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1. A Pilot Study of the Development of Empathy within a Service-learning Trip from a Qualitative Perspective

   Wang, Linjue; Carroll, Turhan Kendall; Delaine, David A. (January 2018, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Qualitative outcomes of a pilot study which seeks to investigate the ways and extent to which service-learning impacts the development of empathy in undergraduate engineering students are presented. Service-learning is an experiential education pedagogy in which students engage in activities designed to tackle community needs within structured opportunities to promote learning and development. Community service, teamwork, problem-solving, and reflection are common elements within service-learning activities. This educational approach can provide students with real-world scenarios that connect classroom theory and knowledge to community needs. A brief literature review on service-learning within engineering education, is presented alongside brief background on the meaning of empathy. This is followed by initial qualitative findings around a service-learning trip within an undergraduate engineering course involving 13 student participants. The findings indicate service-learning in a foreign community can serve as a platform for the development of empathy in engineering undergraduates. The development of empathy can be fostered within three main findings: group dynamics, interactions with the community, and individual interpretation of the service-learning experience through self-reflection. This paper concludes with a discussion on how these three findings collectively influence the development of empathy in students. This paper provides a qualitative approach to contextualizing the development of empathy as a learning outcome for engineering educators interested in service-learning. 

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2. GIFTS: Making Research Experiences Meaningful through Critical Self-Reflection

   DeCrescenzo, Peter; Jangha, S. (June 2023, American Society of Engineering Education)

   In this Great Ideas for Teaching Students (GIFTS) paper, we offer learning outcomes that we are beginning to recognize from our eight-week research experience for undergraduates (REU). There are four characteristics that have been found to be essential to success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields: a strong sense of STEM identity, scientific self-efficacy, a sense of belonging, and a psychological sense of community. This is especially true for first-year and transfer students pursuing STEM undergraduate degrees. A variety of studies have been published that go into detail about why these characteristics in particular have such a significant effect on student performance and retention. This paper will present Critical Self-Reflection as a practical way to integrate development of these characteristics into student research experiences to foster experiential learning that goes beyond increasing technical skills. STEM students are not often trained to critically self-reflect on their experiences in classroom and research settings. An inability for undergraduates to reflect intentionally on their experiences creates greater risk for attrition from STEM disciplines. Curated reflective experiences in collaborative learning settings can offer professional development opportunities to enhance students’ social and technical communication skills. There are four phases within the scaffolded Critical Self-Reflection framework: Learning to Reflect, Reflection for Action, Reflection in Action, and Reflection on Action. When applying the evidence-based practice, STEM undergraduate researchers describe their perceptions via three activities: creating a legacy statement, participating in facilitated dialogue sessions, and writing curated reflection journal entries within an REU. Through critical self-reflection exercises, we are beginning to find growth of first-year and transfer STEM undergraduates in the following areas: understanding of their role in the lab; confidence in their researcher identity; expression of agency; observation and communication skills; and intentionality for action. Participating in this self-reflection allows students to make meaning of their experience enabling them to hone the aforementioned characteristics that creates a pathway from their undergraduate experience to undergraduate degree completion, graduate degree attainment, and to the STEM workforce. 

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3. Student perceptions of and learning in makerspaces embedded in their undergraduate engineering preparation programs

   Nadelson, L. S. (April 2020, ASEE annual conference)

   Building upon our two years of research on the use of makerspaces in undergraduate engineering programs, we engaged in a large-scale data collection from students enrolled in undergraduate engineering preparation programs with affiliated makerspaces established for a minimum of three years. Using web searches, and other sources of information (e.g. references from other researchers or faculty members), we have identified 28 institutions that met our criteria. Working with a third party, we gathered over 574 responses from undergraduate engineering students with makerspace experiences spread across the 28 institutions. To gather our data, we created and validated an online survey with a combination of quantitative and qualitative items. We constructed a survey with subscales aligned with motivation to learn, growth mindset, learning goal orientation, knowledge of engineering as a profession, and belongingness and inclusion, as associated with work within makerspaces. We found significant positive correlations among the variables, positive levels of motivation, growth mindset, knowledge of engineering as a profession, and belongingness. We found differences in levels for gender, engineering majors, and student class standing. We discuss the implications for our findings in the context of undergraduate engineering student learning in makerspaces. 

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4. Student perceptions of and learning in makerspaces embedded in their undergraduate engineering preparation programs.

   Nadelson, L. S.; Villanueva, I.; Bouwma-Gearhart, J.; Soto, E.; Lenhart, C.; Youmans, K.; & Choi, Y. H. (January 2020, Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   Building upon our two years of research on the use of makerspaces in undergraduate engineering programs, we engaged in a large-scale data collection from students enrolled in undergraduate engineering preparation programs with affiliated makerspaces established for a minimum of three years. Using web searches, and other sources of information (e.g. references from other researchers or faculty members), we have identified 28 institutions that met our criteria. Working with a third party, we gathered over 574 responses from undergraduate engineering students with makerspace experiences spread across the 28 institutions. To gather our data, we created and validated an online survey with a combination of quantitative and qualitative items. We constructed a survey with subscales aligned with motivation to learn, growth mindset, learning goal orientation, knowledge of engineering as a profession, and belongingness and inclusion, as associated with work within makerspaces. We found significant positive correlations among the variables, positive levels of motivation, growth mindset, knowledge of engineering as a profession, and belongingness. We found differences in levels for gender, engineering majors, and student class standing. We discuss the implications for our findings in the context of undergraduate engineering student learning in makerspaces. 

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5. “I Understand Their Frustrations a Little Bit Better”: Elementary Teachers’ Affective Stances in Engineering in an Online Learning Program

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--33969  

   Portsmore, Merredith; Watkins, Jessica; Swanson, Rebecca (January 2020, ASEE annual conference)

   As K-12 engineering education becomes more ubiquitous in the U.S, increased attention has been paid to preparing the heterogeneous group of in-service teachers who have taken on the challenge of teaching engineering. Standards have emerged for professional development along with research on teacher learning in engineering that call for teachers to facilitate and support engineering learning environments. Given that many teachers may not have experienced engineering practice calls have been made to engage teaches K-12 teachers in the “doing” of engineering as part of their preparation. However, there is a need for research studying more specific nature of the “doing” and the instructional implications for engaging teachers in “doing” engineering. In general, to date, limited time and constrained resources necessitate that many professional development programs for K-12 teachers to engage participants in the same engineering activities they will enact with their students. While this approach supports teachers’ familiarity with curriculum and ability to anticipate students’ ideas, there is reason to believe that these experiences may not be authentic enough to support teachers in developing a rich understanding of the “doing” of engineering. K-12 teachers are often familiar with the materials and curricular solutions, given their experiences as adults, which means that engaging in the same tasks as their students may not be challenging enough to develop their understandings about engineering. This can then be consequential for their pedagogy: In our prior work, we found that teachers’ linear conceptions of the engineering design process can limit them from recognizing and supporting student engagement in productive design practices. Research on the development of engineering design practices with adults in undergraduate and professional engineering settings has shown significant differences in how adults approach and understand problems. Therefore, we conjectured that engaging teachers in more rigorous engineering challenges designed for adult engineering novices would more readily support their developing rich understandings of the ways in which professional engineers move through the design process. We term this approach meaningful engineering for teachers, and it is informed by work in science education that highlights the importance of learning environments creating a need for learners to develop and engage in disciplinary practices. We explored this approach to teachers’ professional learning experiences in doing engineering in an online graduate program for in-service teachers in engineering education at Tufts University entitled the Teacher Engineering Education Program (teep.tufts.edu). In this exploratory study, we asked: 1. How did teachers respond to engaging in meaningful engineering for teachers in the TEEP program? 2. What did teachers identify as important things they learned about engineering content and pedagogy? This paper focuses on one theme that emerged from teachers’ reflections. Our analysis found that teachers reported that meaningful engineering supported their development of epistemic empathy (“the act of understanding and appreciating someone's cognitive and emotional experience within an epistemic activity”) as a result of their own affective experiences in doing engineering that required significant iteration as well as using novel robotic materials. We consider how epistemic empathy may be an important aspect of teacher learning in K-12 engineering education and the potential implications for designing engineering teacher education. 

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