The Science of Teaching and Learning

It happens all the time: Students start a lab assignment, maybe building or fixing something. They work for a bit, applying what they just learned, then get stuck. Confused, they look to the professor for help.

Because each person had a different question or hit a roadblock in a slightly different spot, he decided the better solution would be to teach “problem-solving knowledge to empower them to be self-sufficient.”

But Sabuncu couldn’t find creative examples of effectively teaching troubleshooting at the college level. Instead of letting that be his own roadblock, he modeled what he wanted to teach his students: Look at the problem holistically and explore possible solutions, step by step. “What are the components of a learning environment for troubleshooting?” he wondered. The National Science Foundation has awarded him a $350,000 grant to find out.

Sabuncu is one of a growing number of WPI faculty dedicating at least some of their formal research efforts to studying—scientifically and empirically—how people learn or how to help people learn. It’s a relatively new twist on the university’s long path of education innovation.

Of course, offering students creative, but practical, learning experiences has been a priority for WPI since its founding. When Ichabod Washburn and John Boynton set out in 1865 to blend theory with practice, it was a novel approach to educating those interested in technical careers. A century later, the university doubled down on the theory-and-practice concept when it restructured the undergraduate curriculum around intensive hands-on projects. In 2021 WPI again made national headlines by pioneering a teaching tenure track, offering a way for faculty whose primary responsibility is teaching to gain the security and prestige that research-based faculty have long enjoyed. And for all WPI faculty up for promotion, regardless of the track they’re on, research about teaching or learning carries as much weight as traditional disciplinary research—a further nod to WPI’s long-held commitment to exceptional instruction.

“It’s very rare to see a research-intensive institution also put so much value on how undergraduates learn,” says Jessi Hill, director of WPI’s Morgan Teaching and Learning Center. Research in this area not only allows WPI to claim with authority that our educational model works, it also helps the university evolve its approach—and remain relevant—as the world changes.

Hill underscores her point by drawing parallels between two very different industries: “Car companies do a ton of testing before the car ever gets to the road. Wouldn’t we want education tested and explored in the same way? Don’t we want to do things in our classrooms that we know are beneficial?” she says. “Broadly speaking, the scholarship of teaching and learning is educational quality control.”

WPI is certainly not the only university conducting research into teaching and learning practices. But its faculty, trained to be methodical, logical, and thorough engineers and scientists, bring a particular structure and precision to this work. “One thing I appreciate about faculty in STEM fields is when they approach understanding education, they do it in a very systematic and controlled way,” says Hill, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Social Science and Policy Studies.

Sometimes, as part of a module on a specific topic, professors will explain the concept of systems thinking and then lead a discussion about how it’s applicable to engineering. Or after completing a unit, faculty may say, “‘In retrospect, were the skills that you learned useful to you? These are called systems thinking skills,’” Zoutendyk says. “But telling students, ‘You are going to design a system and I am going to support you in figuring out how to design a system’? I haven’t been able to find anything written about that.”

So, she and Kimberly LeChasseur, the Morgan Center’s senior research and evaluation associate, co-authored a paper about teaching systems thinking and presented it during the American Society for Engineering Education annual meeting in June. The paper documents Zoutendyk’s approach to teaching systems thinking using a management approach called “complexity leadership,” which increases adaptability within organizations.

Making the case for why engineering professors should know how to impart such proficiencies to students, Zoutendyk and LeChasseur write, “In preparing the engineers of the future, we are also preparing future leaders. Doing so demands that we consider which skills and mindsets these future leaders will need; it also requires that we assess whether the methods we are using to prepare them reflect the ways they will be expected to enact leadership roles.”

Given that engineering students often learn about systems thinking after the fact, it’s perhaps ironic, perhaps serendipitous, that Zoutendyk herself came to the terms “systems thinking” and “complexity leadership” after detailing the steps of each process. She was describing to LeChasseur how students taking her capstone course gradually build their self-confidence individually while working together as a team.

“Students learn professional skills in increasing depth throughout the term. For example, how to be comfortable with ambiguity: I start them off slowly and gradually increase the ambiguity. Or how to work together as a team: Initially it’s really structured, and then as they find their feet they figure out their own strengths and weaknesses and the strengths and weaknesses of the team,” Zoutendyk says. “Slowly but surely, the individual pieces get meshed together. In the end, they produce a product and along the way they learn their engineering skills and they feel well prepared to enter the workforce.”

LeChasseur immediately thought of systems thinking, seeing that each piece of the capstone course adds up to a solid whole—both in the structure of the course itself and in the skills students develop. Her background in psychology and education research gives LeChasseur a different vocabulary from many WPI faculty. And that’s a plus in her role. “I’m translating the expectations and methods, the standards, and the tools from education research for faculty who have very different norms,” LeChasseur says.

With those translation skills, LeChasseur helps faculty craft competitive proposals for research into teaching and learning. And once faculty begin that research, she often works with them to evaluate data they collect.

The question prompting his research is simple, Liu says: “How can we use technology to improve team dynamics?” If, by more efficiently sharing their visual ideas, students’ designs likewise improve, that’s icing on the cake. “It’s very hard to describe complex geometry that’s in your mind. Through this you can try different visual representations quickly or combine two ideas to create a third option. And then they see it. Team members can say, ‘Ah, this is what you wanted to express!’”

He’s developing the AI tool that the rest of the study revolves around in collaboration with Gillian Smith, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and director of the Interactive Media and Game Development program. Liu and Soroush Farzin, assistant professor of teaching in CEAE, will then have students test the tool, giving LeChasseur data to analyze. Not only will she be able to see how, or if, student designs improve, but she’ll be able to assess any changes in team dynamics while using the tool and offer insights into the effectiveness of Liu’s approach as a broader educational model that might have uses beyond architectural engineering.

That glimmer of possible wider applications—and therefore more lives touched—lies at the heart of all scientific research. Likewise, improving people’s lives is central to WPI’s promise of offering students a transformative STEM education. But, notes Sabuncu, there’s an inherent ambiguity in that promise. “We are transforming students from what, into what?” he asks. “We want to transform students from novices into experts.”

His first step has been to “learn what constitutes expertise in troubleshooting” by interviewing experts from diverse disciplines to understand how they tackle complex problems. So far, he’s talked to 18 people from fields as varied as manufacturing, biotechnology, and academic research, looking for commonalities and exceptions.

His study, like all teaching and learning research, is both optimistic and altruistic, hoping to find ways for future students to more fully experience the transformation of education. And because WPI faculty are such methodical and thorough researchers, they’re amassing unambiguous data to back up our educational model.

“Going back to the automobile example, it’s like the road-testing part,” says Hill. “It empirically validates what we say a WPI education does.”

Even with those frustrations, though, the exercise proved a valuable learning experience for her students. “Allowing them to work through challenges themselves helps build their independence, which helps create self-directed learners and problem-solvers.”

“We create a stoplight system. Certain scenarios are green, it’s OK to use AI. Others are red and it’s not OK to use AI. And some are yellow caution areas,” she says. “It generates a conversation with students about why they’re here, which is to learn, and whether they’re achieving that outcome if they have AI do the work.”