Project Catalyst: promoting systemic change in engineering education

Project Catalyst is an NSF-funded initiative to promote systemic change in engineering education by integrating instructional design techniques, transforming the classroom into a cooperative learning environment, and incorporating the use of information technology in the teaching/learning process. A conceptual framework is described to aid in shifting and supporting student's and instructor's activities in a transition from a traditional mode to a collaborative mode of instruction. In the first year of Project Catalyst, a core group of engineering faculty has begun implementing this focused shift by introducing a greater emphasis on team building, teamwork, cooperative learning, problem-based learning, and information technology. This paper discusses our enhanced instructional model and the supplementary skills modules that we will develop and use to implement this model. It concludes with the future work for the remaining two years of the NSF-funded project.