More Like this

1. WIP: An instrument to assess students' perceptions about sociotechnical issues in engineering

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE61694.2024.10892889  

   Finelli, Cynthia J; Lord, Susan M (October 2024, IEEE)

   This work-in-progress research paper describes the development and pilot administration of a survey to assess students’ perceptions about sociotechnical issues in engineering. After refining the survey through iterative rounds of review, we piloted it in an “Introduction to Circuits” course at a large, public university in the Midwestern USA in which we deployed a short module addressing technical and social issues. In this paper we document our instrument development process and present descriptive statistics and results of paired t-tests used to analyze the pilot data. We also describe ways our instrument can be implemented by instructors and researchers in multiple contexts. 

   more » « less
2. Design and testing of a quantitative instrument to evaluate engineering research center participation

   Melo de Lyra, Marcus V.; Carberry, Adam R.; Larson, Jean S.; Zhao, Zhen; Barr, Christopher (January 2023, Design and Testing of a Quantitative Instrument to Evaluate Engineering Research Center Participation)

   This research paper reports the in-progress validation of a quantitative instrument designed to assess the perceived impact of participating in a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Engineering Research Center (ERC). A multi-institutional consortium composed of ERC education directors, researchers, and evaluators from six NSF-funded ERCs designed easily accessible evaluation instruments and tools that specifically help measure anticipated outcomes for ERC participants for all ERCs. The total effort underway by the consortium includes creating a suite of qualitative and quantitative instruments, an evaluator toolkit, and a user-friendly online platform to host the inventory materials. This paper focuses on the quantitative instrument created to evaluate the experiences of those who engage with a center. It consists of Likert-type questions assessing the impact of the ERC on participants' self-reported: 1) understanding of the ERC, 2) research and communication skills, 3) climate of inclusion, 4) mentorship experiences, and 5) program satisfaction. The instrument also included additional demographic questions and questions to capture STEM-related future plans. The instrument was designed using multiple rounds of design iterations and pilot tests. Separate surveys used by individual ERCs were compiled and categorized to ensure all requirements from the National Science Foundation were met. The web-based survey was administered to six ERCs during the Summer of 2021, Fall of 2021, and Spring of 2022. A total of 549 responses were collected; 535 were used following data cleaning procedures. Sample sizes for each component of the survey varied because some ERCs chose to only use some parts of the new instrument. Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA) were performed to identify latent factors and items that needed further revision. The following factors emerged from our analyses: 1) ERC general understanding; 2) development of research skills; 3) development of professional skills; 4) experience in the ERC; 5) feelings toward the ERC; 6) Beliefs about the ERC, 7) mentors performance; and 8) mentorship experience. The results provide preliminary evidence that the survey can be used across ERCs. This effort is the first that has been undertaken to develop a shared ERC instrument. The data collected was used to continue in-progress validation. The collaborative nature of this effort can provide ways for ERCs to benchmark impacts of their efforts and share effective practices across ERCs and other similarly structured STEM centers going forward. 

   more » « less
3. Board 236: Design for Sustainability: How Mental Models of Social-Ecological Systems Shape Engineering Design Decisions

   Katz, A; Paretti, M; Shealy, T; Bilow, F (June 2024, American Society for Engineering Education)

   Understanding how engineers connect technical work to broader social-ecological systems is critical because their designs transform societies and environments. As part of a national study to explore how civil and chemical engineers navigate design decisions, we are developing a survey instrument to assess mental models of social-ecological-technical systems (SETS). Mental models (Johnson-Laird, 2001; Rouse & Morris, 1986), are internal representations that individuals use to describe, explain, and predict the form, function, state, and purpose of a system. In this case, the system is the connection between technical design and broader social-ecological systems. The project is informed by three frameworks: 1) planned behavior, 2) mental models, and 3) social-ecological-technical systems (SETS). The project integrates the theory of planned behavior with mental models to build fundamental knowledge of engineers’ mental models of SETSs, changes in their mental models over time, and relationships between mental models and design decisions. This paper presents the instrument development process centered on eliciting mental models of SETS. SETS (McPhearson et al., 2022) is a generalized framework that positions social, technical, and ecological elements of a system as vertices of a triangle, with interactions in all directions. The instrument will include both closed-ended and open-ended items, allowing us to leverage advances in natural language processing to scale qualitative data analysis and combine an inferential framework often associated with quantitative studies with the richer information flow associated with qualitative studies. Previous work using SETS has identified individual components within each vertex salient to the specific context (Bixler et al., 2019). In this paper, we report on the phases of instrument development that support this contextualization: 1) Initial interview protocol development followed by semi-structured interviews with six engineering students outside the target majors to test how well the protocol elicits information about students mental models of SETS, 2) revisions to the interview protocol followed by semi-structured interviews with senior-level students in chemical and civil engineering students (12 per discipline), 3) deductive and inductive analysis of those interviews, using SETS as our deductive coding scheme followed by inductive coding to refine and contextualize the analysis and support survey development. We conclude with the initial survey instrument, which will undergo pilot testing in the summer of 2024. The results both support instrument development and offer an exploratory analysis of civil and chemical engineering students’ mental models of SETS. 

   more » « less
4. The Design and Implementation of a Method for Evaluating and Building Research Practice Partnerships

   https://doi.org/10.1145/1234567890  

   Rorrer, A. (January 2021, Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)

   We have established a research-practice partnership (RPP) to build a computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT)-focused STEM ecosystem at two middle schools. Creating such an ecosystem to broaden student participation in computing through an RPP approach involves all stakeholders in the research process. Borrowing upon visual participatory research methods, we developed a graphic research instrument to engage teachers in the research process and elicit their perspectives on strategies for building the ecosystem. This experience report describes our research methodology across two distinct cases to demonstrate the utility of this drawing activity as an investigative and partnership development tool. The contribution is in offering a flexible approach to other university-based RPP teams that enables a synergistic partnership development tool and data collection instrument that can be tailored to a variety of RPP contexts, facilitating more productive and equitable ways of engaging stakeholders in the research process. We describe our project contexts and share results from the pilot study with practitioner-members of our RPP teams. We discuss two cases to highlight the contribution this approach made to the development of our partnerships. 

   more » « less
5. Work in Progress: Understanding Student Perceptions of Stress as part of Engineering Culture

   Cross, Kelly J.; Jensen, Karin J. (January 2018, American Society of Engineering Education Conference Proceedings)

   High levels of stress and anxiety are common amongst college students, particularly engineering students. Students report lack of sleep, grades, competition, change in lifestyle, and other significant stressors throughout their undergraduate education (1, 2). Stress and anxiety have been shown to negatively impact student experience (3-6), academic performance (6-8), and retention (9). Previous studies have focused on identifying factors that cause individual students stress while completing undergraduate engineering degree programs (1). However, it not well-understood how a culture of stress is perceived and is propagated in engineering programs or how this culture impacts student levels of identification with engineering. Further, the impact of student stress has not been directly considered in engineering regarding recruitment, retention, and success. Therefore, our guiding research question is: Does the engineering culture create stress for students that hinder their engineering identity development? To answer our research question, we designed a sequential mixed methods study with equal priority of quantitative survey data and qualitative individual interviews. Our study participants are undergraduate engineering students across all levels and majors at a large, public university. Our sample goal is 2000 engineering student respondents. We combined three published surveys to build our quantitative data collection instrument, including the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), Identification with engineering subscale, and Engineering Department Inclusion Level subscale. The objective of the quantitative instrument is to illuminate individual perceptions of the existence of an engineering stress culture (ESC) and create an efficient tool to measure the impact ESC on engineering identity development. Specifically, we seek to understand the relationships among the following constructs; 1) identification with engineering, 2) stress and anxiety, and 3) feelings of inclusion within their department. The focus of this paper presents the results of the pilot of the proposed instrument with 20 participants and a detailed data collection and analysis process. In an effort to validate our instrument, we conducted a pilot study to refine our data collection process and the results will guide the data collection for the larger study. In addition to identifying relationships among construct, the survey data will be further analyzed to specify which demographics are mediating or moderating factors of these relationships. For example, does a student’s 1st generation status influence their perception of stress or engineering identity development? Our analysis may identify discipline-specific stressors and characterize culture components that promote student anxiety and stress. Our objective is to validate our survey instrument and use it to inform the protocol for the follow-up interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the responses to the survey instrument. Understanding what students view as stressful and how students identify stress as an element of program culture will support the development of interventions to mitigate student stress. References 1. Schneider L (2007) Perceived stress among engineering students. A Paper Presented at St. Lawrence Section Conference. Toronto, Canada. Retrieved from: www. asee. morrisville. edu. 2. Ross SE, Niebling BC, & Heckert TM (1999) Sources of stress among college students. Social psychology 61(5):841-846. 3. Goldman CS & Wong EH (1997) Stress and the college student. Education 117(4):604-611. 4. Hudd SS, et al. (2000) Stress at college: Effects on health habits, health status and self-esteem. College Student Journal 34(2):217-228. 5. Macgeorge EL, Samter W, & Gillihan SJ (2005) Academic Stress, Supportive Communication, and Health A version of this paper was presented at the 2005 International Communication Association convention in New York City. Communication Education 54(4):365-372. 6. Burt KB & Paysnick AA (2014) Identity, stress, and behavioral and emotional problems in undergraduates: Evidence for interaction effects. Journal of college student development 55(4):368-384. 7. Felsten G & Wilcox K (1992) Influences of stress and situation-specific mastery beliefs and satisfaction with social support on well-being and academic performance. Psychological Reports 70(1):291-303. 8. Pritchard ME & Wilson GS (2003) Using emotional and social factors to predict student success. Journal of college student development 44(1):18-28. 9. Zhang Z & RiCharde RS (1998) Prediction and Analysis of Freshman Retention. AIR 1998 Annual Forum Paper. 

   more » « less