The shift to the "coach" role
The IMPULSE faculty made clear that in order for this program to be successful, they needed to play more the role of coach than any of them were used to.

Nick explained, For example, both the physics and calculus instructors are frequently in the mode where students are showing up at their door asking for advice about how to approach an engineering problem that involves some physics or math. To the extent that we're able to pull that off, to be able to recast the instructor as a mentor and coach instead of being this person who lectures to you and demands that somehow you got to redo it on the exam, we are successful.

In part because it was challenging for the faculty to adopt a coach role with students, they found themselves more inclined to learn from one another.

As Nick put it, I don't think we've exploited this coaching method as far as we can. It started to work especially well last semester, as the faculty progress on this learning curve, and they learn to work together. We're not used to sequencing courses and worrying about projects together. That's an interesting thing for faculty to get involved with. As they've learned together, we're getting better at it.

Integration of subjects was slow in coming, in part due to struggles faculty faced in applying collaborative learning methods in an inquiry-based classroom.

Ray Laoulache (mechanical engineering) explained: The problem we faced is that originally we did not integrate the coursework. We could not integrate the subjects, because it was the first time ever in our lives we walked into a classroom where we are going to tell the students it was active learning. So I had to recondition my whole thinking from being an active professor on a blackboard to being a mentor, OK? So it took me a while, it took me a semester basically to bring myself up to speed, learn about all the aspects of teaming. There's a learning curve for everyone. Now that I've got that under control, now we are spending more time on integrating.

In fact, as IMPULSE faculty discovered, promoting teamwork was easier said than done. According to Ray, it takes a special kind of teacher to be successful in a team-based classroom:

I'm able to walk into the aisles and talk to the students, pat them on the shoulder, be involved so they feel I am part of the team. When the instructor walks into the classroom and he or she still has the attitude "I am on the blackboard," then he or she is doomed. If you put up a wall between you and the students, you've killed the program.

Ray believes that the success of the program depends heavily on the ability of the participating instructors-a concern that has significant implications for whether a program will outlast a particular group of faculty participants:

My opinion is that, in large measure the success of IMPULSE-like programs depend on the personality of the instructors. Let's say you take two instructors and send them to a workshop by Johnson & Johnson on active learning, and they both understand the material and what it takes to develop the curriculum. You put them in an IMPULSE program, and you could have one person doing a hell of a job with the students and another who did not get through. It is a fine rope to walk on when you are dealing with teaming, because if you don't find what it takes to trigger an interest in the students, you will fail to teach the students.

Students with whom we spoke appreciated a more personable relationship with their instructors. The general sense we got from students is that IMPULSE faculty genuinely cared about them and about their success in the program. The following is an exchange between the case researchers and a group of students discussing the impact of IMPULSE reform on the teacher-student interaction:

Student #1: Well the teachers we had, they were more personable. They tried to get very close to you and not be professors. "Professor Laoulache" was "Ray." The other ones weren't that relaxed, but they weren't just standing up there.

Student #2: They all know who you are, not just because you're the geeky kid that sits in the front and is always kissing up to them, or you're the stupid kid that's always coming in late and getting in trouble. They just know who you are, so that when you go to talk to them, you don't feel intimidated or anything like that.

Interviewer: Does the relationship you developed with the instructor continue on in other classes?

Student #3: He's always asking how everybody is doing whenever you run into him. He's a mechanical engineering faculty. I'm not going to have him again ever for a class.

Student #4: When you see them in the hallway they're like, "Oh hi, how are you doing? How are classes?"

Interviewer: Do you think all of these positive things could have been achieved without computers?

Student #5: Yes, but I don't think the teachers would go for that style. You're sitting there working on the computer, the teacher doesn't have to stand up front lecturing because you're loading a program that runs for you off the computer, the teachers do have the time to go around and talk to you individually.

Managing the increased workload
Almost unanimously, faculty at UMD pointed to an increase in their workload as a result of their participation in IMPULSE. Ray reflected on his own erroneous impression that it is easy to work in an inquiry-based environment:

I was told that when you are dealing with an IMPULSE active learning classroom, you don't lecture at all, you are free from this preparation, you go to the class and you sort of relax, you ask questions. But I am working twenty times harder in this course than I used to in a traditional course. It turned out to be there is more work in IMPULSE.

The increase in workload has to do in part with a shift from a lecture-style teaching to one where the teacher constantly interacts with his/her students. The interaction is a carefully guided one, in which faculty encourage students to explore science and let them do the exploration.

Renate Crawford (physics) explained: It's a completely different environment. It's a completely different energy level that you need for it. In a lecture class you are completely in control. You go in there with prepared notes, which you probably have used before. I always encourage questions, but still it's completely different than walking from group to group, figuring out what they are doing, where they are making mistakes, where are they getting hung up. You have to ask them the right questions without telling them too much which is so tempting, because you feel like, "Please now understand that you do it this way." You want to just sit and do it for them. So it's a completely different energy level. A lot of the times when I come out of there, I feel like I'm drained. You have to give it so much because if you go in there and you just sit back and let it happen, they are not going to get the same learning experience; so you have to walk around; you have to be very interactive with them.

A fair amount of work was also required to adapt the material from RealTime physics so that it could be used in a four-hour time slot at UMD.

John Dowd explained: Also, you don't have to but we all produced a lot of written material. I essentially edited Priscilla Laws' book from one designed for six hours a week to one designed for four hours a week, and put it out every week. I did two labs a week. With fourteen weeks, that's twenty-eight labs. They're all nine or ten pages long. That's a lot of work.

We did find one instructor in the program who felt that the IMPULSE methods, particularly use of technology in the curriculum, were quite in line with the kind of teaching he had been doing for years.

Bob Kowakczyk said: Well, I don't think they were at all surprised, because, as I mentioned earlier, another professor and myself have written a math software package that was published back in 1991; so for at least ten years already, he and I have been using technology in the classroom. We've been bringing a computer into the classroom; before it was LCD panels and now the projectors, so we've always been using technology in the classroom. It was either [another professor] or I as option to teach in this program. I won (or lost, depending on how you look at it!) and I became the first instructor in IMPULSE. I don't think anyone was surprised in my department that I became enrolled in this program because we were the two instructors out of the whole department that were using technology the most. That has changed. Now a lot more instructors in the math department are using technology because we have our own computer classroom.