More Like this

1. An interdisciplinary approach to building students’ spatial thinking skills from high school through college

   Davatzes, Alexandra ; Shipley, Thomas ; LaDue, Nicole ; Lombardi, Doug ( January 2017 , Program and abstracts - V.M. Goldschmidt Conference)

   There is a large gap between the ability of experts and students in grasping spatial concepts and representations. Engineering and the geosciences require the highest expertise in spatial thinking, and weak spatial skills are a significant barrier to success for many students [1]. Spatial skills are also highly malleable [2]; therefore, a current challenge is to identify how to promote students’ spatial thinking. Interdisciplinary research on how students think about spatially-demanding problems in the geosciences has identified several major barriers for students and interventions to help scaffold learning at a variety of levels from high school through upper level undergraduatemore »majors. The Geoscience Education Transdisciplinary Spatial Learning Network (GET-Spatial; http://serc.carleton.edu/getspatial/) is an NSF-funded collaboration between geoscientists, cognitive psychologists, and education researchers. Our goal is to help students overcome initial hurdles in reasoning about spatial problems in an effort to diversify the geoscience workforce. Examples of spatial problems in the fields of geochemistry include scaling, both in size and time; penetrative thinking to make inferences about internal structures from surface properties; and graph-reading, especially ternary diagrams. Understanding scales outside of direct human experience, both very large (e.g. cosmochemistry, deep time) and very small (e.g. mineralogy, nanoparticles) can be acutely difficult for students. However, interventions have successfully resulted in improvements to scale estimations and improve exam performance [3]. We will discuss best practices for developing effective interdisciplinary teams, and how to overcome challenges of working across disciplines and across grade levels. We will provide examples of spatial interventions in scaling and penetrative thinking. [1] Hegarty et al. (2010) in Spatial Cognition VII 6222, 85- 94. [2] Uttal et al. (2012) Psychology of Learning and Motivation 57, 147-181. [3] Resnick et al. (2016) Educational Psychology Review, 1-15.« less
2. Relationship Between Goal Orientation, Agency, and Motivation in Undergraduate Civil Engineering Students

   O'Hara, R. ; Benson, L. ; Ogle, J. ; Bolding, C.J. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Annual Conference)

   Understanding the underlying psychological constructs that affect undergraduate engineering students’ academic achievement and persistence can inform curricular and programmatic changes in engineering education, with the goal of increasing access and advancement in engineering for a diverse population of students. As part of a larger study examining student experiences in a civil engineering department undergoing curricular and cultural changes, this quantitative study investigated the relationship between goal orientation, agency, and time-oriented motivation, differences in this relationship across academic years, and potential influences from personality types. The larger project seeks to examine the motivation, identity, and sense of belonging for undergraduate civilmore »engineering students; this paper seeks to construct a conceptual model explaining the interactive nature of some of these constructs. A previously tested and established survey that draws from multiple theories of motivation and other affective factors such as agency and identity, and that includes Big 5 personality constructs, was used to collect data from second, third-and fourth-year civil engineering students over a two-year period. Prior studies have focused on the instrument’s latent constructs with sense of belonging. However, no analysis has been conducted to examine how some of the constructs influence each other. Specific latent constructs of goal orientation, agency (students’ beliefs that their career in science or engineering can lead to positive effects on the world), FTP, and personality were selected for secondary data analysis based on theory presented in the literature about relationships between motivation, goal setting, agency, and student perceptions of their future. The sample size of respondents was 843; data cleaning and deletion of missing data (65cases; 7.7%) resulted in a final sample size of 778(92.3% of the original data). This included328 second year, 294 third year and 156 fourth year students. Statistical analyses and modeling included bivariate correlational analysis, MANOVA and MANCOVA. Results indicated significant correlation between goal orientation, agency, and time-oriented motivation. Furthermore, differences in these constructs between academic years and personality type influenced the relationship. FTP differed between sophomores and seniors, with seniors having higher scores, suggesting motivation increases as time in the program increases. Personality significantly influenced these relationships in different ways but had the strongest effect on agency. The findings that certain types of people are not only motivated to go into civil engineering but believe their major will make a difference in the world, have implications for educational practice. Results align with current literature but also shed light onto the effects of personality on time-oriented motivation and agency, expanding theory in engineering education. Further research is needed to determine if the effects of personality hold true for other engineering and science majors.« less
3. The Curious Construct of Active Learning

   https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100620973974  

   Lombardi, Doug ; Shipley, Thomas F. ; Bailey, Janelle M. ; Bretones, Paulo S. ; Prather, Edward E. ; Ballen, Cissy J. ; Knight, Jennifer K. ; Smith, Michelle K. ; Stowe, Ryan L. ; Cooper, Melanie M. ; et al ( April 2021 , Psychological Science in the Public Interest)

   The construct of active learning permeates undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but despite its prevalence, the construct means different things to different people, groups, and STEM domains. To better understand active learning, we constructed this review through an innovative interdisciplinary collaboration involving research teams from psychology and discipline-based education research (DBER). Our collaboration examined active learning from two different perspectives (i.e., psychology and DBER) and surveyed the current landscape of undergraduate STEM instructional practices related to the modes of active learning and traditional lecture. On that basis, we concluded that active learning—which is commonly used tomore »communicate an alternative to lecture and does serve a purpose in higher education classroom practice—is an umbrella term that is not particularly useful in advancing research on learning. To clarify, we synthesized a working definition of active learning that operates within an elaborative framework, which we call the construction-of-understanding ecosystem. A cornerstone of this framework is that undergraduate learners should be active agents during instruction and that the social construction of meaning plays an important role for many learners, above and beyond their individual cognitive construction of knowledge. Our proposed framework offers a coherent and actionable concept of active learning with the aim of advancing future research and practice in undergraduate STEM education.« less
4. A Preliminary Exploration of the Role of Surveys In Student Reflection and Behavior.

   Levine, A. ; Bjorklund, T. ; Gilmartin, S. ; Sheppard, S. ( January 2017 , Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, June 25-28. Columbus, OH.)

   Surveys often are used in educational research to gather information about respondents without considering the effect of survey questions on survey-takers themselves. Does the very act of taking a survey influence perspectives, mindsets, and even behaviors? Does a survey itself effectuate attitudinal change? Such effects of surveys, and implications for survey data interpretation, warrant close attention. There is a long tradition of research on surveys as behavioral interventions within political science and social psychology, but limited attention has been given to the topic in engineering education, and higher education more broadly. Recently the engineering education community has started to examinemore »the potential effects of assessment techniques (including surveys) as catalysts for reflection. In March 2014, the Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education (CPREE), representing a two-year collaboration amongst 12 campuses, was established to promote “a broader understanding and use of reflective techniques in engineering education.”1 CPREE’s formation suggests a growing recognition of reflection as an important and underemphasized aspect of an engineer’s education. CPREE defines reflection as “exploring the meaning of experiences and the consequences of the meanings for future action” and emphasizes the importance of taking action as a result of ascribing meaning to experiences.1 Surveys may be one of several tools that may create opportunities for reflection; others include “exam wrappers” and “homework wrappers” that encourage students to explore how they feel about an assignment or task as part of making meaning of it2,3 (and stimulating the kind of reflection that can lead to action). The current study bridges these two frameworks of behavioral interventions and reflection to consider the “extra-ordinate” dimensions of survey-taking and explores how survey participation may (1) support students’ reflection on past experiences, meaningmaking of these experiences, and insights that “inform [their] path going forward,”1 and (2) be associated with students’ subsequent behaviors. We first review a broader literature on the interventional effects on surveys in political studies and social psychology, after which we present the results obtained from including an optional reflection question at the end of an engineering education survey. We conclude that educators would benefit from considering the range of potential impacts that responding to questions may have on students’ thoughts and actions, rather than treating surveys as neutral data collection devices when designing their research.« less
5. CyVerse: a Ten-year Perspective on Cyberinfrastructure Development, Collaboration, and Community Building

   Swetnam, T. L. ; Walls, R. ; Devisetty, U. K. ; Merchant, N. ( December 2018 , AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts)

   Adoption of data and compute-intensive research in geosciences is hindered by the same social and technological reasons as other science disciplines - we're humans after all. As a result, many of the new opportunities to advance science in today's rapidly evolving technology landscape are not approachable by domain geoscientists. Organizations must acknowledge and actively mitigate these intrinsic biases and knowledge gaps in their users and staff. Over the past ten years, CyVerse (www.cyverse.org) has carried out the mission "to design, deploy, and expand a national cyberinfrastructure for life sciences research, and to train scientists in its use." During this time,more »CyVerse has supported and enabled transdisciplinary collaborations across institutions and communities, overseen many successes, and encountered failures. Our lessons learned in user engagement, both social and technical, are germane to the problems facing the geoscience community today. A key element of overcoming social barriers is to set up an effective education, outreach, and training (EOT) team to drive initial adoption as well as continued use. A strong EOT group can reach new users, particularly those in under-represented communities, reduce power distance relationships, and mitigate users' uncertainty avoidance toward adopting new technology. Timely user support across the life of a project, based on mutual respect between the developers' and researchers' different skill sets, is critical to successful collaboration. Without support, users become frustrated and abandon research questions whose technical issues require solutions that are 'simple' from a developer's perspective, but are unknown by the scientist. At CyVerse, we have found there is no one solution that fits all research challenges. Our strategy has been to maintain a system of systems (SoS) where users can choose 'lego-blocks' to build a solution that matches their problem. This SoS ideology has allowed CyVerse users to extend and scale workflows without becoming entangled in problems which reduce productivity and slow scientific discovery. Likewise, CyVerse addresses the handling of data through its entire lifecycle, from creation to publication to future reuse, supporting community driven big data projects and individual researchers.« less