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1. Engaging Female High School Students in the Frontiers of Computing

   Stein, G. ; Gransbury, I. ; Jean, D. ; Alvarez ; L. ; Hill, M. ; Catete, V. ; Grover, S. ; Barnes, T. ; Broll, B. ; et al ( January 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Creating pathways that stimulate high school learners’ interest in advanced topics with the goal of building a diverse, gender-balanced, future-ready workforce is crucial. To this end, we present the curriculum of a new, high school computer science course under development called Computer Science Frontiers (CSF). Building on the foundations set by the AP Computer Science Principles course, we seek to dramatically expand access, especially for high school girls, to the most exciting and emerging frontiers of computing, such as distributed computation, the internet of things (IoT), cybersecurity, and machine learning. The modular, open-access, hands-on curriculum provides an engaging introduction to these advanced topics in high school because currently they are accessible only to CS majors in college. It also focuses on other 21st century skills required to productively leverage computational methods and tools in virtually every profession. To address the dire gender disparity in computing, the curriculum was designed to engage female students by focusing on real world application domains, such as climate change and health, by including social applications and by emphasizing collaboration and teamwork. Our paper describes the design of curricular modules on Distributed Computing, IoT/Cybersecurity, and AI/Machine Learning. All project-based activities are designed to be collaborative, situated in contexts that are engaging to high school students, and often involve real-world world data. We piloted these modules in teacher PD workshops with 8 teachers from North Carolina, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York who then facilitated virtual summer camps with high school students in 2020 and 2021. Findings from teacher PD workshops as well as student camps indicate high levels of engagement in and enthusiasm for the curricular activities and topics. Post-intervention surveys suggest that these experiences generate student interest exploring these ideas further and connections to areas of interest to students. 

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2. Development and Evaluation of Cybersecurity Education Games for High School Students

   Jin, Ge ; Tu, M. ; Kim, T. ; Heffron, J. ; White, J. ; Trekles, A. ( September 2018 , International journal of engineering research & innovation)

   Cybersecurity workforce development is the key to protecting information and information systems, and yet more than 30% of companies are short on security expertise. To address this need, the current authors have developed four cybersecurity education games to teach social engineering, secure online behavior, cyber defense methods, and cybersecurity first principles. These games are intended to recruit the next generation cybersecurity workforce by developing an innovative cybersecurity curriculum and pedagogical methods to provide high school students with hands-on activities in a game-based learning environment. Purdue University Northwest (PNW) offered high school summer camps for 181 high school students in June of 2016 and June of 2017. Out of 181 high school participants, 107 were underrepresented minority students, including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans. To evaluate the effectiveness of the cybersecurity education games, post-camp surveys were conducted with 154 camp participants. The survey results indicated that the games were very effective in cybersecurity awareness training. Furthermore, the cybersecurity education games were more effective for male students than female students in raising student interest in computer science and cybersecurity. 

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3. Board 240: Developing Critically Conscious Aerospace Engineers through Macroethics Curricula: Year 1

   Johnson, Aaron W ; Bowen, Corin L ; Strehl, Elizabeth A ; Olson, Sabrina ; Elias, Ricardo ( June 2024 , American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) PEER)

   Absent from the undergraduate aerospace curricula at many universities is any acknowledgement of macroethics, the ways in which engineering impacts society positively and negatively. Without putting aerospace engineering in its social context, students are left ill-prepared to recognize and address challenging ethical questions and issues they will encounter in their future engineering careers. Alternatively, aerospace engineering curricula should support the development of the critical consciousness required to reflect on the social impact of the field and students’ present and future roles within it. We are addressing this pressing need with integrated research and curriculum development. Our multi-institutional team is composed of aerospace and engineering education research faculty, graduate students in engineering education, undergraduate students in engineering, and practitioners in the aerospace industry. The overarching objective of our design-based research project is to investigate how a macroethical curriculum can be effectively integrated into aerospace engineering science courses. To do this, we ask two research questions to inform the curriculum: RQ1) What are undergraduate students’ current awareness and perceptions of macroethical issues in aerospace engineering?, and RQ2) In what ways do students feel their education is or is not preparing them to address macroethical issues? We also pose a question to assess our curriculum: RQ3) How does the macroethical curriculum impact students’ perceptions and awareness of macroethical issues and their desire to engage with the macroethical implications of their future work? In this poster, we will describe the development and iteration of macroethics lessons in multiple aerospace engineering courses, along with an assessment of the lessons through instructor reflections and quantitative student feedback. We will also describe the development of a survey to conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses of students’ awareness and perception of macroethical issues in aerospace engineering. We will also present preliminary results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. 

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4. The effect of engineering summer camps on middle school students interest and identity

   Chatterjee, I ; Kirn, A ; Amos, J ( June 2018 , ASEE annual conference & exposition proceedings)

   A persistent problem in engineering is an insufficient number of students interested in pursuing engineering as a college major and career. Middle school is a critical time where student interest, identity, and career choices begin to solidify. Student interest in engineering at the K-12 level has been shown to predict whether they pursue engineering as a college major and career. Therefore, research is needed to determine if engineering summer camp activities affect engineering interest and identity in middle school students and in this paper, we present a research study approach to achieve the stated objective. To develop engineering-specific theories of how engineers are formed, this paper explores interest and identity development of three middle-school populations participating in engineering summer camps offered by the College of Engineering at a Western land-grant institution: (1) Young women in engineering camp (2) First generation camp and, (3) Introduction to engineering camp. The camps are identical in content and designed with the goal of increasing understanding of different engineering fields and careers. The only difference between the three camps is that the women-focused and first generation camps involve participation of guest speakers and role-model mentors appropriate for the camp populations. The main objective of designing this mixed-methods research study is to answer three research questions: (1) How strongly are engineering identity and interest linked to the intention to pursue engineering as a major in college and as a future career? (2) Which specific activities in the camps lead to a change in identity and interest in engineering? (3) To what extent and in what ways do the qualitative participant focus group interviews and observations of participants engaged in camp activities addressing research question (2) contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the quantitative data obtained via pre- and post-surveys addressing research question (1)? The research design leverages existing quantitative surveys. Additionally, focus groups and observations will be based on a selected set of questions from these surveys. The research design consists of one phase with two data streams. Quantitative data are gathered in Phase 1 from two data collection points: first, when students register for the camp and, second, at the end of the camp (post-survey). Qualitative data in the form of in-depth focus group interviews (at the end of the camp) with 4 – 5 participants per focus group and observations of camp activities during the five days of camp are implemented. For the qualitative analysis, Grounded Theory is utilized for analyzing focus group interview and observation transcripts using an iterative process that involves reading, discussing, and coding. This paper will present details of the quantitative and qualitative analysis methods used for this study. The research is funded by the National Science Foundation PFE:RIEF program. 

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5. How outreach camps incorporate design affects female high school students’ interest in engineering and perceptions of engineering design (Evaluation).

   Tyler, K. ; Johnson-Glauch, N. ; Dean, L. M. ; Krogstad, J. A. ( June 2019 , ASEE annual conference exposition proceedings)

   Outreach summer camps, particularly those focused on increasing the number of women in engineering, are commonplace. Some camps take the approach of a broad survey of engineering as a whole, while others focus on one specific discipline. Within the discipline-specific camps, there is a high degree of variability in curriculum and structure. This is apparent when considering if and how engineering design is built into the camp structure. While many studies have investigated the impact of outreach camps on engineering self-confidence among participants, few studies have sought to understand how the camp curriculum as a whole can influence these outcomes. To begin to understand the connection between outreach camp curriculum and engineering self-confidence among participants, we studied outreach camps targeted to high school women that varied in the incorporation of design into their structure. We chose to study three camps: (1) a design-focused camp, (2) a design-incorporated camp (run by the authors), and a (3) design-absent camp. All three camps were at the same university but based in different engineering disciplines. Results from pre-post survey Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests showed that design-focused and design-incorporated camps were able to improve students’ perspective of what engineering is (p <.01 and p = .02), while the design-absent camp had no change. The design-incorporated camp increased the participants’ desire to be an engineer (p = .02) while the design-absent camp decreased the participants’ desire to be an engineer (p = .02) and the design-focused camp had no effect. The design-absent camp also decreased the participants’ overall interest in engineering (p = .02). Additionally, both the design-incorporated and design-focused camps increased the participants’ confidence in conducting engineering design (p <.01 and p <.01), but only the design-incorporated camp had consistent improvements throughout the entire design cycle. Motivated by these results, we intend in future studies to more systematically probe the potential of different outreach curricula and structures to positively influence engineering perceptions. 

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