Survey Report - Professors’ Competences Through The Perspective Of STEM Students

Survey Report Professors’ Competences Through The Perspective Of STEM Students Conducted by the Educational Involvement Department of Board of European Students of Technology (BEST)

June 2017

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Introduction

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Results by questions Number of entries Age of respondents Gender Country where they currently study University where they study Field of studies/department Year of study (current year year they are enrolled in) Cycle of degree (bachelor, master, PhD, etc) Importance ranking of competences Open questions - suggestions for other indicators or competences 1. Interpersonal Competence 2. Methodological Competence 3. Communication Competence 4. Planning and Management Competence 5. Teamwork Competence 6. Innovation Competence

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Analysis of the results

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Further reading

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Authors

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Contact

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Introduction This survey was conducted in order to have a quantitative overview on the ​desirable professors’ competences from the perspective of STEM students from European Universities.

Board of European Students of Technology (BEST) is a non-governmental, non-profit and apolitical student organisation. By reaching a better understanding of European cultures and developing capacities to work in an international environment, BEST strives to help European students of technology to become more internationally minded.

Today, BEST is present in 32 countries with a total of 95 active local BEST groups and a total of more than 3.300 vibrant and competent young technology students, who believe in the importance of technology and different ways of thinking.

While putting European universities on the map, connecting students with our partners and closing the gap between students, companies, and universities, BEST is adding value to the environment we are part of. What is more, BEST is not standing idle but rather looking into what we can still do together. ​BEST Educational Involvement (EI) is one of the main activities that BEST offers to technical students all over Europe. It creates a platform to raise awareness of students on educational matters and to provide impartial input of students to the stakeholders of European STEM Education.

Therefore, BEST is writing scientific papers in order to disseminate the work done on the field of EI to stakeholders of education. The research on the students’ opinion on educational matters is gathered through ​Events on Education​ and ​surveys​.

The results of this survey will be presented in the scientific paper ​“Professors Competences Through The Perspective Of STEM Students” by BEST representatives at the ​International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning​, which will take place in Budapest in September 2017 (​link​). The audience will be composed by experts in the field of education (university professors and researchers).

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Results by questions Number of entries The survey gathered responses from ​318 ​STEM students.

Age of respondents The average age of the respondents is ​21.5​ years.

Gender

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Country where they currently study

University where they study KU Leuven - Belgium University of Lorraine - France Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg - Germany National Technical University of Athens - Greece Politecnico di Milano - Italy Delft University of Technology - Netherlands Silesian University of Technology - Poland University of Aveiro - Portugal Politehnica University of Bucharest - Romania University of Ljubljana - Slovenia National Technical University of Ukraine "Kyiv Polytechnic Institute" - Ukraine

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Field of studies/department

Year of study (current year year they are enrolled in)

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Cycle of degree (bachelor, master, PhD, etc)

Importance ranking of competences In the following table, the percentages of importance ranking are shown. Instead of the full names of indicators, abbreviations are used. The full list of competences indicators can be found in the appendix of the following paper: Lopez, D., & Perez-Poch, A. (2016).

‘Detecting which teaching competences should be reinforced in an engineering lecturer training program’. 44-th SEFI Conference, 12-15 September 2016 (​link​).

Indicator

Not Somewhat Very Important important important important

Indicator

Not Somewhat Very Important important important important

IC1

1.89

21.38

45.28

31.45

PMC1

1.26

18.87

47.80

32.08

IC2

1.26

9.75

34.59

54.40

PMC2

3.14

21.07

43.08

32.70

IC3

3.77

21.38

41.82

33.02

PMC3

3.77

19.50

42.14

34.59

IC4

2.83

15.41

41.19

40.57

PMC4

2.83

32.70

44.34

20.13

IC5

2.83

19.18

34.28

43.71

PMC5

4.09

29.87

43.08

22.96

IC6

6.92

31.45

36.48

25.16

PMC6

2.83

15.09

50.63

31.45

IC7

7.23

22.33

35.22

35.22

TC1

4.40

24.21

48.43

22.96

IC8

5.35

17.30

39.62

37.74

TC2

6.92

29.56

38.36

25.16

IC9

0.94

9.12

27.36

62.58

TC3

2.20

22.33

47.80

27.67

MC1

2.20

17.92

41.19

38.68

TC4

3.77

19.81

38.05

38.36

MC2

3.14

21.38

44.34

31.13

TC5

4.09

21.07

45.28

29.56

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MC3

3.46

21.07

43.40

32.08

TC6

4.09

22.96

50.00

22.96

MC4

2.52

28.93

39.94

28.62

TC7

7.23

25.16

43.40

24.21

MC5

3.46

29.56

37.42

29.56

InnC1

0.94

12.58

44.97

41.51

MC6

2.83

17.30

35.85

44.03

InnC2

0.94

15.41

40.57

43.08

MC7

2.20

18.24

39.62

39.94

InnC3

3.14

22.96

43.40

30.50

MC8

4.40

27.36

37.74

30.50

InnC4

3.14

22.01

45.91

28.93

MC9

1.89

22.01

36.16

39.94

InnC5

1.89

20.44

39.31

38.36

MC10

7.86

38.68

33.65

19.81

InnC6

4.40

24.21

34.28

37.11

MC11

4.72

17.30

36.79

41.19

InnC7

2.52

18.87

40.57

38.05

CC1

0.63

19.50

46.86

33.02

CC2

1.57

7.55

29.56

61.32

CC3

0.94

10.38

35.53

53.14

CC4

1.57

19.81

48.43

30.19

CC5

6.29

22.96

34.91

35.85

CC6

5.66

27.04

39.62

27.67

CC7

4.72

28.62

33.96

32.70

CC8

10.69

31.76

31.13

26.42

CC9

2.52

12.58

44.97

39.94

Open questions - suggestions for other indicators or competences Some of the answers did not reflect ideas on indicators or competences, however we do find them interesting enough to be shared here.

1. Interpersonal Competence ● Be a good speaker, to know how to be understood. ● Promote an open-mindedness. ● Develop leadership skills. ● Encourage learning through practice. ● To be able to manage their own emotions. ● Willing to be a good professor. ● Be impartial to all students and treat their students as their equals. ● Encourage students to do extracurricular activities. ● Encourage communication. ● Be approachable and available for students.

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● Needs to inspire and be liberal with exams! ● A good professor should know when to crack a joke to wake up his public. ● Encourage the sharing of personal opinions. ● Stressing the manner in which something should be done/solved. ● Avoid discrimination or abuse toward students. ● Often professor are those people who have excellent academic records, which is wrong because they don't understand why a student is not understanding because he himself have never faced those problem. ● Use his authority as a mean to pass knowledge and not use it as a mean to bash people having different opinions/solutions/methods of approach on a subject. ● Professor's knowledge should be relevant and up to date.

2. Methodological Competence ● Plan an activity that allows them to have time for each student. ● Interdisciplinary associations. ● Show that the grade is nothing but a number assessing a particular situation of one's knowledge. Provide a different type of assessment that doesn't promote unhealthy competitive behaviors or characterise an individual by a number. ● Keep it simple -> not to many platforms/techniques. Due to an overdose of platforms and resources, it can be difficult to simply get the needed information. ● Stimulate critical thinking on most recent research scenarios and open problems in the field, linking to useful and specific references for individual deepening, dealing extensively with environmental concerns in industrial processes. ● Encourage learning through practice. ● At every major assignment (about 2-3 per semester) it is forbidden to use any form of modern programs (CAD, MS Office, BIM, etc) and all assignments must be written and designed by hand. ● Teach only the useful instead of teaching thousands of subjects that a student won't require in the future. ● Be able to understand students and their situations, make concessions.

3. Communication Competence ● Gather Information regarding the classes in a way that promotes student’s privacy.

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● Being able to deal with schedule changes for the lecture, knowing how to maintain high the level of interest from students and adequately planning breaks to improve efficiency, answering promptly to didactic and logistic questions asked via email. ● There is no way for students to express any problems having to do with academic problems, professors abuse or discrimination. Student bodies are extensions of political parties and don't have the students interests as a priority.

4. Planning and Management Competence ● Plan classes that can reach different demands, not all students learn in the same way.

5. Teamwork Competence ● Demand what can be achieved in the healthiest way possible. Evaluate time demanded. ● Usually professors don't have meetings with the teams prior to the assignment submission date.

6. Innovation Competence ● Promote dialogue within teachers in order to understand new ways of addressing new issues and share professional experience for the evolvement the department and the university. ● The way slide presentations are used is useless compared to a blackboard.

Analysis of the results When analysing the students’ opinions, the indicators which were ranked as more important should be reinforced by the professors. The indicators were rated using a Likert scale where the choices were the following: “not important” (1); “somewhat important” (2); “important” (3); or “very important” (4). The indicators ranked as “important” (3) or “very important” (4) by more than 75% of the students, are considered as having a high importance to students.

In Graph 1, the results are obtained according to the following steps: the percentages of both “important” (3) and “very important” (4) ranking per indicator are summed. Then, the average of these sums is considered as the importance average of the competence

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to which the indicators belong. According to the results, the innovation and interpersonal competences are given a high importance ranking according to more than 75% of the surveyed students. In comparison, the teamwork competences seem to have the lowest importance according to students, even though this percentage is higher than 65%.

Fig 1: Importance ranking of the professors' competences

In Table 1, the indicators are clustered within a few ranges, according to the students’ perception of their importance. As mentioned before, an indicator or a competence are considered to have a significant importance when the percentage is higher than 75%.

Thus, the indicators that belong to the categories 75-80%, 80-90% and 90-100% are acknowledged as such.

Table 1: Importance ranking of the professors' competences - Summed importance of each indicator clustered within the range of importance

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Using the same principle as for Graph 1, summed importance of each indicator was calculated and presented in Table 2. Highest importance among interpersonal competences has the indicator “IC9: Encourage motivation”. For methodological competences, highest importance has the indicator “MC1: Use methodological strategies that stimulate student participation”. Considering communication competences, planning and management competences, teamwork competences and innovation competences, highest importance have indicators “CC2: Explain with clarity and enthusiasm”, “PMC6: Assess implementation of the program regarding learning and acquisition of competences; detect weaknesses and introduce improvements to ensure achievement of outcomes”, “TC4: Act for the good of the team” and “InnC1: Analyze the teaching/learning context to identify areas of improvement and apply innovative strategies and/or resources, respectively”. The highest priority of all has the indicator “CC2: Explain with clarity and enthusiasm”, of 90.88% of importance.

Out of all the indicators of the 6 different competences, only 2 did not receive a ranking of importance of more than 60% of the students. The two lowest ranked indicators are: “MC10: Use different formative assessment strategies” and “CC8: Use body language as appropriate”. The first aforementioned indicator has a complex wording and it is possible that students may not understand its meaning. The second lower ranked indicator shows that around 40% of the surveyed students do not see body language as an important criterion when evaluating a professor’s teaching practice.

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Table 2: Importance ranking of the professors' competences - Summed importance of each indicator

In comparison with summed importance of each indicator, only 2 indicators were marked as “very important” for more than 60% of applicants and these are “IC9: Encourage motivation” with 62.58% and “CC2: Explain with clarity and enthusiasm” with 61.32%. Indicators that were marked as “very important” for more than 50% of applicants are “IC2: Develop reflexive and critical thinking” with 54.40% and “CC3: Use definitions, examples and alternative explanations to facilitate understanding of the topic” with 53.14%.

Surprisingly, indicator “CC8: Use body language as appropriate” has the highest percentage of being “not important”, with 10.69%.

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Further reading ● Events on Education (rebranded to BEST Symposia on Education) reports and papers from BEST (​link​) ● BEST Educational Involvement pages on best.eu.org (​link​) ● D. Manasova, S. Antera, S. Mihajlov. (2017). Professors Competences Through The Perspective Of STEM Students. International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning, 27-29 September 2017 (​link​) ● Lopez, D., & Perez-Poch, A. (2016). Detecting which teaching competences should be reinforced in an engineering lecturer training program. 44-th SEFI Conference, 12-15 September 2016 (​link​)

Authors Sonja Mihajlov, University of Belgrade, Serbia Sofia Antera, Stockholm University, Sweden Dragana Manasova, University Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, Macedonia

Contact If you have any questions or ideas, please contact ​education@BEST.eu.org