Engineering Education Commons^™

Early Engineering Experience (E3) Initiative, Danielle Nicole Carter, Rafael E. Landaeta

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

This Work in Progress paper details an initiative designed to broaden exposure and attract increased interest in the study of engineering of a minority-serving institution (MSI) with a plurality of races represented. The University's student population where this initiative is being implemented consists of 26.2% African American and 6% that identify with two or more races. In contrast, the College of Engineering in this University is 20% African American; the freshmen class makes up 6.3% of this figure. By USDOE standards, this characterization is indicative of a predominantly white institution (PWI). According to the Bureau of Labor Statics, underrepresented minorities …

Exploring The Relationship Between Teamwork Skills And Team Members' Centrality, Francisco Cima, Pilar Pazos, Ana Maria Canto

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The present paper describes an exploratory study of small teams working on a four-month project as part of a graduate engineering program. The research had two primary goals. The first was to utilize the log files from shared repositories used for team collaboration to describe the network structure of the teams. The second was to determine whether the network centrality of any individual team member is associated with their teamwork skills and attitudes towards the collaboration platform. The relationship between teamwork skills, attitudes towards the collaboration technology, and the centrality index was explored using Pearson correlations. A total of 35 …

Inclusion & Marginalization: How Perceptions Of Design Thinking Pedagogy Influence Computer, Electrical, And Software Engineering Identity, Sarah L. Rodriguez, Erin E. Doran, Rachel E. Friedensen, Elizabeth Martínez-Podolsky, Paul S. Hengesteg

Faculty Publications

Engineering identity plays a vital role in the persistence of engineering students, yet limited research exists on how particular pedagogical approaches influence engineering identity at the college level. This qualitative case study explored how undergraduate student perceptions of design thinking pedagogy influence computer, electrical, and software engineering identity. The study found that design thinking pedagogy reinforces the recognition of an engineering identity, particularly for those from historically marginalized groups (i.e., women, people of color). Intentional implementation, including organization and framing of design thinking pedagogy, was an essential foundation for fostering student interest in the course and connecting to their role …

Set And Spike: Mentoring A Student-Athlete In Stem For Undergraduate Engineering Education Research, Leroy Long Iii, Mckenna D. Gooch

Publications

It is well known that student-athletes are more diverse and higher academic achievers, on average, than their collegiate peers. However, little research has explored the mentoring relationships of student-athletes who conduct undergraduate research. Unique challenges and opportunities exist for student-athletes and faculty when it comes to mentoring undergraduate research in fields like science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Using a collaborative autoethnographic methodological approach and apprenticeship theory, our personal narratives detail how an engineering professor mentored a former engineering student-athlete for undergraduate engineering education research. We offer several findings and recommendations.

Career Prospects And Resources Of Domestic Engineering Doctoral Students, Laura A. Gelles

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Career prospects are a motivating factor for entry and retention of doctoral students, especially in the discipline of engineering. While doctoral student training provides them with highly specialized skills to be an independent researcher, they may not have the requisite skills or guidance to secure the job position of their choice. Therefore, it is important to provide doctoral students with opportunities, training, and information (i.e., resources) about different types of careers to not only ensure they are productive contributors of teaching and research, but also equip them for future career prospects. Research techniques based upon in-depth narrative interviews and combining …

Textual Comparison Of Role Model And Mentor Profiles Developed To Increase Participation Of Underrepresented Minorities In Stem, Kyle F. Trenshaw, Elif Miskioglu, Philip Asare, Nir Aish

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Engineering Students’ Perceptions Of Belongingness In Civil Engineering, Lisa Benson, Candice Bolding, Jennifer Harper Ogle, Catherine Mcgough Spence, Joseph Murphy, Rachel Lanning

Integrated Engineering Department Publications

Prior research shows that engineering students with low feelings of belongingness tend to switch to non-technical majors. With the understanding that aspects of student motivation, identity, and personality, as well as their academic performance, affect their sense of community in engineering, this study seeks to assess these student attributes over time. The context for this study is a single civil engineering program that is undergoing both curricular and cultural changes as part of an NSF-funded project. The data and findings presented here are part of a larger study of how student attitudes and beliefs change during their experiences in a …

Leaders Like Me, Kyle F. Trenshaw, Nir Aish, Elif Miskioglu, Philip Asare

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

The Workshop Program at the University of Rochester infuses collaborative learning into a variety of introductory STEM and non-STEM courses through small, weekly, peer-led problem solving sessions called "Workshops." Decades of data from these Workshops indicate that 1) African American, Black, Hispanic, and Latinx students are less likely to attend them than White and Asian students and 2) that every additional Workshop students attend improves their final course grades, even if they only miss a single Workshop out of the 13 or 14 that are offered each semester. To address this situation, the UR Workshop Program has partnered with the …

"Mentoring Is Ethical, Right?": Women Graduate Students And Faculty In Science And Engineering Speak Out, Laura Gelles, Idalis Villanueva, Marialuisa Di Stefano

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

The relationship between graduate students and their research advisors within academia is pivotal to the development and success of the research enterprise. Graduate students rely on their faculty advisor to be a source of information, a departmental negotiator, and a role model to guide their professional and ethical behavior. However, if an advisor does not fully recognize a student’s best interest or they are unaware of how to be an “ethical mentor”, they may overlook the unique social capital of the graduate student (e.g., background, culture) and jeopardize the research relationship. This work aims to explore how women graduate students …

Exploring Engineering Club, Samantha Corey, Stephen Yaghmour

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

Exploring Engineering Club provides an introduction to a variety of engineering problems and piques the students’ interest in engineering by accompanying the information with hands-on problem solving activities mainly related to structural engineering. The activities will often be done in teams which will teach good teamwork skills, as well as problem solving and critical thinking.

International Observations: United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Sdgs) And Digitalisation, Mike Murphy

Presentations

•Superficial thoughts on SDGs and Digitalisation •International Observations: –Skills and competences –Networking •Including a word about the EU –Broadening the Curriculum

Scaffolding Project-Based Learning In An Engineering And Education Partnership Using Open-Access Technology, Pilar Pazos, Stacie I. Ringleb, Jennifer Kidd, Rachel Jones

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper describes the use of a freely-accessible open-source platform based on Google Apps for Education that combines Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Hangouts and script language in a custom-based interface that supports collaborative service-learning projects for teams of Engineering and Education students. The approach discussed in this paper was successful in promoting collaboration among students from two different disciplines working remotely. The analysis suggests that balanced participation in the team, presence of shared goals and clear roles that emphasized individual and collective responsibilities were key to a successful interdisciplinary project experience. While many students still reported struggling …

Instilling An Entrepreneurial Mindset In A New Generation Of First-Year Engineering Students Through A Graphics Course Project, Lulu Sun, Leroy Long Iii

Publications

Each year, an increasing number of engineering start-up companies emerge in the U.S. and around the world. Innovation and entrepreneurship have never been so pronounced, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. How can we train engineering students to be more entrepreneurially-minded so they are well-equipped to become global innovators? Engineering educators can use entrepreneurially-minded learning activities to help students develop an entrepreneurial mindset, which is a set of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. At a mid-sized Southeastern private institution, we used an open-ended team project and an end-of-semester poster competition within a freshman-level engineering graphics course to encourage …

Infographic: Be A Stem Professional, Christian Pierre, Leroy Long Iii

Publications

Infographic describing top STEM professions.

“There Is Never A Break”: The Hidden Curriculum Of Professionalization For Engineering Faculty, Idalis Villanueva, Taya Carothers, Marialuisa Di Stefano, Md. Tarique Hasan Kahan

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

The purpose of this exploratory special issue study was to understand the hidden curriculum (HC), or the unwritten, unofficial, or unintended lessons, around the professionalization of engineering faculty across institutions of higher education. Additionally, how engineering faculty connected the role of HC awareness, emotions, self-efficacy, and self-advocacy concepts was studied. A mixed-method survey was disseminated to 55 engineering faculties across 54 institutions of higher education in the United States. Quantitative questions, which centered around the influences that gender, race, faculty rank, and institutional type played in participants’ responses was analyzed using a combination of decision tree analysis with chi-square and …

A Case Study Of Engineering Students’ Experiences With The Co-Op Application Process, Laura F. Long, Xinrui Xu, Joyce B. Main

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Engineering faculty and advisors emphasize the importance of obtaining industry experience in addition to academic learning. One way universities encourage their students to obtain hands-on work experiences is through cooperative education (co-op) programs. Previous studies have examined the advantages and disadvantages of co-op participation, but the application process for students has not been closely examined. Studying this process will show how academic institutions and companies can potentially enhance the student experience of applying for a co-op position. This study examines student experiences with the co-op application process based on interviews with engineering students at a research-intensive university in the Midwestern …

Effectiveness Of Gamification Activities In A Project-Based Learning Classroom, Eleanor Leung, Elizabeth Pluskwik

Integrated Engineering Department Publications

The purpose of this research is to analyze the effectiveness, and student's self-reported engagement with gamification tools on a student's learning of technical concepts when used in a project-based learning (PBL) engineering classroom environment. Gamification, as defined in this study, is the use of game-based elements such as online audience response systems with automated feedback in non-game situations. By adding gamification to the classroom, we hope to further build on the active and collaborative learning environment that our PBL program already provides. Five gamification activities were implemented during the Fall 2017 semester with junior and senior student engineers enrolled in …

Growing Entrepreneurial Mindset In Interdisciplinary Student Engineers: Experiences Of A Project-Based Engineering Program, Elizabeth Pluskwik, Eleanor Leung, Andrew Lillesve

Integrated Engineering Department Publications

Engineering education models have recently embraced the entrepreneurial mindset as a desired outcome of undergraduate engineering education. Interdisciplinary active learning strategies have been suggested as an effective pedagogy for engaging student engineers in undergraduate engineering education. Recent research suggests that active, social learning in context can lead to improvements in learner innovation, problem-solving, curiosity, retention and accessibility of knowledge, value-creation, and other desired learning outcomes. Much of the recent adoption of active and collaborative learning, self-directed learning, problem-based and project-based learning (PBL), peer to peer learning, and other similar learning strategies are aimed at developing innovative and entrepreneurial mindset skills, …

A Gamification Approach For Experiential Education Of Inventory Control, Gokhan Egilmez, Ridvan Gedik

Engineering and Applied Science Education Faculty Publications

In this educational research project, game-based in-class and after-class learning activities are developed to teach selected inventory control strategies to undergraduate and graduate students. Students from Supply Chain Management and System Simulation courses are targeted, who are taught by different instructors. The activities include teaching the inventory control policies to students in a regular class setting, then providing an overview on a game developed on MS Excel. In the game, the lead time and customer demand variables are defined uncertain, and not given to students, which make the assignment an ill-structured problem. A 12-month planning and execution period is given …

Sustainability Children's Book, Linden Cheek

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

As human driven climate change continues to alter our planet, persuading the general public to adopt sustainable living practices has become increasingly important. Storytelling has long been a part of human culture, and recent studies have emphasized the power of storytelling to influence the audience as a means of changing behavior. This project attempted to teach sustainable principles to primary school children through the creation of a scientific children’s book. The book communicated the maxim of “reduce, reuse, recycle” by tracing a fictitious story of a town where children frequently buy new toys and throw the old toys away. The …

Making Connections: Evaluation Of A Professional Development Program For Teachers Focused On Stem Integration, Judy Lambert, Carmen Cioc, Sorin Cioc, Dawn Sandt

Journal of STEM Teacher Education

This article reports on a 2-year evaluation of a STEM integration professional development (PD) program for 40 math, science, and special education teachers in Grades 5–9 from a large Midwestern public school district. The National Research Council’s framework for integrated STEM education (Honey, Pearson, & Schweingruber, 2014) was used to explain the goals, outcomes, nature and scope, and implementation of the program. Teachers were measured on their growth in STEM content knowledge, technology integration, teaching confidence, pedagogical beliefs, and impact of PD. Increases resulted in all these areas with statistically significant improvements in most of them, particularly in Year 2. …

Engineering Education Research, Michael C. Loui, Maura Borrego

School of Engineering Education Faculty Publications

This chapter describes several aspects of engineering education research with an emphasis on how they might relate to computing education research. We briefly summarize the history of engineering education as a scholarly field, and we describe the current structures that support engineering education research: academic departments, scholarly journals, annual conferences, and professional societies. We identify the theories that often inform engineering education research studies, including theories of cognition, motivation, and identity. We explain how quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods have been used. We summarize the results of an illustrative selection of empirical studies across a broad range of topics, including …

The Impact Of Functional Modeling On Engineering Students' Mental Models, Jacob T. Nelson

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The ability to understand complexity and think holistically about systems is an increasingly important part of engineering design. This is embodied in the concept of systems thinking, a concept studied primarily in the fields of systems dynamics and systems engineering. Systems thinking ability is built off mental models, a loosely-defined construct people form to make predictions about their surroundings. Methods to evaluate systems thinking and underlying mental models rely primarily on self-evaluative methods such as questionnaires, or detailed simulations of systems or processes; however these methods fail to directly capture students’ design tendencies. This work presents a visual instrument used …

Engineering Identity Development: A Review Of Higher Education Literature, Sarah L. Rodriguez, Charles Lu, Morgan Bartlett

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this systematic literature review was to appraise and synthesize the current scholarship pertaining to engineering identity development within the higher education context and create recommendations for future scholarship within engineering education. A review of the literature concluded that research on engineering identity development has increased over the past ten years, has been conducted primarily with qualitative methods, and has been primarily limited to academic communities focused on mathematics, science, and engineering education. In addition, current scholarship reflected that most of the work in this area has focused on the learning contexts and experiences of women and underrepresented …

Infographic: Institutional Barriers To Black And Latino Male Collegians’ Success In Engineering And Related Stem Fields, Leroy L. Long Iii, William Wanyagah

Publications

Infographic was created to support the article Institutional Barriers to Black and Latino Male Collegian's Success in Engineering and Related Stem Fields, which can be read here:

Examining Engineering Design Cognition With Respect To Student Experience And Performance, Greg J. Strimel, Eunhye Kim, Scott R. Bartholomew, Diana V. Cantu

Faculty Publications

This study investigated the design cognition and performance results of secondary and post-secondary engineering students while engaged in an engineering design task. Relationships between prototype performance and design cognition were highlighted to investigate potential links between cognitive processes and success on engineering design problems. Concurrent think-aloud protocols were collected from eight secondary and 12 post-secondary engineering students working individually to design, make, and evaluate a solution prototype to an engineering design task. The collected protocols were segmented and coded using a pre-established coding scheme. The results were then analyzed to compare the two participant groups and determine the relationships between …

Gender And Participation In An Engineering Problem-Based Learning Environment, Laura Hirshfield, Milo D. Koretsky

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

The use of problem-based learning (PBL) is gaining attention in the engineering classroom as a way to help students synthesize foundational knowledge and to better prepare students for practice. In this work, we study the discourse interactions between 27 student teams and two instructors in an engineering PBL environment to analyze how participation is distributed among team members, paying particular attention to the differences between male and female students. There were no statistically significant differences between the amount that male and female students spoke; however, stereotypical gender roles and traditional gendered behavior did manifest in the discussion. Also, regardless of …

People Like Me: Increasing Likelihood Of Success For Underrepresented Minorities In Stem By Providing Realistic And Relatable Role Models, Nir Aish, Philip Asare, Elif Miskioglu

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

Seeing themselves represented in the role models they aspire to, has been shown to be important to students' sense of belonging and success. Underrepresented college students in STEM fields are exposed to only a small set of role models. This set often consist of famous individuals with extraordinary stories (we call these outliers), and represent unfeasible paths to success for a large majority of these students. We aim to remedy this by identifying a set of role models who represent more feasible paths to success (we call these non-outliers) for many underrepresented students. We contend that, despite the less extraordinary …

Approaches To Integrating Engineering In Stem Units And Student Achievement Gains, Elizabeth A. Crotty, Selcen S. Guzey, Gillian H. Roehrig, Aran W. Glancy, Elizabeth A. Ring-Whalen, Tamara J. Moore

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

This study examined different approaches to integrating engineering practices in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curriculum units. These various approaches were correlated with student outcomes on engineering assessment items. There are numerous reform documents in the USA and around the world that emphasize the need to incorporate engineering into science education. The authors of this study contend that different approaches to integrating engineering in STEM units correlate to larger student achievement gains in engineering, based on assessment items developed from the Framework for Quality K–12 Engineering Education (Moore, Glancy, Tank, Kersten, & Smith, 2014). The goal of this work …

Pltw Female High-School Students' Supports And Barriers In Choosing A College Degree, Lisa Lubin Rubin

Dissertations

Purpose:The purpose of this mixed-methods research study is to identify and describe the barriers and supports that PLTW female students encounter when pursuing a non-traditional female STEM degree upon graduation from high school.

Methodology:A mixed-method (qualitative-quantitative) research design was chosen for this study to explore barriers and supports of female high-school seniors in PLTW. The qualitative portion of the study was phenomenology. This study explored the supports and barriers of female high-school seniors in PLTW courses when choosing a college degree. The quantitative portion of the study was conducted via a hard-copy survey containing closed-ended five-point Likert scale …