POSTER. Presented at the Symposium (9/12/2019)
Abstract:
The Academy of Engineering Success (AcES) employs literature-based, best practices to support and retain underrepresented students in engineering through graduation with the ultimate goal of diversifying the engineering workforce. AcES was established in 2012 and has been supported via NSF S-STEM award number 1644119 since 2016. The 2016, 2017, and 2018 cohorts consist of 12, 20, and 22 students, respectively. Five S-STEM supported scholarships were awarded to the 2016 cohort, seven scholarships were awarded to students from the 2017 cohort, and six scholarships were awarded to students from the 2018 cohort.
AcES students participate in a one-week summer bridge experience, a common fall semester course focused on professional development, and a common spring semester course emphasizing the role of engineers in societal development. Starting with the summer bridge experience, and continuing until graduation, students are immersed in curricular and co-curricular activities with the goals of fostering feelings of institutional inclusion and belonging in engineering, providing academic support and student success skills, and professional development. The aforementioned goals are achieved by providing (1) opportunities for faculty-student, student-student, and industry mentor-student interaction, (2) academic support, and student success education in areas such as time management and study skills, and (3) facilitated career and major exploration.
Four research questions are being examined, (1) What is the relationship between participation in the AcES program and participants’ academic success?, (2) What aspects of the AcES program most significantly impact participants’ success in engineering, (3) How do AcES students seek to overcome challenges in studying engineering, and (4) What is the longitudinal impact of the AcES program in terms of motivation, perceptions, feelings of inclusion, outcome expectations of the participants and retention?
Students enrolled in the AcES program participate in the GRIT, LAESE, and MSLQ surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews at the start and end of each fall semester and at the end of the spring semester. The surveys provide a measure of students’ GRIT, general self-efficacy, engineering self-efficacy, test anxiety, math outcome efficacy, intrinsic value of learning, inclusion, career expectations, and coping efficacy. Focus group and interview responses are analyzed in order to answer research questions 2, 3, and 4. Survey responses are analyzed to answer research question 4, and institutional data such as GPA is used to answer research question 1.
An analysis of the 2017 AcES cohort survey responses produced a surprising result. When the responses of AcES students who retained were compared to the responses of AcES students who left engineering, those who left engineering had higher baseline values of GRIT, career expectations, engineering self-efficacy, and math outcome efficacy than those students who retained. A preliminary analysis of the 2016, 2017, and 2018 focus group and one-on-one interview responses indicates that the Engineering Learning Center, tutors, organized out of class experiences, first-year seminar, the AcES cohort, the AcES summer bridge, the AcES program, AcES Faculty/Staff, AcES guest lecturers, and FEP faculty/Staff are viewed as valuable by students and cited with contributing to their success in engineering. It is also evident that AcES students seek help from peers, seek help from tutors, use online resources, and attend office hours to overcome their challenges in studying engineering.
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Investigating the impact of three-dimensional learning interventions on student understanding of structure–property relationships
The ability to predict macroscopic properties using a compound's chemical structure is an essential idea for chemistry as well as other disciplines such as biology. In this study we investigate how different levels of interventions impact the components of students’ explanations (claims, evidence, and reasoning) of structure–property relationships, particularly related to boiling point trends. These interventions, aligned with Three-Dimensional Learning (3DL), were investigated with four different cohorts of students: Cohort 1 – a control group of students enrolled in an active learning general chemistry course; Cohort 2 – students enrolled in the same active learning general chemistry course but given Intervention 1 (a 3DL worksheet administered during class time); Cohort 3 – students enrolled in the same active learning general chemistry course but given Intervention 1 and Intervention 2 (a 3DL course exam question administered after instruction); and Cohort 4 – a reference group of students enrolled in a transformed active learning general chemistry curriculum in which 3DL is an essential feature and includes Intervention 1 and Intervention 2 as part of the curriculum. We found that Cohort 2 students (with the 3DL worksheet intervention) were more likely than the control group (Cohort 1) to correctly predict the compound with a higher boiling point as well as incorporate ideas of strength of intermolecular forces into their explanations of boiling point differences. When a 3DL exam question was given as a follow up to the 3DL worksheet, students in Cohort 3 were more likely than Cohorts 1 and 2 to correctly identify the claim. Further comparison showed that Cohort 4 (transformed general chemistry curriculum) were more likely than Cohorts 1–3 to also include the ideas of energy needed to overcome stronger forces for a more sophisticated explanation (50% of Cohort 4 students compared to 17–33% for Cohorts 1–3). In addition, 80% of Cohort 4 students were able to construct a correct representation of hydrogen bonding as a non-covalent interaction compared to 13–57% for the other three cohorts.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10290156
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Chemistry Education Research and Practice
- Volume:
- 22
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1109-4028
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 247 to 262
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1039/D0RP00216J
