Globalization and socially complex problems will greatly affect the way engineers work in the future. Therefore, efforts to transform engineering education must focus on professional skills and engagement of faculty as key change agents.
For engineering programs to address the needs of society, graduates must have the skills to tackle future challenges. Transformation will only be successful if faculty fully engage in all curriculum design aspects; however, little is known about how faculty view professional skills. This understanding is critical if we wish to support and encourage their participation in the transformation effort. This novel study reveals the qualitatively different ways faculty conceptualize professional skills.
Phenomenography was selected as the most appropriate method to showcase the variations in faculty conceptions. The study selected 19 interview participants from 273 responses to an online survey.
Faculty revealed their conceptions of professional skills in six ways: communication skills, technical skills, enabling skills, a combination of skills, interpersonal behaviors, and acting professionally.
Findings revealed a tension between technical and nontechnical skills. The study highlights that engineering education must focus on behaviors and interactions between people rather than technical skills alone. Further, there was a gendered difference in conceptions between women and men with women more likely to consider professional skills to be inclusive of behavioral aspects. The findings can help create future strategies for engineering education and can be used as a reflective tool for engineering faculty in efforts to transform engineering education.
Despite well-documented benefits, instructor adoption of active learning has been limited in engineering education. Studies have identified barriers to instructors’ adoption of active learning, but there is no well-tested instrument to measure instructors perceptions of these barriers.
We developed and tested an instrument to measure instructors’ perceptions of barriers to adopting active learning and identify the constructs that coherently categorize those barriers.
We used a five-phase process to develop an instrument to measure instructors’ perceived barriers to adopting active learning. In Phase 1, we built upon the Faculty Instructional Barriers and Identity Survey (FIBIS) to create a draft instrument. In Phases 2 and 3, we conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on an initial 45-item instrument and a refined 21-item instrument, respectively. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in Phases 4 and 5 to test the factor structure identified in Phases 2 and 3.
Our final instrument consists of 17 items and four factors: (1) student preparation and engagement; (2) instructional support; (3) instructor comfort and confidence; and (4) institutional environment/rewards. Instructor responses indicated that time considerations do not emerge as a standalone factor.
Our 17-item instrument exhibits a sound factor structure and is reliable, enabling the assessment of perceived barriers to adopting active learning in different contexts. The four factors align with an existing model of instructional change in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Although time is a substantial instructor concern that did not comprise a standalone factor, it is closely related to multiple constructs in our final model.
Researchers have shown that students leave undergraduate engineering programs during the first 2 years. Justifiably, many studies have tried to tackle engineering student persistence and attrition, especially during the first year, and then developed interventions to address the challenges. Although those interventions have improved freshmen retention in some institutions, less has been published on the impacts of these interventions on the sophomore student experience.
To contribute to the knowledge base about all engineering students, we examined the experiences of sophomore engineering students and explored how these experiences might be related to their identities as engineers.
We conducted this study using photovoice, a methodology in which participants submit photographs to describe their experiences and give recommendations on improving their experiences and resolving their concerns. Participants submitted three sets of pictures (at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester) and participated in focus groups to aid in illuminating their experiences. We analyzed data using thematic analysis.
We inductively determined three themes: on the frame, out of focus, and prefigures. These themes illustrate the experiences of sophomore engineering students, enabling us to see what interest, competence, and recognition as engineers looked like from their perspectives.
Participants grappled with the tension between their personal, social, and engineering identities. Photovoice empowered them to author and illustrate that they could exist beyond the murky middle.
To create design solutions experienced engineering designers engage in expert iterative practice. Researchers find that students struggle to learn this critical engineering design practice, particularly when tackling real-world engineering design problems.
To improve our ability to teach iteration, this study contributes (i) a new teaching approach to improve student teams' expert iterative practices, and (ii) provides support to existing frameworks—chiefly the Design Risk Framework—that predict the key metacognitive processes we should support to help students to engage in expert iterative practices in real-world engineering design.
In a 3-year design-based research study, we developed a novel approach to teaching students to take on real-world engineering design projects with real clients, users, and contexts to engage in expert iterative practices.
Study 1 confirms that student teams struggle to engage in expert iterative practices, even when supported by problem-based learning (PBL) coaching. Study 2 tests our novel approach, Planning-to-Iterate, which uses (i) templates, (ii) guiding questions to help students to define problem and solution elements, and (iii) risk checklists to help student teams to identify risks. We found that student teams using Planning-to-Iterate engaged in more expert iterative practices while receiving less PBL coaching.
This work empirically tests a design argument—a theory for a novel teaching approach—that augments PBL coaching and helps students to identify risks and engage in expert iterative practices in engineering design projects.
Engineers operate in an increasingly global environment, making it important that engineering students develop global engineering competency to prepare them for success in the workplace. To understand this learning, we need assessment approaches that go beyond traditional self-report surveys. A previous study (Jesiek et al., Journal of Engineering Education 2020; 109(3):1–21) began this process by developing a situational judgment test (SJT) to assess global engineering competency based in the Chinese context and administering it to practicing engineers.
We built on this previous study by administering the SJT to engineering students to explore what prior experiences related to their SJT performance and how their SJT performance compared with practicing engineers' performance on the SJT.
Engineering students completed a survey including the SJT and related self-report survey instruments. We collected data from three groups of students: those who had studied abroad in China; those who had studied abroad elsewhere; and those who had not studied abroad.
We found that students' SJT performance did not relate to their scores on the self-report instruments, but did relate to their participation in study abroad programs. The students also performed better on the SJT when compared to the practicing engineers.
Our results highlight the need to use multiple forms of assessment for global engineering competence. Although building evidence for the validity of the Global Engineering Competency China SJT is an ongoing process, this data collection technique may provide new insights on global engineering competency compared to traditionally used assessments.
Research points to family talk and interactions involving STEM concepts as one of the most influential informal learning experiences that shape an individual's STEM identity development and encourage their pursuit of a STEM career. However, a recent literature review uncovers limited research regarding the development of engineering identity in young children.
The purpose of this study was to add to this scant literature by exploring how children position themselves as engineers and how children are positioned as engineers through interactions with parents and other adults within a program focused on family engagement within an engineering design process.
This study includes two parent–child dyads. We collected and analyzed approximately 19.5 h of video data of the two child–parent dyads interacting with one another throughout an engineering design process as part of an out-of-school program.
Results highlight three ways in which the two children enacted various engineering identities through their positioning, negotiation, and acceptance and/or rejection of positionalities as they engaged in an engineering design process with a parent. These identity enactments included (a) possessing knowledge and authority to make decisions regarding the development of their self-identified engineering problem and prototype; (b) questioning and challenging adult ideas, solutions, and construction of prototypes; and (c) documenting and communicating their thinking regarding the engineering design through sketches and notes.
The significance of this study lies in its potential to change the landscape of those who pursue an engineering career and to contribute to the limited research and ongoing conversations about how to foster environments that support families in creative and collaborative learning specific to the engineering discipline.
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