Currently, substantial efforts are underway to improve the engagement and retention of engineering and computer science (E/CS) students in their academic programs. Student participation in specific activities known as High Impact Educational Practices (HIP) has been shown to improve student outcomes across a variety of degree fields. Thus, we suggest that understanding how and why E/CS students, especially those from historically underrepresented groups, participate in HIP is vital for supporting efforts aimed at improving E/CS student engagement and retention. The aim of the current study is to examine the participation of E/CS undergraduates enrolled at two western land-grant institutions (both institutions are predominantly white; one is an emerging Hispanic-serving institution) across five HIEP (i.e., global learning and study aboard internships, learning communities, service and community-based learning, and undergraduate research) that are offered outside of required E/CS curricula and are widely documented in the research literature. As part of a larger study, researchers developed an online questionnaire to explore student HIP participation and then surveyed E/CS students (n = 576) across both land-grant institutions. Subsequently, researchers will use survey results to inform the development of focus groups interview protocols. Focus group interviews will be conducted with purposefully selected E/CS students who participated in the survey. Combined survey and focus group data will then be analyzed to more deeply understand why and how E/CS students participate in the HIP at their university. This research paper reports on the frequency distribution analysis of the survey data generated with E/CS undergraduates enrolled at one of the two land grant institutions. The combined sample included E/CS undergraduates from the following demographic groups: female (34 %), Asian (10 %), Black or African American (2%), Hispanic or Latinx (6%), Native American or Alaskan Native (1%), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (1%), White (81 %), and multiracial (4 %). Results show that most (38%) E/CS students reported participating in internships, while study abroad programs garnered the smallest level of E/CS student participation (5%) across all five HIP. Internships were found most likely to engage diverse students: Female (42%), Hispanic or Latinx (24%), Multiracial (44%), Asian (31%), First-generation (29%), and nontraditional students—other than those categorized as highly nontraditional—all reported participating in internships more than any other HIP. Notable differences in participation across E/CS and demographic groups were found for other HIPs. Results further revealed that 43% of respondents did not participate in any extracurricular HIP and only 19% participated in two or more HIP. Insights derived from the survey and used to inform ongoing quantitative and qualitative analyses are discussed. Keywords: community-based learning, high impact educational practices, HIP, internships learning communities, service learning, study aboard, undergraduate research
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Investigating On-campus Engineering Student Organizations as Means of Promoting Ethical Development
Ethics is and should be intrinsic to engineering. However, many engineering students do not recognize that every engineering decision contains ethical dimensions and that underlying values and current sociopolitical and cultural contexts can influence those decisions. One potential way to enhance engineering students’ ethical development is through extra-curricular activities (ECAs). ECAs can include many topics and interests, such as student societies (e.g., fraternities and sororities) and cultural and social organizations (e.g., Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Latinos in Science and Engineering, Society of Women Engineers). Previous studies emphasize that participation in student organizations plays an important role in the ethical development of students. Despite this important role, it is not clear whether some student organizations are more successful at enhancing ethical development of engineering students than others, or if it is the act of participation in these organizations itself has an effect on students’ ethical development. We hypothesize that the more organizations students participate in, the higher their ethical development will be. As such, we ask, does participation in more organizations enhances students’ overall moral development? To respond to this question, we distributed a survey to senior engineering students (n=165) at one Midwestern university in the spring of 2020. The survey captured demographics information, membership in student organizations, and the standardized Defining Issue Test-2 (DIT-2), which measures students’ ethical developmental indices (Personal Interest, Maintaining Norms, Post-conventional Thinking Score, and N2Score). The preliminary results suggest that there are significant differences between the groups of students who participated in one organization and two organizations as well as between one organization and three or more organizations, with the largest difference between those who participated in one organization and those who participated in three or more organizations. This suggests that it is possible that students with low PI scores become involved in more student organizations. This project studies student organizations as key sites for ethical learning. The research suggests that students should be encouraged to participate in more student organizations in order to promote their overall ethical development.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1926172
- PAR ID:
- 10488383
- Publisher / Repository:
- 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Virtual Conference
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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