How Award Winning Courseware is Impacting Engineering Education

In this paper, we report on a study regarding the impact of the Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware. This paper describes the first two phases of the research and findings with implications for engineering education. Research questions focus on, identifying the impact of the award on the courseware authors and developers, their teaching and their students’ learning; gathering information on the evolution of the award itself; and, describing the spread of pedagogical innovations across engineering and other related disciplines. The interviews and content analysis to date have initiated a rich description of the impact on the awardees' careers, especially with regard to their teaching practices and STEM education scholarship. It appears that the Premier Award holds some prestige and has been instrumental in shaping the careers of graduate students and young faculty members. Analysis of the awardees’ dossiers revealed the challenges associated with evaluating the impact of innovations on teaching and learning as well as issues surrounding the dissemination of innovations in engineering education.