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Graduate education in engineering is an extremely challenging, complex entity that is difficult to change. The purpose of this exploratory research paper was to investigate the applicability of the Collective Impact framework, which has been used within community organizing contexts, to organize the change efforts of a center focused on advancing equitable graduate education within engineering. We sought to understand how the conditions of Collective Impact (i.e., common agenda, backbone organization, mutually reinforcing activities, shared measurement system, and continuous communication) could facilitate the organization of equity-focused change efforts across a college of engineering at a single institution. To achieve this, we took an action research approach. We found the Collective Impact framework to be a useful tool for organizing cross-sectional partnerships to facilitate equity-focused change in graduate education; we also found the five conditions of Collective Impact to be applicable to the higher education context, with some intentional considerations and modifications. Through coordinated efforts, the Collective Impact framework can support the goal of reorienting existing decentralized structures, resource flows, and decision processes to foster bottom-up and top-down change processes to advance equitable support for graduate students.

 

This Work-in-Progress paper studies the mental models of engineering faculty regarding assessment, focusing on their use of metaphors. Assessments are crucial components in courses as they serve various purposes in the learning and teaching process, such as gauging student learning, evaluating instructors and course design, and documenting learning for accountability. Thus, when it comes to faculty development on teaching, assessments should consistently be considered while discussing pedagogical improvements. To contribute to faculty development research, our study illuminates several metaphors engineering faculty use to discuss assessment concepts and knowledge. This paper helps to answer the research question: which metaphors do faculty use when talking about assessment in their classrooms? Through interviews grounded in mental model theory, six metaphors emerged: (1) cooking, (2) playing golf, (3) driving a car, (4) coaching football, (5) blood tests, (6) and generically playing a sport or an instrument. Two important takeaways stemmed from the analysis. First, these metaphors were experiences commonly portrayed in the culture in which the study took place. This is important to note for someone working in faculty development as these metaphors may create communication challenges. Second, the mental model approach showed potential in eliciting ways engineering faculty describe and discuss assessments, offering opportunities for future research and practice in faculty development. The lightning talk will present further details on the findings. 

Although advising relationships are key for doctoral student success, little research has addressed how they form. Understanding the formation of advising relationships can help contextualize their later development and ultimately support a student’s decision to persist in the doctorate. To understand relationship formation, the purpose of this qualitative study is to identify and describe the types of advisor–advisee selection processes that exist in engineering, science, and math doctoral programs and examine patterns across disciplines within those fields. We conducted interviews with doctoral program directors and engaged in document analysis of graduate student handbooks from 55 doctoral programs in the aforementioned fields in high research institutions across the United States. Using principal–agent theory as a theoretical lens, our findings showed that engineering programs tend to decentralize the advisor selection process by funding students across different funding sources upon enrollment. Contrariwise, science and math programs tended to fund all students in a cohort from a common funding source, which allowed students to have more time to gather information, meet, and select an advisor. These findings also show important nuances when comparing graduate education in these programs that directly impact the doctoral student experience and reiterates the necessity to study these fields separately.

 

In this Research Full Paper we explore the factors that traditionally minoritized students consider when selecting a graduate school to pursue a doctoral degree in an engineering discipline. To this end, we used case study methods to analyze the experiences of ten traditionally minoritized students through interviews conducted immediately after they had selected their graduate programs, but before they had commenced their studies. Our findings show that in choosing an institution, the most salient ideals these students hold are related to the offer of funding towards their degree and an alignment with their initial research interests. However, they described having made compromises on ideals related to their personal experience and racial identity, the most prominent being finding a faculty mentor with a similar racial background, finding a racially diverse institution, or being located in a geographical location they perceived to be more amenable to their individual identities. These findings suggest that continuing to increase the recruitment of traditionally minoritized faculty in engineering schools would have a direct impact on minoritized student recruitment, by thus helping to create spaces where more of their racial identity ideals are met and fewer compromises are made. Equally important to the recruitment of traditionally minoritized students is the transparency of funding opportunities during the recruitment and application processes, and the publication of current research opportunities within the institution. 

This paper proposes the use of collaborative secondary data analysis (SDA) as a tool for building capacity in engineering education research. We first characterise the value of collaborative SDA as a tool to help emerging researchers develop skills in qualitative data analysis. We then describe an ongoing collaboration that involves a series of workshops as well as two pilot projects that seek to develop and test frameworks and practices for SDA in engineering education research. We identify emerging benefits and practical challenges associated with implementing SDA as a capacity building tool, and conclude with a discussion of future work. 

The Skillful Learning Institute is preparing a virtual short course experience for engineering educators to expand the explicit engagement of engineering students in their metacognitive development, which is currently lacking. Participants will develop a unique metacognitive activity for their context. The ultimate goal is to enhance the education of engineers through explicit metacognitive training, and we focus on instructors for their enduring and multiplicative impact on current and future engineering students, and secondary impacts on their colleagues. We have designed the short course as a series of three two-hour synchronous virtual workshops over a six-week period in the summer. The experience is designed to build instructors’ capacities to teach metacognition and to continue to use and develop engaging metacognitive activities. By eliminating the time and cost of travel, this project will enable populations that might otherwise be limited in attendance such as professional-track faculty, teaching focused faculty, community college faculty, adjunct faculty. 

In this Lessons Learned paper, we describe the implementation of an on-campus workshop focused on supporting faculty as they develop metacognitive interventions for their educational contexts. This on-campus workshop at Duke University included faculty from engineering as well as other faculty from campus and was developed and implemented by members of the Skillful Learning Institute Team. First, we describe the purpose and intent of the workshop by the host institution (Duke University) and the workshop development team (Skillful-Learning Institute Team). We then provide the workshop overview across the two day period, including a description of instruction provided and structured breakout sessions. Next, we provide a lessons learned section from the perspectives of the host institution and the workshop developers. Finally, we offer insights into how those lessons learned are being incorporated into the development of future workshops. By providing the two perspectives, our lessons learned should help those who invite speakers in for faculty development and those who are creating faculty development activities. 

Calls to improve learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and particularly engineering, present significant challenges for school systems. Partnerships among engineering industry, universities, and school systems to support learning appear promising, but current work is limited in its conclusions because it lacks a strong connection to theoretical work in interorganizational collaboration.

This study aims to reflect more critically on the process of how organizations build relationships to address the following research question: In a public–private partnership to integrate engineering into middle school science curriculum, how do stakeholder characterizations of the collaborative process align with existing frameworks of interorganizational collaboration?

This qualitative, embedded multiple case study considered in‐depth pre‐ and post‐year interviews with teachers, administrators, industry, and university personnel during the first year of the Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools (PEERS) program. Transcripts were analyzed using a framework of interorganizational collaboration operationalized for our context.

Results provide insights into stakeholder perceptions of collaborative processes in the first year of the PEERS program across dimensions of collaboration. These dimensions mapped to three central discussion points with relevance for school–university–industry partnerships: school collaboration as an emergent and negotiated process, tension in collaborating across organizations, and fair share in collaborating toward a social goal.

Taking a macro‐level look at the collaborative processes involved enabled us to develop implications for collaborative stakeholders to be intentional about designing for future success. By systematically applying a framework of collaboration and capitalizing on the rich situational findings possible through a qualitative approach, we shift our understanding of collaborative processes in school–university–industry partnerships for engineering education and contribute to the development of collaboration theory.