More Like this

1. Faculty Development for Research Inclusion: Virtual Research Experiences for Undergraduates

   Morreale, P. ; Gates, A. ; Villa, E. ; Hug, S. ( January 2021 , Zone 1 Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education)

   This paper presents an innovative approach, applicable to all research-based fields, that identifies and broadly engages future computer science researchers. The Computing Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institutions (CAHSI) piloted a national virtual Research Experience for Undergraduates (vREU) during the summer of 2020. Funded by an NSF grant, the goal of the program was to ensure that students, in particular those with financial need, had opportunities to engage in research and gain critical skills while advancing their knowledge and financial resources to complete their undergraduate degrees and possibly move to advanced studies. The vREU pilot provided undergraduate research experiences for 51 students and 21 faculty drawn from 14 colleges and universities. The Affinity Research Group (ARG) model, based on a cooperative learning model, was used to guide faculty mentors throughout the eight-week vREU. ARG is a CAHSI signature practice with a focus on deliberate, structured faculty and student research, technical, communication, and professional skills development. At weekly meetings, faculty were provided resources and discussed a specific skill to support students’ research experience and development, which faculty put into immediate practice with their students. Evaluation findings include no statistical difference in student development between the face-to-face and virtual models with faculty and the benefit of training as an opportunity for faculty professional growth and impact. This faculty development model allows for rapid dissemination of the ARG model through practice and application with weekly faculty cohort meetings, coaching, and reflection. 

   more » « less
2. Work in Progress: An Exploration of Students’ Conceptualization of Research after Participating in an Undergraduate Research Experience

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--32361  

   Tise, J. ; Zappe, S.E. ; Gomez, E.W. ; Kumar, M. ; Croninger, R.M.V. ; Cutler, S. ( January 2019 , American Society for Engineering Education)

   This Work-in-Progress paper investigates how students participating in a chemical engineering (ChE) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program conceptualize and make plans for research projects. The National Science Foundation has invested substantial financial resources in REU programs, which allow undergraduate students the opportunity to work with faculty in their labs and to conduct hands-on experiments. Prior research has shown that REU programs have an impact on students’ perceptions of their research skills, often measured through the Undergraduate Research Student Self-Assessment (URSSA) survey. However, few evaluation and research studies have gone beyond perception data to include direct measures of students’ gains from program participation. This work-in-progress describes efforts to evaluate the impact of an REU on students’ conceptualization and planning of research studies using a pre-post semi-structured interview process. The construct being investigated for this study is planning, which has been espoused as a critical step in the self-regulated learning (SRL) process (Winne & Perry, 2000; Zimmerman, 2008). Students who effectively self-regulate demonstrate higher levels of achievement and comprehension (Dignath & Büttner, 2008), and (arguably) work efficiency. Planning is also a critical step in large projects, such as research (Dvir & Lechler, 2004). Those who effectively plan their projects make consistent progress and are more likely to achieve project success (Dvir, Raz, & Shenhar, 2003). Prior REU research has been important in demonstrating some positive impacts of REU programs, but it is time to dig deeper into the potential benefits to REU participation. Many REU students are included in weekly lab meetings, and thus potentially take part in the planning process for research projects. Thus, the research question explored here is: How do REU participants conceptualize and make plans for research projects? The study was conducted in the ChE REU program at a large, mid-Atlantic research-oriented university during the summer of 2018. Sixteen students in the program participated in the study, which entailed them completing a planning task followed by a semi-structured interview at the start and the end of the REU program. During each session, participants read a case statement that asked them to outline a plan in writing for a research project from beginning to end. Using semi-structured interview procedures, their written outlines were then verbally described. The verbalizations were recorded and transcribed. Two members of the research team are currently analyzing the responses using an open coding process to gain familiarity with the transcripts. The data will be recoded based on the initial open coding and in line with a self-regulatory and project-management framework. Results: Coding is underway, preliminary results will be ready by the draft submission deadline. The methods employed in this study might prove fruitful in understanding the direct impact on students’ knowledge, rather than relying on their perceptions of gains. Future research could investigate differences in students’ research plans based on prior research experience, research intensity of students’ home institutions, and how their plans may be impacted by training. 

   more » « less
3. A Rapid and Formative Response by the Engineering Education Faculty to Support the Engineering Faculty and Students Throughout the Extreme Classroom Changes Resulting from the COVID-19 Pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36606  

   White, Lance ; Jaison, Donna ; Ray, Samantha ; Brumbelow, Kelly ; Fields, Sherecce ; Barroso, Luciana ; Watson, Karan ; Hammond, Tracy ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   This paper describes an evidence based-practice paper to a formative response to the engineering faculty and students’ needs at Anonymous University. Within two weeks, the pandemic forced the vast majority of the 1.5 million faculty and 20 million students nationwide to transition all courses from face-to-face to entirely online. Never in the history of higher education has there been a concerted effort to adapt so quickly and radically, nor have we had the technology to facilitate such a rapid and massive change. At Anonymous University, over 700 engineering educators were racing to transition their courses. Many of those faculty had never experienced online course preparation, much less taught one synchronously or asynchronously. Faculty development centers and technology specialists across the university made a great effort to aid educators in this transition. These educators had questions about the best practices for moving online, how their students were affected, and the best ways to engage their students. However, these faculty’s detailed questions were answerable only by faculty peers’ experience, students’ feedback, and advice from experts in relevant engineering education research-based practices. This paper describes rapid, continuous, and formative feedback provided by the Engineering Education Faculty Group (EEFG) to provide an immediate response for peer faculty guidance during the pandemic, creating a community of practice. The faculty membership spans multiple colleges in the university, including engineering, education, and liberal arts. The EEFG transitioned immediately to weekly meetings focused on the rapidly changing needs of their colleagues. Two surveys were generated rapidly by Hammond et al. to characterize student and faculty concerns and needs in March of 2020 and were distributed through various means and media. Survey 1 and 2 had 3381 and 1506 respondents respectively with most being students, with 113 faculty respondents in survey 1, the focus of this piece of work. The first survey was disseminated as aggregated data to the College of Engineering faculty with suggested modifications to course structures based on these findings. The EEFG continued to meet and collaborate during the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester and has continued through to this day. This group has acted as a hub for teaching innovation in remote online pedagogy and techniques, while also operating as a support structure for members of the group, aiding those members with training in teaching tools, discussion difficult current events, and various challenges they are facing in their professional teaching lives. While the aggregated data gathered from the surveys developed by Hammond et al. was useful beyond measure in the early weeks of the pandemic, little attention at the time was given to the responses of faculty to that survey. The focus of this work has been to characterize faculty perceptions at the beginning of the pandemic and compare those responses between engineering and non-engineering faculty respondents, while also comparing reported perceptions of pre- and post-transition to remote online teaching. Interviews were conducted between 4 members of the EEFG with the goal of characterizing some of the experiences they have had while being members of the group during the time of the pandemic utilizing Grounded theory qualitative analysis. 

   more » « less
4. The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Principal Investigators (PI) Guide: Development of a best practices website.

   Iglesias Pena, Mariangely ; Gilbert, Stephen B ; Payton, Jamie ( June 2018 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   With the help of the National Science Foundation (NSF), many Principal Investigators (PIs) have been able to mentor undergraduates through Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site awards. These REU sites are critical to the development of future graduate students, but can be challenging to run due to several required skills outside the scope of most faculty members' expertise, e.g., recruiting applicants, navigating the logistics of housing visiting undergraduate students, and tracking student outcomes after their REU experiences. In recent years, REU PIs in NSF's Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directorate have come together through PI meetings to share best practices for running a successful REU site. While PIs inevitably take different approaches to running their sites based on their research projects, there is still a need to provide new PIs with guidance on the different aspects of an REU site such as identifying resources that can assist in recruiting women and underrepresented minority applicants, providing training for graduate students acting as mentors, and strategies for keeping a mentoring connection to undergraduate researchers after they return to their home institutions. Currently, REU site preparation and orientation for new PIs is a face-to-face process that requires careful planning and significant travel costs. The REU PI Guide, a set of web-based resources at https://www.vrac.iastate.edu/cise-reu-pi-resources/, was developed to share best practices of experienced PIs and build capacity within the REU PI community in a more scalable and cost-effective way. The REU PI Guide allows PIs to look up advice and guidance when needed and share their own best practices. This paper describes our approach to designing the REU PI Guide. The Guide is a database of documents, examples, and overviews of the different aspects of running an REU site. The Guide was developed by assessing new PIs' needs at an NSF workshop for new PIs, gathering existing resources from experienced PIs, creating and refining a website, and evaluation with new PIs. The website’s content and design will be refined through on-going feedback from PIs and other REU site stakeholders. This site has the potential broader impact to share best practices with REU PIs outside the CISE directorate and significantly ease the process of engaging future scientists via REU sites. 

   more » « less
5. Early lessons learned from pivoting an REU program to a virtual format

   Guessous, L. ( June 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Since the summer of 2006, the NSF-funded AERIM Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in the department of Mechanical Engineering at Oakland University has been offering rich research, professional development, networking and cohort-building experiences to undergraduate students in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. With a focus on hands-on automotive and energy research projects and a proximity to many automotive companies, the program has been successful at attracting a diverse group of students. In fact, a total of 104 students from 70 different universities have participated in the program over the past 15 years, with about 70% of the participants coming from groups that have traditionally been underrepresented in engineering (women in particular). Most research projects have been team-based and have typically involved experimental and analytical work with perhaps a handful of numerical simulation-based projects over the years. Prior assessment has shown that students greatly valued and benefited from interacting with faculty mentors, industry professionals, industry tours, and each other. As a result of limitations placed on in-person meeting and on-campus activities impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the program had to pivot to a virtual format in the summer of 2021. This virtual format brought about several challenges and opportunities, which will be discussed in this paper. Despite the virtual format, the program was successful at attracting a diverse group of students in 2021. Twelve undergraduate students from eight different institutions took part remotely in the program and encompassed several time zones ranging from Eastern Standard Time to Alaska Standard Time. The 2021 cohort included seven women, three underrepresented minorities, and two students with a reported disability. Also noteworthy is the fact that half of the students were first generation in college students. While the PIs were happy with the student make up, running the program in a virtual format was very challenging. For one, what was traditionally a hands-on, experimental research program had to pivot to completely simulation/analytical based projects. This brought about issues related to remote access to software, time lags and difficulties with engaging students while computer simulations were running remotely. While the program was able to offer several seminars and meetings with industry professionals in a virtual fashion, it was not possible to provide industry tours or the casual conversations that would spontaneously occur when meeting face to face with industry professionals. Finally, with students logging in from their homes across the country and across different time zones rather than living together in the Oakland University dorms, the usual bonding and group interactions that would normally occur over the summer were difficult to replicate. In this paper we discuss what was learned from these challenges and how the virtual format also offered opportunities that will be utilized in future years. 

   more » « less