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1. Audio Narratives as aWay of Voicing Marginalized Student Experience

   Secules, Stephen; McCall, Cassandra; Kali, Maimuna Begum; Van_Dyke, Gabriel; Tran, Vanessa (June 2024, ASEE PEER Document Repository)

   The marginalization of minoritized students in undergraduate engineering education is an important equity issue created by the racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other systemic discrimination in the system. Qualitative research to understand and listen to student voices has been an important tool for documenting marginalization, but research solely to create conference and journal publications could be re-traumatizing and limited in its ability to help students or change the system. In prior work, we have argued that qualitative research should progress beyond simply documenting marginalization, to try new methods to actually change faculty perspectives. This arts-based research paper and interactive poster presentation presents an innovative audio-based project methodology to center the voices of students experiencing marginalization. The existing narratives are presented on YouTube, approximately 10 minutes long for each of 10 student narratives, and include subtitles for accessibility. The narratives are intended to inform faculty practice and understandings of systemic marginalization. Our primary implications will be for engineering education researchers of marginalization, to potentially incorporate our methodology to help create a more impactful and engaged research agenda. 

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2. Audio Narratives as a Way of Voicing Marginalized Student Experience

   Secules, S; McCall, C; Kali, M B; Van_Dyke, G; Tran, V (June 2024, Proceedings of the 2024 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference)

   Background: Marginalization of minoritized students in undergraduate engineering education is an important equity issue created by the racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other systemic discrimination in the system. Qualitative research to understand and listen to student voices has been an important tool for documenting marginalization, but research solely to create conference and journal publications could be re-traumatizing and limited in its ability to help students or change the system. In prior work, we have argued that qualitative research should progress beyond simply documenting marginalization, to try new methods to actually change faculty perspectives. Purpose: This arts-based research paper presents an innovative audio-based project methodology to center the voices of students experiencing marginalization. Our work connects to multiple ECSJ 2023 Pillars: 1) our focus on innovation towards impact through our research is a form of methodological activism and a potentially decolonizing (broadly speaking) methodological practice; 2) the audio narratives of individual students can provide insight into the marginalizing systems through the lens of their experience (Pawley, 2013); and 3) the audio narratives are meant to provide resources towards equitable faculty practice. Format of Presentation: Our presentation will include a paper and/or web-based presentation of the audio narratives. The existing narratives are prepared on YouTube, approximately 10 minutes long for each of 10 student narratives, and include subtitles for accessibility. Our proposed presentation at ASEE will be an interactive poster presentation that incorporates the audio narratives. We will have QR codes for ASEE session participants to interact with the audio narratives and will present our analysis of how these student narratives inform faculty practice and understandings of systemic marginalization. Implications: Our primary implications will be for engineering education researchers of marginalization, to potentially incorporate our methodology to help create a more impactful and engaged research agenda. 

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3. Minoritized Student Audio Narratives to Influence Faculty’s Empathic Understanding: Learning from Sophie and Enola

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--45461  

   Secules, Stephen; Kali, Maimuna Begum; McCall, Cassandra; Van_Dyke, Gabriel (February 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   Background: Undergraduate engineering education is a critical moment for student experiences and broadening participation, yet many minoritized students experience it as unwelcoming, unsupportive, or exclusionary. Engineering faculty have a central role and responsibility to play in the creation of inclusive classrooms, yet there is a gap in empathic communication for faculty to better understand their students. Education researchers can play a critical role in addressing this communication and empathy gap, but disseminating research findings in long form papers is not accessible for most engineering faculty. Purpose: This paper highlights the audio narratives created through the Audio for Inclusion project, an NSF-funded project intended to help faculty become more aware of students’ hidden and marginalized identities and impacts of those identities on their engineering education experiences. Method: We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 nationally recruited undergraduate engineering students and turned these into 10 distinct audio narratives. Our narrative analysis focused on constructing a cohesive, concise, and anonymized narrative that would present key content from student interviews in a format that would preserve some of the immediacy and emotionality of student interviews while improving accessibility and coherence for faculty. Findings: In this paper, we present the scripts and link to audio narratives for two student participants: 1) Sophie, a mixed race (Asian and white) white-passing woman, and 2) Enola, an Indigenous woman. In addition to presenting the written and audio narrative, we comment on the specific lessons we see as valuable for engineering faculty that emerge from each of the audio narratives. Conclusion: This project highlights lessons learned for faculty in the areas of student support, accommodations, inclusive practice, and student perceptions of classroom practice. We present this project as methodological innovation for qualitative research, and as future work, we intend to keep investigating impact on faculty via faculty focus groups, surveys, and workshops. We also highlight this research as a metaphor for the empathic understanding that each faculty member can gain by listening to students, individually and collectively, and distilling lessons for their practice. 

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4. Minoritized Student Audio Narratives to Influence Faculty’s Empathic Understanding: Learning from Sophie and Enola

   Secules, S; Kali, M B; McCall, C; Van_Dyke, G (June 2024, Proceedings of the 2024 Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference)

   Background: Undergraduate engineering education is a critical moment for student experiences and broadening participation, yet many minoritized students experience it as unwelcoming, unsupportive, or exclusionary. Engineering faculty have a central role and responsibility to play in the creation of inclusive classrooms, yet there is a gap in empathic communication for faculty to better understand their students. Education researchers can play a critical role in addressing this communication and empathy gap, but disseminating research findings in long form papers is not accessible for most engineering faculty. Purpose: This paper highlights the audio narratives created through the Audio for Inclusion project, an NSF-funded project intended to help faculty become more aware of students’ hidden and marginalized identities and impacts of those identities on their engineering education experiences. Method: We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 nationally recruited undergraduate engineering students and turned these into 10 distinct audio narratives. Our narrative analysis focused on constructing a cohesive, concise, and anonymized narrative that would present key content from student interviews in a format that would preserve some of the immediacy and emotionality of student interviews while improving accessibility and coherence for faculty. Findings: In this paper, we present the scripts and link to audio narratives for two student participants: 1) Sophie, a mixed race (Asian and white) white-passing woman, and 2) Enola, an Indigenous woman. In addition to presenting the written and audio narrative, we comment on the specific lessons we see as valuable for engineering faculty that emerge from each of the audio narratives. Conclusion: This project highlights lessons learned for faculty in the areas of student support, accommodations, inclusive practice, and student perceptions of classroom practice. We present this project as methodological innovation for qualitative research, and as future work, we intend to keep investigating impact on faculty via faculty focus groups, surveys, and workshops. We also highlight this research as a metaphor for the empathic understanding that each faculty member can gain by listening to students, individually and collectively, and distilling lessons for their practice. 

   more » « less
5. Minoritized Student Audio Narratives to Influence Faculty’s Empathic Understanding: Learning from Sophie and Enola

   Secules, S; McCall, C; Kali, M B; Van_Dyke, G (February 2024, Proceedings of the 2024 Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity (CoNECD) Conference)

   Background: Undergraduate engineering education is a critical moment for student experiences and broadening participation, yet many minoritized students experience it as unwelcoming, unsupportive, or exclusionary. Engineering faculty have a central role and responsibility to play in the creation of inclusive classrooms, yet there is a gap in empathic communication for faculty to better understand their students. Education researchers can play a critical role in addressing this communication and empathy gap, but disseminating research findings in long form papers is not accessible for most engineering faculty. Purpose: This paper highlights the audio narratives created through the Audio for Inclusion project, an NSF-funded project intended to help faculty become more aware of students’ hidden and marginalized identities and impacts of those identities on their engineering education experiences. Method: We conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with 22 nationally recruited undergraduate engineering students and turned these into 10 distinct audio narratives. Our narrative analysis focused on constructing a cohesive, concise, and anonymized narrative that would present key content from student interviews in a format that would preserve some of the immediacy and emotionality of student interviews while improving accessibility and coherence for faculty. Findings: In this paper, we present the scripts and link to audio narratives for two student participants: 1) Sophie, a mixed race (Asian and white) white-passing woman, and 2) Enola, an Indigenous woman. In addition to presenting the written and audio narrative, we comment on the specific lessons we see as valuable for engineering faculty that emerge from each of the audio narratives. Conclusion: This project highlights lessons learned for faculty in the areas of student support, accommodations, inclusive practice, and student perceptions of classroom practice. We present this project as methodological innovation for qualitative research, and as future work, we intend to keep investigating impact on faculty via faculty focus groups, surveys, and workshops. We also highlight this research as a metaphor for the empathic understanding that each faculty member can gain by listening to students, individually and collectively, and distilling lessons for their practice. 

   more » « less