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This Research Work In Progress Paper examines empirical evidence on the impacts of feedback from an intelligent tutoring software on sketching skill development. Sketching is a vital skill for engineering design, but sketching is only taught limitedly in engineering education. Teaching sketching usually involves one-on-one feedback which limits its application in large classrooms. To meet the demands of feedback for sketching instruction, SketchTivity was developed as an intelligent tutoring software. SketchTivity provides immediate personalized feedback on sketching freehand practice. The current study examines the effectiveness of the feedback of SketchTivity by comparing students practicing with the feedback and without. Students were evaluated on their motivation for practicing sketching, the development of their skills, and their perceptions of the software. This work in progress paper examines preliminary analysis in all three of these areas. 

In 1991, the Texas A&M University System was one of the first six Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) awardees. In the three decades of programming, several high impact practices (HIP) have been emphasized. One of them, undergraduate research (UR), is discussed. All members of the Alliance are part of the Texas A&M University System and undergraduate research was supported through a variety of initiatives on the Alliance campuses. Data presented chronicle student perspectives. Topics addressed are the impact of involvement in undergraduate research on academic outcomes, interest in further engagement with research, interest in graduate school, and career goals as well as the patterns of research engagement participants experienced and the forms of learning that resulted. These materials are presented regarding an audience that was overwhelmingly underrepresented minority students all of whom were pursuing science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) degrees. Students reported UR influenced their academic outcomes, further engagement with research, interest in graduate school, and career goals while facilitating learning and skill development. These findings, for URM students from institutions with three different Carnegie classifications that are a predominantly white institution, two Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), and a historically Black college or university (HBCU), parallel outcomes reported in the literature for investigations focused on general student populations suggesting that UR benefits are generalizable regardless of institution type and ethnicity/race of the participant. Findings also suggest that these patterns apply regardless of the student’s year in school. Material presented details the research elements commonly included in TAMUS LSAMP UR experiences and in which areas students reported the most learning. Thus, this document touches on topics important in addressing development of an adequate, well-trained, and diverse STEM workforce. It also confirms the efficacy of a highly replicable approach to facilitating a HIP, undergraduate research, with students from underrepresented groups. 

Drawing, as a skill, is closely tied to many creative fields and it is a unique practice for every individual. Drawing has been shown to improve cognitive and communicative abilities, such as visual communication, problem-solving skills, students’ academic achievement, awareness of and attention to surrounding details, and sharpened analytical skills. Drawing also stimulates both sides of the brain and improves peripheral skills of writing, 3-D spatial recognition, critical thinking, and brainstorming. People are often exposed to drawing as children, drawing their families, their houses, animals, and, most notably, their imaginative ideas. These skills develop over time naturally to some extent, however, while the base concept of drawing is a basic skill, the mastery of this skill requires extensive practice and it can often be significantly impacted by the self-efficacy of an individual. Sketchtivity is an AI tool developed by Texas A&M University to facilitate the growth of drawing skills and track their performance. Sketching skill development depends in part on students’ self-efficacy associated with their drawing abilities. Gauging the drawing self-efficacy of individuals is critical in understanding the impact that this drawing practice has had with this new novel instrument, especially in contrast to traditional practicing methods. It may also be very useful for other researchers, educators, and technologists. This study reports the development and initial validation of a new 13-item measure that assesses perceived drawing self efficacy. The13 items to measure drawing self efficacy were developed based on Bandura’s guide for constructing Self-Efficacy Scales. The participants in the study consisted of 222 high school students from engineering, art, and pre-calculus classes. Internal consistency of the 13 observed items were found to be very high (Cronbach alpha: 0.943), indicating a high reliability of the scale. Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed to further investigate the variance among the 13 observed items, to find the underlying latent factors that influenced the observed items, and to see if the items needed revision. We found that a three model was the best fit for our data, given fit statistics and model interpretability. The factors are: Factor 1: Self-efficacy with respect to drawing specific objects; Factor 2: Self-efficacy with respect to drawing practically to solve problems, communicating with others, and brainstorming ideas; Factor 3: Self-efficacy with respect to drawing to create, express ideas, and use one’s imagination. An alternative four-factor model is also discussed. The purpose of our study is to inform interventions that increase self-efficacy. We believe that this assessment will be valuable especially for education researchers who implement AI-based tools to measure drawing skills.This initial validity study shows promising results for a new measure of drawing self-efficacy. Further validation with new populations and drawing classes is needed to support its use, and further psychometric testing of item-level performance. In the future, this self-efficacy assessment could be used by teachers and researchers to guide instructional interventions meant to increase drawing self-efficacy. 

This paper describes an evidence based-practice paper to a formative response to the engineering faculty and students’ needs at Anonymous University. Within two weeks, the pandemic forced the vast majority of the 1.5 million faculty and 20 million students nationwide to transition all courses from face-to-face to entirely online. Never in the history of higher education has there been a concerted effort to adapt so quickly and radically, nor have we had the technology to facilitate such a rapid and massive change. At Anonymous University, over 700 engineering educators were racing to transition their courses. Many of those faculty had never experienced online course preparation, much less taught one synchronously or asynchronously. Faculty development centers and technology specialists across the university made a great effort to aid educators in this transition. These educators had questions about the best practices for moving online, how their students were affected, and the best ways to engage their students. However, these faculty’s detailed questions were answerable only by faculty peers’ experience, students’ feedback, and advice from experts in relevant engineering education research-based practices. This paper describes rapid, continuous, and formative feedback provided by the Engineering Education Faculty Group (EEFG) to provide an immediate response for peer faculty guidance during the pandemic, creating a community of practice. The faculty membership spans multiple colleges in the university, including engineering, education, and liberal arts. The EEFG transitioned immediately to weekly meetings focused on the rapidly changing needs of their colleagues. Two surveys were generated rapidly by Hammond et al. to characterize student and faculty concerns and needs in March of 2020 and were distributed through various means and media. Survey 1 and 2 had 3381 and 1506 respondents respectively with most being students, with 113 faculty respondents in survey 1, the focus of this piece of work. The first survey was disseminated as aggregated data to the College of Engineering faculty with suggested modifications to course structures based on these findings. The EEFG continued to meet and collaborate during the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester and has continued through to this day. This group has acted as a hub for teaching innovation in remote online pedagogy and techniques, while also operating as a support structure for members of the group, aiding those members with training in teaching tools, discussion difficult current events, and various challenges they are facing in their professional teaching lives. While the aggregated data gathered from the surveys developed by Hammond et al. was useful beyond measure in the early weeks of the pandemic, little attention at the time was given to the responses of faculty to that survey. The focus of this work has been to characterize faculty perceptions at the beginning of the pandemic and compare those responses between engineering and non-engineering faculty respondents, while also comparing reported perceptions of pre- and post-transition to remote online teaching. Interviews were conducted between 4 members of the EEFG with the goal of characterizing some of the experiences they have had while being members of the group during the time of the pandemic utilizing Grounded theory qualitative analysis. 

Protests against racial injustice have been increasing in the United States. Universities often rapidly respond to acts of injustice through public statements about their position to uphold the equality of all people. To gauge the desires and concerns around discussing events causing social unrest in engineering classrooms specifically, the engineering education faculty chair of a large university conducted discussions with both students and faculty regarding its place in their classrooms. This paper describes the emerging themes from survey responses using coding and grounded theory. Reactions from students and faculty were decidedly different. Most students stressed the importance of discussing such topics in class with their engineering faculty, while most faculty emphasized their concerns with doing so due to their lack of training to effectively handle such topics. This paper describes the evaluation of student and faculty responses and its implications for supporting diversity and inclusion in the engineering classroom. 

The Texas A&M University System was one of the first six Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) awardees. All current members of the Alliance are part of the Texas A&M University System. Many high impact practices (HIP) have been emphasized in the Alliance’s 30 years of programming with Diversity/Global Learning as a focus in the last 14 years. Diversity/Global Learning has been supported in two formats on the Alliance campuses, through traditional study abroad programming and a College of Engineering initiative. Data presented were derived from a number of sources, project evaluation information regarding student perspectives and outcomes, survey research conducted by an independent party, and institutional data and online platforms accessed to assess student outcomes. Triangulation was completed between data sets. Results indicate both forms of programming were efficacious for underrepresented and first-generation students. Outcomes reported were substantial increases in awareness of and interest in graduate school, increases in cultural learning, confidence in travel outside the United States, learning relevant to major, commitment to continuing involvement with research, interest in another similar experience, and willingness to consider employment outside the U.S. Participants reported statistically significant growth in personal, professional, and research skills. They persisted, participated in additional study abroad experiences, and graduated at higher rates than their institutional peers with approximately 90% of informants indicating intention to consider graduate school in the future, over 40% indicating intent to attend immediately following undergraduate study, and 39.4% of 2007–2014 participants enrolling in graduate school by the spring of 2021. Programming described is replicable at and likely to be efficacious for a wide variety of institutions of higher education.