Research Initiation: Factors Motivating Engineering Faculty to Adopt and Teach New Engineering Technologies

Michigan Technological University, Houghton MI

Investigators

Abstract

With the world on the brink of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, engineering faculty must continually teach new industry-relevant engineering technologies, such as new software tools or new programming languages, to maintain the relevance of their course materials, as well as to model lifelong learning and technology adoption to students. Although faculty regularly adopt new technologies for their own research, these technologies are not necessarily those that are most important for practicing engineers within industry. This project will develop an understanding of what aids and hinders engineering faculty ability to learn and teach new engineering technologies, which will inform a model of faculty technology acceptance as well as proposed interventions to increase faculty adoption of industry-relevant technologies. Properly trained engineers are an essential element of our country to navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution and maintain both our long-term economic stability and our national security. The success of engineering programs within the technological revolution depends upon a quick and agile response from faculty and administration. This project will help position engineering faculty to be able to maintain the relevance of engineering programs and the skills of engineering graduates both now and in the long term. This project will develop an understanding of factors that support or inhibit engineering faculty technology acceptance, including the development of a faculty-specific model of such acceptance. Its scope will focus on examining engineering faculty voluntary adoption and teaching of industry-relevant technologies. Previous studies of technology adoption among faculty have focused on instructional technologies, rather than the technologies that students will use in their careers. Additionally, the widely used Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been shown to be limited, only accounting for 60% of the variability in the ultimate adoption of a technology (Lee et al., 2003). Thus, additional factors remain to be uncovered that affect the adoption and teaching of industry-relevant technologies by university engineering faculty. The questions to be addressed in the research include: (a) What are the motivations that influence the adoption of new digital technologies by engineering faculty? (b) What are the barriers that inhibit the adoption of new digital technologies by engineering faculty? (c) What institutional policies and programs might aid faculty in the adoption of new engineering technologies? (d) What factors affect faculty decisions regarding which new engineering technologies to learn and adopt for their professional use? and (e) How do faculty determine which engineering technologies to teach in their courses? Qualitative interviews with engineering faculty will be used to gather data to identify the relevant variables which can then be tested in subsequent research. Identified themes in the data will be used to elaborate new constructs that may affect faculty technology acceptance. These new constructs will ultimately lead to a proposed revised TAM that is more applicable to engineering faculty, leading to a better understanding of technology adoption and use among these faculty. More importantly, the new understandings that are developed will inform proposed interventions to address the challenge of keeping the technological tools taught to students, and associated skills learned, in engineering courses relevant for engineering graduates. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.