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1. “Making” to the Future: An Innovative Approach to Undergraduate Science Education

   Key, S. Catherine ; Bradley, Tanina ; Reid, Aileen ; Saliim, Eric T. ( August 2022 , Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   Gentry, Susan (Ed.)

   “Making’ - a hands-on practice of creating technology-based artifacts typically involves integrating electronics, programming, or 3D printing. This paper describes the targeted infusion of “making” into undergraduate STEM education as an approach to encourage innovation while building capacity in the 21st-century technical STEM skills of engineering and design. “Making’ has the potential to impact self-efficacy and building capacity in technical STEM skills among underrepresented and underserved science majors. To investigate how “making” experiences are received by Underrepresented Minority (URM) students at an Historically Black College or University (HBCU), we applied and received funding through the National Science Foundation HBCU-UP Targeted Infusion Project (TIP) mechanism. The infusion included “making” instructional practices and Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) into two undergraduate biology courses. Assessment data indicates the targeted - infusion courses were well-received by these communities with females exceling in iteration and communication of engineered designs. 

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2. Assessing Awareness and Competency of Engineering Freshmen on Ethical and Responsible Research and Practices

   Johnson, M.D. ( January 2023 , American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference)

   This paper presents the progress made in the first year of a five-year NSF ER2 (Ethical and Responsible Research)-funded project on ethical and responsible research and practices in science and engineering undertaken at a large public university in the southwestern United States. The objective of this research is to improve instructor training, interventions, and student outcomes in high schools and universities to improve awareness and commitment to ethical practices in STEM coursework. The paper will describe the progress made in several components of the grant: i) Preliminary analysis of measures of ethical knowledge, reasoning skills, attitudes, and practices of several hundred undergraduate freshmen and seniors, correlated with demographic data, based on data captured in the first year of the grant; ii) Progress made in the development of the concept of “ethical self-efficacy” and an instrument to measure it for freshmen and senior engineering students, and in assessing how it relates to ethical competency and student background; iii) Implications of these analyses in the construction of a three-week professional development program that guides high school STEM teachers through the development of learning modules on ethical issues related to their courses; iv) The assessment of the undergraduate engineering curriculum in two majors to determine appropriate courses for ethics interventions to help students understand how technical activities fit within broader social, economic, and environmental contexts; the construction of these interventions; and the development of measures to track their success; and, v) Initial steps toward measuring impact of other experiences (e.g., undergraduate research, internships, service learning) and courses (e.g., humanities, social science, and business courses) on development of ethical practices, on assessments taken in senior engineering capstone courses. 

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3. Understanding Data Science Instruction in Multiple STEM Domains

   Snyder, Caitlin ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   As technology advances, data-driven work is becoming increasingly important across all disciplines. Data science is an emerging field that encompasses a large array of topics including data collection, data preprocessing, data visualization, and data analysis using statistical and machine learning methods. As undergraduates enter the workforce in the future, they will need to “benefit from a fundamental awareness of and competence in data science”[9]. This project has formed a research-practice partnership that brings together STEM+C instructors and researchers from three universities and education research and consulting groups. We aim to use high-frequency monitoring data collected from real-world systems to develop and implement an interdisciplinary approach to enable undergraduate students to develop an understanding of data science concepts through individual STEM disciplines that include engineering, computer science, environmental science, and biology. In this paper, we perform an initial exploratory analysis on how data science topics are introduced into the different courses, with the ultimate goal of understanding how instructional modules and accompanying assessments can be developed for multidisciplinary use. We analyze information collected from instructor interviews and surveys, student surveys, and assessments from five undergraduate courses (243 students) at the three universities to understand aspects of data science curricula that are common across disciplines. Using a qualitative approach, we find commonalities in data science instruction and assessment components across the disciplines. This includes topical content, data sources, pedagogical approaches, and assessment design. Preliminary analyses of instructor interviews also suggest factors that affect the content taught and the assessment material across the five courses. These factors include class size, students’ year of study, students’ reasons for taking class, and students’ background expertise and knowledge. These findings indicate the challenges in developing data modules for multidisciplinary use. We hope that the analysis and reflections on our initial offerings have improved our understanding of these challenges, and how we may address them when designing future data science teaching modules. These are the first steps in a design-based approach to developing data science modules that may be offered across multiple courses. 

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4. Assessing Awareness and Competency of Engineering Freshmen on Ethical and Responsible Research and Practices

   1. Brahmbhatt*, P. ( June 2022 , Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   This paper presents the initial work of a recently funded NSF project on ethical and responsible research and practices in science and engineering. The objective of this research is to improve instructor training, interventions, and student outcomes in high schools and universities to improve awareness and commitment to ethical practices in STEM coursework. The project will generate a robust snapshot of the ethical knowledge, reasoning skills, attitudes, and practices of several thousand undergraduate engineering students. This snapshot will inform the development of a three-week enrichment opportunity for high school STEM teachers. Working with university faculty and graduate students, these teachers will develop learning modules on ethical issues related to their courses. The snapshot will also identify gaps and guide the creation of targeted interventions that will be used in second-, third-, and fourth-year engineering courses. This data-driven project uses a mixed-methods approach to generate a better understanding of the impact of ethics interventions at various points in a student's academic development by developing and using a set of instruments to measure cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of ethical competency and self-efficacy. To that end, a second snapshot will be taken by testing and surveying engineering students in their capstone courses to provide a broad overview of the competence and self-confidence that engineering students have in dealing with ethical STEM issues, to determine the efficacy of various interventions, and to improve future interventions. Utilizing repeated measures and possessing a longitudinal dimension, the project will generate extensive data about the development of ethical competency, ethical self-efficacy, and their relationship. The interventions designed for secondary and tertiary classrooms will build on best practices for micro-insertion of ethics content that are practical and help students understand how technical competencies fit within broader social, economic, and environmental contexts. The capstone snapshot will also provide some measure of the impact of other experiences (e.g., undergraduate research, internships, service learning) and courses (e.g., humanities, social science, and business courses) on development of ethical practices. This report marks the start of a five-year project; therefore, the results presented in this paper represent findings from the engineering ethics literature and baseline results from survey of engineering freshmen at Texas A&M University. The findings from the survey are being utilized in developing intervention modules that will be integrated in upper-level engineering courses and training materials for high school teachers. 

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5. Active learning module development for at-risk learners in engineering graphics

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--30120  

   Ernst, J. V. ( July 2018 , Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   This paper describes the creation of an active learning framework and process of module development in efforts to build requisite knowledge and skills for at-risk learners enrolled in university introductory engineering design and technical graphics courses. Specifically, the module sequence, strategy for building direct relevance for at-risk populations, and culminating performance-based learning tasks are identified and detailed. Student-oriented reference points of learning are leveraged through relevant imagery, examples, and objects in further building personalized meaning and deeper comprehension of processes. Ten learning modules were initially developed within the Problem-Based Learning Modules (PBLM) framework and are currently being pilot tested under the Active Learning Modules to Support Problem-Based Learning: Effects on Engineering Retention and Academic Outcomes of At-Risk Students project funded through the National Science Foundation IUSE Program (Award # 1725874) to refine through evidence-based process outcomes. 

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