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Title: Work in Progress: Developing an Engineering Community in a Fablab
The observations to date for an NSF S-STEM Research project will be shared as a work in progress. The NSF S-STEM program has enabled academically talented lower income scholars at a community college to receive scholarships and intentional advising since 2006. This support resulted in higher success rates based on GPA as well as higher graduation and transfer rates. In addition, the percentage of students who are historically underrepresented in the engineering and computer science fields was greater among these NSF scholars in comparison to the overall program comparison group. Starting in 2020, a research component was added to the scholarship program with a desire to better understand the development of student self-efficacy and sense of belonging. In particular, the impact of enhanced community building activities at the college using the Fablab as a central hub was of interest. The lab was developed in part to encourage commuter students to engage in more experiential learning and social collaboration between classes. While considerable research has been conducted on self-efficacy, sense of belonging and student success, there is limited data available on connections to a Fablab / makerspace environment and even less in a community college context. For the last four semesters, the NSF engineering and computer science scholars and a comparison student population have completed a survey to provide a measure of their self-efficacy relative to engineering, tinkering and design, sense of belonging, and inclusion. Observations and survey results to date will be shared. Since the timing of these surveys is such that only one occurred prior to the pandemic, there will be an attempt to disentangle the effects of the remote learning experience and discussion of the virtual approach to support services. In addition, the self-efficacy and sense of belonging measures will be analyzed for different student populations including the NSF scholars and overall comparison group as well as exploring underrepresented status in terms of gender and ethnicity. Next steps will be discussed for the following three years of the research program.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1929983
PAR ID:
10575140
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Publisher / Repository:
ASEE Conferences
Date Published:
Format(s):
Medium: X
Location:
Minneapolis, MN
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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