Beyond "How's it going?": A Collaborative Autoethnographic Study by Early Instructors in a First-Year Engineering Studio Course

In this complete research paper, we study student-instructor communication in an engineering studio course. Studio pedagogy is an increasingly popular active learning technique. This tradition of pedagogy deemphasizes faculty lecture and emphasizes student-directed project work. However, studio pedagogy draws heavily on instructor-initiated communication for effective instruction. A limited body of research suggests that such communication is challenging, and we posit that early instructors experience additional, as-of-yet unidentified challenges. To better understand these communication issues, a team of four undergraduate course assistants and one faculty member conducted a collaborative autoethnographic study of instructors learning to teach in a first-year studio course. We identified the challenges the (student) instructors faced and the approaches they used. For instance, the instructors faced an interaction barrier—sources of resistance to initiating a student-instructor interaction, such as a lack of instructor self-confidence or student reticence. We illustrate challenges instructors faced and their approaches to resolve them through reflective episodes from the instructors. Our audience is twofold: Education researchers will find new lines of investigation for future work on studios, while early instructors will learn how to get started with teaching in studios.