Improving teaching with research: the role for theory-driven evaluation

For the last five years universities in Australia and New Zealand have experimented with the use of the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Challenge in their first-year engineering courses. In evaluating the initiative we asked 'What works for whom under what circumstances?' Here we report specifically on the third phase of the project which examined three attempts to embed the findings of the evaluation in the next year's teaching: one concerned adjustments to assessment to improve alignment; another concerned the use of the EWB Challenge projects in a multidisciplinary subject outside of engineering; and the third set of changes revolved around attempts to make sure a large teaching team was implementing the projects in a consistent way. In all of these cases it emerged that maintaining communication and collaboration amongst stakeholders was critically important and practically difficult. We conclude that embedding the results of research may require as much time and attention as actually doing the research and reflect on how practical strategies may be developed