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The purpose of this NSF grantees poster is to disseminate initial findings on faculty perception of mastery-based assessment in a project-based engineering program as part of an NSF Broadening Participation award. It is understood that pedagogical approaches influence more than what students learn but also impact their mindsets, motivation, and how they see themselves as engineers. Mastery-based teaching has seen growing popularity in engineering education as faculty strive to support students in achieving learning outcomes linked with continuous improvement to promote performance and persistence. However, this teaching approach has specific challenges as it requires significant restructuring of assessment practices including assignments, exams, evaluation processes, and grading. This work seeks to better understand faculty perspectives of assessment within mastery-based teaching to support a user-oriented perspective that can help other engineering faculty navigate the challenges of using evidence-based teaching practices in their own classrooms. This paper focuses on qualitative findings from an initial pilot study from a larger, NSF-funded Broadening Participation project at a small, Eastern private college. This exploratory pilot study includes the perceptions of two engineering faculty members using mastery teaching and assessment in a project-based engineering program. A semi-structured interview with multiple open-ended questions was used to prompt participants to share their experiences with assessment in relation to their self-efficacy around teaching and their perceptions of assessment in relation to their students’ learning, confidence, and agency. Directed content and thematic analysis were used to identify codes and develop themes in relation to how participants described certain features of assessment in their engineering program. Preliminary results will illustrate features of mastery assessment that faculty highlighted as particularly challenging or successful and related lessons learned. The initial themes and patterns identified in this preliminary pilot study will be used to set up a more focused secondary full data collection phase in the larger study. Additionally, this poster serves as an opportunity to initiate important dialogue around the implementation of mastery-based assessment and project-based learning in engineering programs and to better support engineering faculty in incorporating elements of mastery-based teaching and assessment. 

The purpose of this work-in-progress research paper is to explore how mid-program engineering students perceive mastery-based assessment in a multidisciplinary, project-based engineering program. There have been calls in engineering education to support students beyond learning specific competencies but to also include curricular practices that help students see themselves as people who can do engineering. While it is understood that students’ mindsets and feelings of control over their own actions and outcomes are influential in how students see themselves as engineers, less is known about what specific classroom practices have this effect. Specifically, students experience assessment in relation to their learning throughout their engineering programs, but little is known about how their perceptions of these experiences impact their sense of agency or control over how and what they learn. This work explores how mastery-based learning and its associated assessment can be paired with a multidisciplinary project-based learning approach to influence students’ feelings of control and choice in their own engineering education. This paper focuses on qualitative findings from an initial pilot study for a larger, NSF-funded project at a small, Eastern private college. This exploratory pilot study includes the perceptions of four second-year engineering students enrolled in an undergraduate engineering program designed around integrated, multidisciplinary projects. A semi-structured interview with multiple open-ended questions was used to prompt participants to share their experiences with assessment in relation to their own learning, performance, confidence, and choices. Directed content and thematic analysis were used to identify codes and develop themes in relation to how participants described certain features of assessment in their engineering program. Preliminary results will illustrate students’ beliefs, learning, and perceptions of choice in relation to specific features of mastery-based assessment in a multidisciplinary project-based context. The initial themes and patterns identified in this preliminary pilot study will be used to set up a more focused secondary full data collection phase in the larger study and to initiate important conversation around the impacts of specific pedagogical choices on outcomes parallel to learning. By better understanding students’ perceptions of this pedagogical design, future classroom practices can be designed and oriented to support students in feeling agentic in their own engineering education and in becoming their version of an engineer. 

Results will be presented from a 5-year NSF S-STEM scholarship program for academically talented women in engineering with financial need. Elizabethtown College’s Engineering Practices with Impact Cohort (EPIC) Scholarship program was launched with an NSF S-STEM grant awarded in 2013. The program developed a pathway for academically talented and financially needy women interested in engineering to successfully enter the STEM workforce. The program targeted three critical stages: 1) recruiting talented women into the ABET-accredited engineering program and forming a cohort of scholars,  2) leveraging and expanding existing high impact practices (including an established matriculation program, living-learning community, collaborative learning model, focused mentoring, and undergraduate research) to support women scholars during their college experience, and 3) mentoring scholars as they transitioned to the STEM workforce or graduate programs. The goals of the scholarship program were to increase the number and percent of women entering engineering at our institution and to increase the graduation/employment rate of EPIC scholars beyond that of current engineering students and beyond that of national levels for women engineers.   At the end of this grant, we have roughly doubled the number of women (22.7%) and underrepresented minority students (14%) in the engineering program. This is comparable to the 2016 national average of 20.9% women and 20.6% underrepresented minority bachelor's graduates in engineering. We have also remained at a consistently high level of enrollment and retention of low-income (18.6% Pell-eligible) and first-generation college students (61%). 83% of the scholars have been retained in the engineering program or have graduated with an engineering degree, which is above the institutional and national average. The remaining scholars transferred to another major but have been retained at the institution. All of the scholars participated in a living-learning community, tutoring, focused mentoring, and a women engineers club. Almost all participated in a pre-matriculation program. 17% of the scholars additionally had an undergraduate research experience and 28% studied abroad. 100% of the scholars had engineering workforce jobs or graduate school acceptances at the time of graduation. This program successfully increased the population of underrepresented minority, low-income, and first-generation women entering the engineering workforce.  

First-generation (FG) and/or low-income (LI) engineering student populations are of particular interest in engineering education. However, these populations are not defined in a consistent manner across the literature or amongst stakeholders. The intersectional identities of these groups have also not been fully explored in most quantitative-based engineering education research. This research paper aims to answer the following three research questions: (RQ1) How do students’ demographic characteristics and college experiences differ depending on levels of parent educational attainment (which forms the basis of first-generation definitions) and family income? (RQ2) How do ‘first-generation’ and ‘low-income’ definitions impact results comparing to their continuing-generation and higher-income peers? (RQ3) How does considering first-generation and low-income identities through an intersectional lens deepen insight into the experiences of first-generation and low-income groups? Data were drawn from a nationally representative survey of engineering juniors and seniors (n = 6197 from 27 U.S. institutions). Statistical analyses were conducted to evaluate respondent differences in demographics (underrepresented racial/ethnic minority (URM), women, URM women), college experiences (internships/co-ops, having a job, conducting research, and study abroad), and engineering task self-efficacy (ETSE), based on various definitions of ‘first generation’ and ‘low income’ depending on levels of parental educational attainment and self-reported family income. Our results indicate that categorizing a first-generation student as someone whose parents have less than an associate’s degree versus less than a bachelor’s degree may lead to different understandings of their experiences (RQ1). For example, the proportion of URM students is higher among those whose parents have less than an associate’s degree than among their “associate’s degree or more” peers (26% vs 11.9%). However, differences in college experiences are most pronounced among students whose parents have less than a bachelor’s degree compared with their “bachelor’s degree or more” peers: having a job to help pay for college (55.4% vs 47.3%), research with faculty (22.7% vs 35.0%), and study abroad (9.0% vs 17.3%). With respect to differences by income levels, respondents are statistically different across income groups, with fewer URM students as family income level increases. As family income level increases, there are more women in aggregate, but fewer URM women. College experiences are different for the middle income or higher group (internship 48.4% low and lower-middle income vs 59.0% middle income or higher; study abroad 11.2% vs 16.4%; job 58.6% vs 46.8%). Despite these differences in demographic characteristics and college experiences depending on parental educational attainment and family income, our dataset indicates that the definition does not change the statistical significance when comparing between first-generation students and students who were continuing-generation by any definition (RQ2). First-generation and low-income statuses are often used as proxies for one another, and in this dataset, are highly correlated. However, there are unique patterns at the intersection of these two identities. For the purpose of our RQ3 analysis, we define ‘first-generation’ as students whose parents earned less than a bachelor’s degree and ‘low-income’ as low or lower-middle income. In this sample, 68 percent of students were neither FG nor LI while 11 percent were both (FG&LI). On no measure of demographics or college experience is the FG&LI group statistically similar to the advantaged group. Low-income students had the highest participation in working to pay for college, regardless of parental education, while first-generation students had the lower internship participation than low-income students. Furthermore, being FG&LI is associated with lower ETSE compared with all other groups. These results suggest that care is required when applying the labels “first-generation” and/or “low-income” when considering these groups in developing institutional support programs, in engineering education research, and in educational policy. Moreover, by considering first-generation and low-income students with an intersectional lens, we gain deeper insight into engineering student populations that may reveal potential opportunities and barriers to educational resources and experiences that are an important part of preparation for an engineering career.