Providing hands-on learning experiences increases student understanding of theory and practices in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. The experience gives students motivation and allows them to focus their career path towards completing a degree in a STEM field. This paper provides initial observations on the learning impact of community college students and their instructors participating in the Support Center for Microsystems Education 2021 Undergraduate Research Experience. Twenty undergraduate community college students and their instructors participated in a week-long hands-on project-based course in a cleanroom environment. Both students and instructors showed an increase in the level of knowledge regarding microfabricating based on the collected survey results after completing the program. Survey results and observations of participating mentors are presented.
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“It Seems Like I’m Doing Something More Important”—An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the Transformative Impact of Research Experiences for STEM Students with ADHD
Recent studies have suggested a link between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and increased creativity and ingenuity. Clinical work suggests that individuals with ADHD generally gravitate toward exploratory rather than exploitative thinking. Yet, these theories have not been tested in the field. This paper is a case study of a transformative undergraduate summer research program that allows engineering students with ADHD to spend 10 weeks in engineering labs at a research-intensive (R1) university. The program intends to show that students with ADHD can excel in engineering and STEM fields when placed in research environments that align with their natural cognitive processes and preferences. Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) on post-program participant interviews, this paper suggests that engineering students with ADHD perceive that they learn more effectively when given the opportunity to explore academic material via hands-on research. The traditional structure of STEM education, with its focus on lectures and rigid curricula, causes significant harm to these students, leading to struggles, anxiety, and even thoughts of dropping out. In contrast, the research environment appears to foster creativity and motivation in students with ADHD, as it allows for exploration, provides real-world problem-solving opportunities, and offers tangible, hands-on experiences. This paper highlights the need for a paradigm shift in engineering pedagogy to better engage with and retain this neurodiverse student population and fully harness their creative potential.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1653854
- PAR ID:
- 10494814
- Publisher / Repository:
- MDPI
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Education Sciences
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 8
- ISSN:
- 2227-7102
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 776
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) represent a growing fraction of the college population. We plan to study the experiences of college students with ADHD majoring in science, engineering, and mathematics (SEM) and explore how those experiences relate to academic success (i.e., academic achievement, persistence, and creativity). For this work-in-progress paper, we present our project’s conceptual framework and share how specific aspects of it may relate to the academic success of students with ADHD. Our framework is based on Terenzini and Reason’s college impact model, which includes precollege characteristics and experiences, the organizational context, the college experience, and students’ educational outcomes (i.e., academic success). We also describe the quantitative portion of our two-part research study that will analyze longitudinal data from three nationally-administered, multi-institutional surveys. That analysis will guide further qualitative research focused on the college experience and academic success of college students with ADHD.more » « less
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Creativity plays an important role in engineering problem solving, particularly when solving an ill-structured problem, and has been a topic of increasing research interest in recent years. Prior research on creativity has been conducted in problem solving settings, predominantly focusing on undergraduate engineering students, including how faculty can foster creativity in engineering students, how engineering faculty perceive their students’ creativity, and how to measure it. However, more work is needed to examine engineering faculty and practitioner perspectives on the role of creativity when they solve an engineering problem themselves. Since engineering students learn problem solving, at least initially, mainly from their professors, it is essential to understand how faculty perceive their own creativity in problem solving. Similarly, given that practitioners solve ill-structured engineering problems on a regular basis in the workplace and that most of the students go on to work in the engineering industry when they graduate and ultimately become practitioners, it is also important to explore practitioner perspectives on creativity in problem solving settings. As part of an ongoing NSF-funded study, this paper investigates how engineering faculty’s and practitioners’ creativity influences their problem solving processes, how their perspectives on creativity in a problem solving environment differ, and what factors impact their creativity. Five tenure-track faculty in civil engineering and five practitioners were interviewed after they solved an ill-structured engineering problem. Participants’ responses were transcribed and coded using initial coding. This paper discusses their responses to semi-structured interview questions. The findings suggest that faculty and practitioners feel more creative when they are familiar with the subject area of a problem. If they are aware of a particular solution that has been developed and used before or have access to resources to look them up, they may not necessarily embrace creativity. The findings indicated differences not only across faculty and practitioners but also within the faculty and practitioner participants. Similarities and differences between faculty and practitioners in creative problem solving and the themes emerged are discussed and recommendations for educators are provided.more » « less
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Abstract Background Creativity is increasingly recognized as an important skill for success in the field of engineering, but most traditional, post‐secondary engineering education programs do not reward creative efforts. Failing to recognize creativity or creative efforts can have particularly negative effects for those students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), who may exhibit enhanced divergent thinking ability yet struggle in the traditional educational environment.
Purpose/Hypothesis This study was conducted to investigate how ADHD characteristics, academic aptitude, and one important component of creativity (divergent thinking) contribute to academic performance in engineering programs and how traditional markers of academic performance and ADHD characteristics predict divergent thinking.
Design/Method Undergraduate engineering students (
n = 60) completed measures of ADHD symptoms and divergent thinking. Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores and grade point average (GPA) were collected from university records, and hypotheses were tested using a series of multivariate regression models.Results Verbal SAT scores were the only positive predictor of overall GPA and engineering GPA. ADHD characteristics did not significantly predict overall GPA but negatively predicted engineering GPA. ADHD characteristics were the only positive predictor of divergent thinking ability.
Conclusions ADHD characteristics negatively predict academic performance (i.e., GPA) in engineering programs but are more predictive of divergent thinking ability than traditional markers of academic performance.
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While a large body of literature suggests that students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) possess significant creative and risk-taking potential, they remain highly underrepresented in engineering programs. High school students with ADHD have significantly lower GPAs and are over eight times more likely to drop out than their peers without ADHD, which makes them significantly less likely to enter college engineering programs. To support the development of a more diverse engineering pipeline, this work summarizes outreach efforts to high school and middle school students with ADHD with the intention of boosting self-esteem and increasing interest in engineering.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13080776
