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1. Identifying Congruence Between Advanced Manufacturing Two-year Curricula and Employer Needs: Findings from Five Florida State Colleges

   Kowligi, Pallavi R. ; Prajapati, Priyanka ; Jones, Faye R. ; Mardis, Marcia A. ( January 2020 , ASEE annual conference exposition)

   In this research paper, we report our assessment of the congruence between two-year advanced manufacturing (AM) program syllabi to employer needs expressed in the Department of Labor’s (DOL) AM Competency Model. The dynamic AM industry relies on two-year AM technician program graduates from state and community colleges. These program curricula are mandated to reflect state career and technology education (CTE) curriculum frameworks, but the frameworks are not designed to measure graduates' abilities to meet AM employers’ current needs. Because this technology-reliant industry changes so quickly, faculty are challenged to source, develop, and implement responsive educational experiences. Through consultation with industry leaders, the Department of Labor (DOL) developed an AM competency model to illustrate and promote workers’ necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions. To determine whether the AM competency model can function as an exit assessment for AM program graduates, we compared AM program syllabi from five rural Northwest Florida state colleges to the DOL AM Competency Model. We text-mined competencies in both syllabi and the AM Competency Model and compared them to identify: 1) frequently addressed topics; 2) verbs guiding course learning outcomes versus the skill depth desired by employers; and 3) overall match between documents. Our findings indicate that despitemore »being developed to reflect the same curriculum framework, the five AM programs’ topical and complexity emphases varied widely. Overall, AM Competency Model content reflected higher levels of the Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, highlighting industry commitments to fostering analysis, evaluation, and creation. We conclude with implications for educational institutions, AM policymakers, and industry, outline the need for an AM Body of Knowledge, and propose an ongoing assessment model to improve the congruence between what employers want and what is taught in two-year AM degree programs.« less
2. Facilitating Advanced Manufacturing Technicians' Readiness in the Rural Economy: A Competency-based Deductive Approach

   Jones, Faye R. ; Mardis, Marcia A. ; Prajapati, Priyanka ; Kowligi, Pallavi R. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   While rural manufacturing job availability is growing throughout the country, rural communities often lack skilled workers. Thus, it is imperative for employers to validate needed new professional competencies by understanding which skills can be taught on-the-job as well as the knowledge and abilities best gained through classroom learning and experiential learning opportunities. This enhanced understanding not only benefits employers’ hiring practices, but also it can help Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs improve curricula and expand learning opportunities to best meet students’ and employers’ needs. In this study, we triangulated industry competency model content with rural employer perspectives on new advanced manufacturing (AM) professionals’ desired competencies (i.e., the level of skill sophistication in a particular AM work area). To extract competencies for entry-level AM rural jobs, we used a deductive approach with multiple methods. First, we used Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract, analyze, and compare the U.S. Department of Labor’s AM 2010 and 2020 Competency Models because they reflect the levels and topics AM industry professionals nationally reported as technician needs. Then, we interviewed 10 rural AM employers in North Florida to capture their perceptions of the most important competencies for new middle-skill technicians. Interview transcripts were also processedmore »using NLP to extract competency levels and topics; we compared this output to the AM Competency Model analysis results. We deduced that the most critical competencies identified by rural AM employers required direct classroom instruction, but there was a subset of skills obtainable through on-the-job training or other experiential learning. This study, with the goal of addressing employee shortages and increasing the number of technicians ready for the workforce, has implications for rural community colleges’ AM programs curricula and the role of experiential learning.« less
3. "I'm looking at you, you're a perfectly good person …”: Describing non-apparent disability in engineering

   https://doi.org/https://strategy.asee.org/36059  

   Zongrone, C. ; McCall, C. ; Paretti, M. C. ; Shew, A. ; Simmons, D. R. ; McNair, L. D. ( January 2021 , Collaborative Network for Engineerign and Computing Diversity)

   In recent years, studies in engineering education have begun to intentionally integrate disability into discussions of diversity, inclusion, and equity. To broaden and advocate for the participation of this group in engineering, researchers have identified a variety of factors that have kept people with disabilities at the margins of the field. Such factors include the underrepresentation of disabled individuals within research and industry; systemic and personal barriers, and sociocultural expectations within and beyond engineering education-related contexts. These findings provide a foundational understanding of the external and environmental influences that can shape how students with disabilities experience higher education, develop a sense of belonging, and ultimately form professional identities as engineers. Prior work examining the intersections of disability identity and professional identity is limited, with little to no studies examining the ways in which students conceptualize, define, and interpret disability as a category of identity during their undergraduate engineering experience. This lack of research poses problems for recruitment, retention, and inclusion, particularly as existing studies have shown that the ways in which students perceive and define themselves in relation to their college major is crucial for the development of a professional engineering identity. Further, due to variation in defining ‘disability’ acrossmore »national agencies (e.g., the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Justice) and disability communities (with different models of disability), the term “disability” is broad and often misunderstood, frequently referring to a group of individuals with a wide range of conditions and experiences. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain deeper insights into the ways students define disability and disability identity within their own contexts as they develop professional identities. Specifically, we ask the following research question: How do students describe and conceptualize non-apparent disabilities? To answer this research question, we draw from emergent findings from an on-going grounded theory exploration of professional identity formation of undergraduate civil engineering students with disabilities. In this paper, we focus our discussion on the grounded theory analyses of 4 semi-structured interviews with participants who have disclosed a non-apparent disability. Study participants consist of students currently enrolled in undergraduate civil engineering programs, students who were initially enrolled in undergraduate civil engineering programs and transferred to another major, and students who have recently graduated from a civil engineering program within the past year. Sensitizing concepts emerged as findings from the initial grounded theory analysis to guide and initiate our inquiry: 1) the medical model of disability, 2) the social model of disability, and 3) personal experience. First, medical models of disability position physical, cognitive, and developmental difference as a “sickness” or “condition” that must be “treated”. From this perspective, disability is perceived as an impairment that must be accommodated so that individuals can obtain a dominantly-accepted sense of normality. An example of medical models within the education context include accommodations procedures in which students must obtain an official diagnosis in order to access tools necessary for academic success. Second, social models of disability position disability as a dynamic and fluid identity that consists of a variety of physical, cognitive, or developmental differences. Dissenting from assumptions of normality and the focus on individual bodily conditions (hallmarks of the medical model), the social model focuses on the political and social structures that inherently create or construct disability. An example of a social model within the education context includes the universal design of materials and tools that are accessible to all students within a given course. In these instances, students are not required to request accommodations and may, consequently, bypass medical diagnoses. Lastly, participants referred to their own life experiences as a way to define, describe, and consider disability. Fernando considers his stutter to be a disability because he is often interrupted, spoken over, or silenced when engaging with others. In turn, he is perceived as unintelligent and unfit to be a civil engineer by his peers. In contrast, David, who identifies as autistic, does not consider himself to be disabled. These experiences highlight the complex intersections of medical and social models of disability and their contextual influences as participants navigate their lives. While these sensitizing concepts are not meant to scope the research, they provide a useful lens for initiating research and provides markers on which a deeper, emergent analysis is expanded. Findings from this work will be used to further explore the professional identity formation of undergraduate civil engineering students with disabilities. These findings will provide engineering education researchers and practitioners with insights regarding the ways individuals with disabilities interpret their in- and out-of-classroom experiences and navigate their disability identities. For higher education, broadly, this work aims to reinforce the complex and diverse nature of disability experience and identity, particularly as it relates to accommodations and accessibility within the classroom, and expand the inclusiveness of our programs and institutions.« less
4. It Depends on Your Perspective: Comparing Advanced Manufacturing Employers Expectations to Advanced Manufacturing Curriculum Frameworks

   Mardis, Marcia A. ; Jones, Faye R. ; Pahuja, Divya ( August 2019 , Frontiers in Education)

   To meet the rising skill demands of the dynamic advanced manufacturing (AM) industry, two-year AM programs must produce well-trained graduates. This need is especially marked in Florida because the state is an AM leader, producing intermediate and finished products ranging from plastics to tortillas to motor vehicles. In total, Florida is home to over 20,000 AM companies employing over 320,000 workers. Florida is also geographically diverse, being simultaneously one of the most urban and one of the most rural highly populous states in the country. To characterize Florida's AM employment needs, we sought to determine how AM jobs were distributed across the state. We analyzed 108 job postings from Florida employers who were seeking manufacturing and engineering technicians through publicly available job postings. We used text mining to extract the knowledge areas and verbs in the documents that AM employers identified in job postings and desired from their entry-level employees. We compared those topics and verbs to the ones found in the Florida Department of Education's (FLDoE) AM curriculum framework for two-year programs. We found varying levels of alignment, and, in some instances, misalignment, between employers' desired topics and competency levels and those found in FLDoE Frameworks. Our findings notmore »only highlight the importance of industry-education partnerships to tailor preparation to employer needs, but also suggest that a deeper exploration and analysis of AM jobs is needed to further determine alignment to FLDoE frameworks. We conclude that the FLDoE framework may be used as a foundation, but not the sole source, for important AM knowledge areas.« less
5. Analyzing Three Competency Models of Advanced Manufacturing

   Oh, Sang Hoo ; Mardis, Marcia A. ; Jones, Faye R. ( June 2019 , ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   In this research paper, we present a study in which we analyzed and compared three competency models of manufacturing to assess how well the models visually communicate advanced manufacturing (AM) competencies. Advanced manufacturing covers new industrial processes that improve upon traditional methods in quality, speed, and cost. In addition, the dynamic nature of technology and innovation has made it difficult to find a unified illustration of key advanced manufacturing skills. However, three visual models of manufacturing illustrate various stakeholders’ perceptions of the field and depict the competencies individuals need to join the AM workforce. The three models we analyzed are: U.S. Department of Labor’s Advanced Manufacturing Competency Model, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ Four Pillars of Manufacturing Knowledge, and the National Association of Manufacturers-endorsed Manufacturing Skills Certification System. While the content in these models has been validated by governmental, industry, and educational stakeholders, less explored is whether these models, as visual media, are readily understandable by their intended audiences. In this paper, we will provide an in-depth analysis of these models by using the six fundamental principles of visual design by Edward Tufte (2006): comparisons, causality, multivariate analysis, integration evidence, documentation, and content. Taken together, these principles allowed us tomore »explore the fundamental principles of design in each model and distill promising directions for further investigation into more unified depiction of the advanced manufacturing industry sector’s competencies.« less