Higher education literature is replete with evidence that socioeconomic variables and background characteristics inform a myriad of factors related to students’ college life. These include the institutions students choose to attend, their experiences after matriculation, differences in success rates, and even post-graduation outcomes. This is particularly true in engineering, where gaps in academic performance, persistence, and degree attainment still endure despite the litany of federal, institutional, and unit-level resources designed to address socioeconomic disparities.
In contrast to much of the literature that takes a deficit-based approach, in this work we presuppose that it is not simply differences in socioeconomic variables and background characteristics that separates highly engaged, successful students in engineering from their less engaged, unsuccessful counterparts. Rather, we suggest that an underlying set of socialization processes by which students become familiar with collegiate engineering education makes students more or less likely to engage in activities that are associated with success. We posit that students’ experiences with these socialization processes – institutional socialization tactics and proactive behaviors – may better explain patterns of participation and outcomes in engineering that go beyond the consideration of access to academic and social resources.
Drawing on Weidman’s Undergraduate Socialization framework, we developed a conceptual model for understanding the socialization processes that inform engineering students’ participation in co-curricular activities (specifically professional engineering societies and student design teams). This model is guided by three hypotheses. First, we hypothesize that socioeconomic, academic, and demographic background characteristics combine to uniquely inform students’ experiences with two socialization processes – institutional tactics and proactive behaviors. This, in turn, informs their participation in co-curricular activities, such as professional engineering societies and student design teams. Finally, students who participate in co-curricular engineering activities have different academic and social outcomes than their counterparts who do not participate in co-curricular engineering activities. We also developed a survey instrument based on this model to understand how various socioeconomic variables and background characteristics inform students’ socialization processes and, as a result, their outcomes in engineering.
Our goal is to understand the factors that shape students’ socialization into engineering, as well as their development into engineers. Ultimately, our goal is to narrow gaps in participation and success in engineering by addressing negative socialization experiences.
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Student perceptions about participation in co-curricular engineering projects - an Institutional Study at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Co-curricular team projects in engineering – like design projects, experimental assignments, or national project-based competitions or challenges – can be key experiences for students in forming personal and professional skills and traits. Little concrete data is available about why students choose to participate or not participate in such activities though, and how their participation and perceptions of the activities may be influenced by factors such as their gender identity, race/ethnicity, and other facets of themselves and their experiences. Without this data, it is difficult to conceive of strategies to improve participation in certain activities among groups of people who are otherwise under-represented compared even to their representation at the College level. The research was devised to gather insight into why students chose to participate or not participate, and what they felt the benefits and detrimental effects of participation were. The pilot study was conducted at the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus, which is part of the California State University system - it has a student cohort that is not particularly diverse compared to the rest of the system or highly representative of state demographics, and it has an institutional focus on applied, hands- on learning that means that a high number of students participate in co-curricular engineering projects. A 70 question survey tool, adapted from an existing tool, garnered responses from nearly 500 students, with demographic and identity questions preceding sections about factors that led to participation or non- participation, and then perceptions of positive and negative outcomes that can come from involvement in co-curricular engineering projects.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1738154
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10106258
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Conference proceedings - Hawaii International Conference on Education
- ISSN:
- 1541-5880
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 895-920
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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