Bridges to Engineering Education
Developing collaboration among engineering and education faculty for cyber-tutoring of middle school math students in applications of engineering to mathematics.
Washington State University Colleges of Engineering and of Education collaborated on a Bridges for Engineering Education/BEE planning grant [focused upon 9 monthly planning “technology summits”] to improve, expand, and rigorously evaluate the WSU’s innovative Cybermentoring Project. The cybermentoring project, begun in 1998, originally used web pages and emails, enabling geographically isolated WSU students, under the direction of teachers and professors, to tutor grade 1-12 students in distant classrooms across Washington state. In 2002, WSU cybermentors incorporated into the tutorials high end video conferencing along with integrated computers and white boards. In January 2003, the Cybmentoring Project was showcased as one of WSU’s most promising “world class/face to face” research initiatives. In June 2003, the Cybermentoring Project was awarded the National University Telecommunications Network “Distance Education Innovation Award.”
Although the intellectual merits of tutorial programs have been universally recognized since the time of Socrates’ pedagogical and peripatetic methods, it was not until Richard Bloom’s meta-analyses in the 1970’s and 1980’s that the outstanding effectiveness of tutorial programs vis a vis student achievement was established on the basis of scientific research in education. The BEE planning grant is designed not only to improve the practical and infrastructure aspects of WSU’s award-winning and well-published cybermentoring project, but also to identify and pilot research designs and investigations that go beyond the high quality, though mostly exploratory cybermentoring research studies conducted in Washington state during the past five years. In addition, the BEE planning grant increases the number of its partnerships to include more faculty in the WSU College of Education, the WSU College of Engineering, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and a much larger number of collaborating public, private, and home schools.
In terms of the planning grant’s broader impacts in education and in society at large, the BEE grant focused on researching and developing cutting edge technologies and testing how they improve the teaching and learning of preservice engineers and preservice teachers in the areas of mathematics and project-based learning within the domain of engineering education. The project’s objectives address the three central problems that are acknowledged at national, state, and local levels, viz., the mathematics achievement of youngsters needs to be improved, teachers need to teach math more effectively, and students need stronger mathematics and quantitative literacy skills if they are to be accepted and retained in engineering colleges. By connecting WSU students with pre-college students in inner city, Native Focus, rural and remote, home schools, and other distant contexts and by using the resources and innovations of WSU’s Carnegie Initiative for the Doctorate/CID project, the BEE planning grant will enable WSU to develop and disseminate researchable and research-proven aspects of its cybermentoring model to the many geographically isolated institutions of higher education. When, in Spring 2003, consultants from Microsoft Corporation analyzed the promise and impact of the cybermentoring project, they noted the following in their 13 page report:
"The current process [of cybermentoring] is seen as a value-add to the University, student teacher mentors, students and education in the state for the following reasons:
- The system aids the student recruitment pipeline for WSU and other institutions by building relationships between K-12 school children and the University.
- The system assists student teachers in developing classroom skills in a controlled environment.
- The system helps the students achieve in the classroom through the mentoring offered and through the perceived “coolness” of the one-on-one high-tech interaction.
- The system focuses more students on engineering, mathematics and science, and so assists public policy encouraging more students to enter such fields."
Finally, the BEE planning grant is designed to make cybermentoring projects replicable [in their teaching, technological, and research infrastructures] in other northwest teacher preparation and engineering programs and in WSU’s Carnegie Initiative for the Doctorate/CID peer institutions across the country.