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The existing curriculum and models for civil engineering graduate programs assume that graduating Ph.D. students will primarily pursue career opportunities in research or academia. However, the number of civil engineering Ph.D. graduate students continues to increase, while the number of opportunities in academia for civil engineers remains stagnant. As a result, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the civil engineering graduate programs must be reevaluated to assist students entering industry after graduation. As part of a larger research study funded through the NSF Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE), we aim to answer the following research questions: 1) How can a research-to-practice model assist students in preparing for a transportation engineering career outside of academia?, 2) What impacts does the research-to-practice graduate model have on the development of transportation engineering doctoral students’ professional identity?, 3) How does the cognitive apprenticeship framework prepare doctoral students for professional practice in transportation engineering?, and 4) What influences does the research-to-practice model have on doctoral students’ motivation toward degree completion? As part of the first phase for the project, two surveys were developed: a graduate engineering student motivation survey based on Expectancy-Value-Theory, and an instrument based on the Cognitive Apprenticeship framework. The motivation survey was based on an instrument designed and validated by Brown & Matusovich (2013) which aimed to measure undergraduate engineering students' motivation towards obtaining an engineering degree. The survey prompts were reviewed and rewritten to reflect the change in context from undergraduate to graduate school. Revised survey prompts were reviewed with a group of graduate engineering students through a think aloud protocol and changes to the instrument were made to ensure consistency in interpretation of the prompts (Rodriguez-Mejia and Bodnar, 2023). The cognitive apprenticeship instrument was derived from the Maastricht Clinical Teaching Questionnaire (MCTQ), originally designed to offer clinical educators feedback on their teaching abilities, as provided by medical students during their clerkship rotations (Stalmeijer et al., 2010). To tailor it to the context of engineering graduate students, the MCTQ's 24 items were carefully examined and rephrased. A think aloud was conducted with three civil engineering graduate students to determine the effectiveness and clarity of the cognitive apprenticeship instrument. Preliminary results show that minimal clarification is needed for some items, and suggestions to include items which address support from their mentors. The other part of the project assessment involves students completing monthly reflections to obtain their opinions on specific events such as seminars or classes, and identify their perceptions of their identity as professionals, scientists, or researchers. Preliminary results suggest that the students involved place an emphasis on developing critical thinking and planning skills to become an engineering professional, but de-emphasize passion and enjoyment. This paper will report on initial findings obtained through this first phase of the IGE project.
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Tolerance of Ambiguity, Development of Cognitive Models and Engineering Identity
The cognitive models of students’ perceptions of the real world lie on a spectrum spanning a dualistic understanding of the worldview on one end and a relativistic view on the other end. Students who are dualistic in their understanding of concepts have difficulty in solving problems which do not lend themselves to a well-defined single answer or solution. One would therefore assume that engineering students would rapidly develop a relativistic understanding of the solution space. It is also expected that this developmental process would also manifest itself in the strengthening of an engineering identity. The focus of the research presented in this paper is to explore the relationships of the cognitive models of the solution space, tolerance of ambiguity and the development of engineering identity. A cross-sectional study of the cognitive models of undergraduate students, their tolerance to ambiguity and perception of engineering identity was conducted at an historically black university. The modified Rydell-Rosen Ambiguity Tolerance (RRAT) instrument for tolerance of ambiguity and the Bateman-McDonald (BD) instrument for determining their location on the cognitive spectrum were used in this study. The students were also administered the Godwin Engineering Identity (GEI) survey. Data analysis indicated that students’ tolerance of ambiguity increased on only few items of the RRAT instrument with the time spent in college. The analysis of the engineering identity indicated positive changes on several of the items of the instrument for the freshmen while reduction on some items of the GEI survey were observed. This research is supported by NSF Grant# 1832041.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1832041
- PAR ID:
- 10185885
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASEE National Conference 2020
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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