Experience Teaching a Two Course Sequence in Engineering Innovation & Leadership

This paper details the establishment of effective team teaching for the first year of an ABET-accredited Engineering Innovation and Leadership degree program. The teaching team successfully taught to courses: EL 1405 Fundamentals of Engineering and Graphics and EL 1302 Introduction to Design and Leadership, using a variety of online platforms and sources. EL 1405 equips students with fundamental skills to help thrive during pursuit of their BS in Engineering Innovation and Leadership. Therefore, a major focus of the course is to helps students their own identity as leaders and as engineers. Another focus of the course is to build community and culture within the Program. Further, this course introduces students to the flipped classroom and project-based learning styles common in EL courses. The final focus of this course is the development of critical engineering graphics skills for students EL 1302 focuses on engineering design and engineering project management with emphases on the techniques and skills needed for leadership within this domain. Topics include innovation and creativity, continuous quality improvement, and sustainability. We describe the teaching team dynamic, the student-to-teaching team cooperation and the use of innovative technology tools to support student learning and success. The teaching team is comprised of faculty, staff and students who work closely to provide a seamless learning experience for students. The students in the teaching team having taken the courses previously, demonstrate the value-added in their own professional development through leadership and management of course structures and schedules, as well as delivering content and overseeing course management systems. The teaching team experience, working closely together during all phases of the classes, provides a demonstration of how course teaching is both an art, a science, and a research endeavor; and all grow joyfully from the experience. We will share our efforts and how they have impacted students, and how we use student feedback to develop the next iterations of these phenomenal experiences, in a continuous quality improvement process.