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As more institutions create first year engineering programs that teach an engineering design process, there is a growing desire to prepare students for this coursework in the high school setting. When exposing such a broad population to these ideas, a primary question arises regarding student attitudes toward engineering and how these attitudes develop over time. That is, how does this exposure to engineering design influence student attitudes toward engineering? Moreover, answering this question will allow educators to better understand what motivates students to learn, how much their motivation impacts their overall mastery of these skills, and how these aspects of engineering self-efficacy and engineering design may differ between those who are on a pre-engineering track and those who are not. To begin answering this question, high school students enrolled in the Olathe City school system of Olathe, Kansas completed Engineering Problem-Framing Design Activities (EPDAs) in participating science courses (AP physics, physics, advanced biotechnology, chemistry, honors chemistry, biology, honors biology, and physical science specifically) of the traditional science and engineering academy curriculums offered by the district. Student engineering self-efficacy and motivation was also measured at the beginning and end of their coursework. This was conducted via a new instrument, the Engineering Design Value-Expectancy Scale (EDVES), which includes 38 items across three primary subscales: expectancy of success in, perceived value of, and identification with engineering and design. The development of this tool was presented and discussed in a previous study where the EDVES instrument was analyzed for validity among first-year undergraduate engineering students. In this work, the responses of high school students on the EDVES were analyzed to establish validity in this new population and to begin exploring trends in student responses based on their sub-population. Validity testing was completed via Cook’s validation evidence model with respect to scoring, generalization, and extrapolation evidence. The pre-course EDVES responses obtained were used to complete validation and trend analysis (note that post-course data was not readily available at the time of analysis).
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Towards Development of an Engineering Design Value-expectancy Scale (EDVES)
As high school programs are increasingly incorporating engineering content into their curricula, a question is raised as to the impacts of those programs on student attitudes towards engineering, in particular engineering design. From a collegiate perspective, there is a related question as to how first-year engineering programs at the college level should adapt to a greater percentage of incoming students with prior conceptions about engineering design and how to efficaciously uncover what those conceptions may be. Further, there is a broader question within engineering design as to how various design experiences, especially introductory experiences, may influence student attitudes towards the subject and towards engineering more broadly. Student attitudes is a broad and well-studied area and a wide array of instruments have been shown to be valid and reliable assessments of various aspects of student motivation, self-efficacy, and interests. In terms of career interests, the STEM Career Interest Survey (STEM-CIS) has been widely used in grade school settings to gauge student intentions to pursue STEM careers, with a subscale focused on engineering. In self-efficacy and motivation, the Value-Expectancy STEM Assessment Scale (VESAS) is a STEM-focused adaptation of the broader Values, Interest, and Expectations Scale (VIES), which in turns builds upon Eccles’ Value-Expectancy model of self-efficacy. When it comes to engineering design, there have been a few attempts to develop more focused instruments, such as Carberry’s Design Self-Efficacy Instrument. For the purposes of this work, evaluating novice and beginning designer attitudes about engineering design, the available instruments were not found to assess the desired attributes. Design-focused instruments such as Carberry’s were too narrowly focused on the stages of the design process, many of which required a certain a priori knowledge to effectively evaluate. Broader instruments such as the VESAS were too focused on working and studying engineering, rather than doing or identifying with engineering. A new instrument, the Engineering Design Value-Expectancy Scale (EDVES) was developed to meet this need. In its current form the EDVES includes 38 items across several subscales covering expectancy of success in, perceived value of, and identification with engineering and design. This work presents the EDVES and discusses the development process of the instrument. It presents validity evidence following the Cook validation evidence model, including scoring, generalization, and extrapolation validity evidence. This validation study was conducted using pre- and post-course deployment with 192 first-year engineering students enrolled in a foundational engineering design course.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1812823
- PAR ID:
- 10286684
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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