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1. Backtracking CTE Pathways: Identifying and Investigating Pathways and Critical Junctures in Two-Year Information Technology Programs

   Mardis, M.A. Jones (January 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   This NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) research and development project aims to design and test a Backtracking Technique for understanding the pathways students take through college and into careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and career and technical education (CTE), with the focus of this project on information technology (IT). The project gathers data about current and former students who started in the same cohort, includes institutional research data (e.g., grades, demographics, course-taking) and merges these data with employment data from surveys and lived experiences obtained from interviews. These data are analyzed to identify potential pathways and critical junctions that may lead to student success or other outcomes. The research team is led by a doctoral granting institution and a community college, and includes four additional community colleges that collectively serve rural and urban student populations. In this paper we share the potential of the Backtracking Technique to generate contextualized career pathway data for institutions and create visualizations that can aid in institutional decision-making through a study pilot. The pilot is an initial effort to test the project’s aims of integrating institutional data with phenomenological data to model student progression through post-secondary STEM programs. The analysis will identify and verify influencers that support or hinder student success. Quantitative data analyses will consist of descriptive and comparative methods, which will be verified and informed by open coding and thematic analysis of the qualitative data. We share how the systematic investigation of institutional and phenomenological data used in the Backtracking Technique has the potential to: (1) generate practical knowledge about academic/career pathways in information technology for use by stakeholders; (2) identify and examine relationships among these pathways, students experiences, and psychosocial factors; and (3) add to the analytical methods available to institutional research professionals to document, investigate, and visualize student pathway information using data dashboards. This ATE project has great potential to transform the technician preparation for the advanced technology fields that drive the nation's economy. 

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2. Effects of High Impact Educational Practices on engineering and computer science student participation, persistence, and success at land grant universities: YEAR 2.

   Asghar, M. (August 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Effects of High Impact Educational Practices on Engineering and Computer Science Student Participation, Persistence, and Success at Land Grant Universities: Award# RIEF-1927218 – Year 2 Abstract Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), this project aims to investigate and identify associations (if any) that exist between student participation in High Impact Educational Practices (HIP) and their educational outcomes in undergraduate engineering and computer science (E/CS) programs. To understand the effects of HIP participation among E/CS students from groups historically underrepresented and underserved in E/CS, this study takes place within the rural, public university context at two western land grant institutions (one of which is an Hispanic-serving institution). Conceptualizing diversity broadly, this study considers gender, race and ethnicity, and first-generation, transfer, and nontraditional student status to be facets of identity that contribute to the diversity of academic programs and the technical workforce. This sequential, explanatory, mixed-methods study is guided by the following research questions: 1. To what extent do E/CS students participate in HIP? 2. What relationships (if any) exist between E/CS student participation in HIP and their educational outcomes (i.e., persistence in major, academic performance, and graduation)? 3. How do contextual factors (e.g., institutional, programmatic, personal, social, financial, etc.) affect E/CS student awareness of, interest in, and participation in HIP? During Project Year 1, a survey driven quantitative study was conducted. A survey informed by results of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) from each institution was developed and deployed. Survey respondents (N = 531) were students enrolled in undergraduate E/CS programs at either institution. Frequency distribution analyses were conducted to assess the respondents’ level of participation in extracurricular HIPs (i.e., global learning and study aboard, internships, learning communities, service and community-based learning, and undergraduate research) that have been shown in the literature to positively impact undergraduate student success. Further statistical analysis was conducted to understand the effects of HIP participation, coursework enjoyability, and confidence at completing a degree on the academic success of underrepresented and nontraditional E/CS students. Exploratory factor analysis was used to derive an "academic success" variable from five items that sought to measure how students persevere to attain academic goals. Results showed that a linear relationship in the target population exists and that the resultant multiple regression model is a good fit for the data. During the Project Year 2, survey results were used to develop focus group interview protocols and guide the purposive selection of focus group participants. Focus group interviews were conducted with a total of 27 undergraduates (12 males, 15 females, 16 engineering students, 11 computer science students) across both institutions via video conferencing (i.e., ZOOM) during the spring and fall 2021 semesters. Currently, verified focus group transcripts are being systematically analyzed and coded by a team of four trained coders to identify themes and answer the research questions. This paper will provide an overview of the preliminary themes so far identified. Future project activities during Project Year 3 will focus on refining themes identified during the focus group transcript analysis. Survey and focus group data will then be combined to develop deeper understandings of why and how E/CS students participate in the HIP at their university, taking into account the institutional and programmatic contexts at each institution. Ultimately, the project will develop and disseminate recommendations for improving diverse E/CS student awareness of, interest in, and participation in HIP, at similar land grant institutions nationally. 

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3. Triangulated Mentorship of Engineering Students - Leveraging Peer Mentoring and Vertical Integration.

   Kaul, S. (January 2019, Global journal of engineering education)

   The benefits of mentorship are widely acknowledged in the literature, specifically for students from under-represented groups in technical fields of study. The authors propose a triangulation methodology for mentorship that can be adopted in engineering programmes by leveraging peer mentorship and vertical integration in a project-based learning environment. Results from a pilot programme are presented to comprehend the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Results are evaluated quantitatively by evaluating student performance and student responses. Qualitative results are evaluated through data collected from student interviews. Results indicate that the mentorship programme outlined in this article has been highly beneficial to the cohort observed in this study. In addition to academic achievements, it is observed that students in the programme engaged in undergraduate research and actively participated in engineering student clubs since they understood the benefits of such participation for their future pursuits. Students in the pilot programme strongly acknowledge the benefits of triangulated mentorship. 

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4. Writing Attitudes and Career Trajectories of Domestic and International Students in the United States

   Zerbe, E.; Berdanier, C.G.P. (January 2020, IJEE International Journal of Engineering Education)

   Graduate engineering students are rarely taught to write in formal disciplinary coursework, but it is an essential skill required for success in industry and academic careers. This study builds on existing work exploring doctoral writing practices, processes, and attitudes, expanding it into the disciplinary context of engineering. Engineering traditionally offers few opportunities for students to practice or develop academic writing in coursework, despite the fact that most academic milestones for graduate students are based on writing. Grounded in Academic Literacies Theory, this paper seeks to determine how engineering graduate students’ writing attitudes affect their career trajectories. This study surveyed N = 621 engineering graduate students at ten research-intensive universities in the United States using several previously established scales. These data were analyzed using Pearson correlations and Welch’s t test methods to answer the research questions. Results indicate that while most students consider writing to be a knowledge transforming activity, they overwhelmingly struggle with procrastination, perfectionism, and low-writing self-efficacy. Further, strong writing attitudes are linked statistically with the likelihood to pursue a broader set of future careers after graduate school, indicating that writing may be an invisible mediator for broadening participation in all sectors of engineering. 

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5. Correlations between graduate student writing concepts and processes and certainty of career trajectories

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8658678  

   Berdanier, Catherine G.P.; Zerbe, Ellen (October 2018, 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   At the graduate level, most milestones are based on the ability to write for an academic audience, whether that be for dissertation proposals, publications, or funding opportunities. Writing scholars often discuss the process by which graduate students learn to join their academic “discourse communities” through academic literacies theory. Graduate attrition researchers relate the feeling of belonging with persistence in doctoral programs; however, there has not to date been any research that directly studies engineering writing attitudes and perceptions with student career trajectories, persistence, or attrition. To meet this need, this paper presents research from a larger study analyzing graduate level engineering writing and attrition. The explicit objective of this paper is to present quantitative data relating current graduate engineering students' attitudes, processes, and concepts of academic writing with the certainty of their career trajectory. Five scales measuring aspects of writing were deployed to engineering programs at ten research intensive universities across the United States, with a final total of n=621 graduate student respondents that represent early-career, mid-career, and late-career stages of the graduate timeline. Results indicate that graduate student processes and conceptions of engineering writing correlate with the likelihood of pursuing careers in various engineering sectors after completing their graduate degree programs. 

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