ABSTRACT
This research Work in Progress explores establishing a baseline for a measure of 'happiness' as a noncognitive construct, and how it might change over the school year for engineering students, and begins to explore how it may relate to other noncognitive attributes.Affective characteristics of engineering students have been studied in different contexts. Studies have attempted to assess the effect of affective and cognitive characteristics on retention, success, motivation, etc. Little if any research has been done on happiness of engineering students as an affective construct, or a trajectory of happiness within engineering cohorts.This work-in-progress builds upon prior research at a large, mid-Atlantic university. As the COVID pandemic began, multidisciplinary engineering students were given an open-ended prompt to submit an artifact that illustrated how the pandemic was affecting them. There were no restrictions, other than the assignment had to be capable of being submitted in the existing learning management system. Students submitted a wide variety of creative artifacts, from poems to movies to paintings. These submissions were analyzed based on the type of submission and emotion mentioned or conveyed in the assignments. Submissions were coded to glean characteristics such as happiness, sadness, and other emotions from the students' submissions.This was created in a snapshot in time, within the first few weeks of COVID and before the effects of COVID on students or society was evident. The COVID-19 pandemic had undoubtedly impacted any measure of happiness among engineering undergraduates (which was the impetus of the project). From this initial study, two research questions emerged: a) what is the happiness level of engineering students as they begin the academic year, and b) what is the trajectory over the course of the year? For further consideration, does a quantitative measure of happiness correlate to fixed vs. growth mindset? The Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) was administered at the beginning of the academic year, at the end of the first semester, and at the end of the year at a small, private, Midwest university. This study hopes to establish a baseline to understand how interventions might be designed to positively affect happiness within students. This paper will discuss the initial results of administering the SHS to undergraduate engineering students, with a comparison to results from a similar instrument measuring fixed vs. growth mindset. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Based on the multidisciplinary needs of today's complex and innovative technology, accreditation bodies of engineering demand proof of multidisciplinary teamwork in undergraduate engineering curricula. This article reports the design and conduct of a Multidisciplinary Engineering Design (MED) course initiated as a result of accreditation process requirements. The course, which consists of multidisciplinary lectures, practice sessions, and various phases of a multidisciplinary team project, was conducted online because of the COVID-19 pandemic by a multidisciplinary team of instructors using multiple software tools to enhance collaboration. In general, the course outcomes were satisfied under the current design, and several points for further improvement and elaboration were collected via quantitative and qualitative evaluations. Accordingly, the results show that the project-based and team-based MED course, in terms of multidisciplinary course management and its outcomes, can benefit from the use of software tools in creating a multidisciplinary team in distance education by means of enhanced cooperation and motivation among the participants. © 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.
ABSTRACT
Inspired by an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2015 titled “Final Exams or Epic Finales” (https://www.chronicle.com/article/Final-Exams-or-Epic-Finales/231871), three instructors of middle-level multidisciplinary engineering courses at Elizabethtown College, a small, private, regional liberal arts college, replaced their traditional final exams with self-described “epic finales” or final “celebrations of learning.” We seek to share our experiences from several years of implementation as many in the engineering education community consider alternative final exams coming out of COVID. We have implemented epic finales in Strength of Materials, Thermodynamics, Introduction to Environmental Engineering, and Civil Engineering Materials. Our experiences include in-person and virtual implementation. In this paper, we share our exercises, details of the semi-structured time block used, our grading approaches and rubrics, student and instructor reactions, challenges and opportunities identified, and guidance on the circumstances under which we recommend using this approach. Of note, student feedback indicating that students felt 'like a real engineer' and thought they would remember this exercise far better and for far longer than wiping their mind of the cramming before a typical exam. While the level of technical analysis during the exercise did not rise to the level of a typical final exam, in all courses, students had been tested on most of the content during partial exams. Instead, students had to display a higher level of 'real world' skills including problem-solving on an open-ended question, researching a new topic, synthesizing course content, modeling and making tractable a complex problem, self-regulated organization and group management, coordination and communication between groups of students, prioritization of which information they needed to solve the problem, and considerable time constraint. Our intention with this paper is provide instructors with our lessons learned over several years of implementation and the guidance to implement a practical, creative, and fun alternative 'epic finale,' under COVID circumstances and beyond. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
The experience of delivering a STEM focused summer program to pre-college students is not novel, however, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the choice to offer such a program virtually to a diverse underrepresented population of 9-12th graders in rural Louisiana posed a great opportunity to reach an otherwise underserved segment of the population. This however is not without unique challenges. The ten-day summer program included applications of engineering principles across disciplines in a virtual setting. The program consisted of 8 different modules as daily themed mini-camps covering the areas of mechatronics, CAD & 3D printing, cyber security, biological sciences, physical science, architectural design, environmental engineering, and chemical engineering. Through several hands-on activities and interactive simulations, students practiced many engineering concepts including the engineering design process, drafting and 3D modeling, energy conversions, sustainability and clean energy, microcontroller coding, and internet security. This program was one segment of a comprehensive on-going initiative to serve students and educators from underrepresented communities which also includes a professional development program for in-service STEM educators. The program for educators is ongoing and is designed to provide them with the tools and experiences that are necessary to offer continued support and specific instruction to their students at their local schools. This paper will serve as an investigation of such a program and detail both the delivery and specific challenges encountered as well as discuss the solutions that were implemented and lessons learned. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
The experience of delivering a STEM focused summer program to pre-college students is not novel, however, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the choice to offer such a program virtually to a diverse underrepresented population of 9-12th graders in rural Louisiana posed a great opportunity to reach an otherwise underserved segment of the population. This however is not without unique challenges. The ten-day summer program included applications of engineering principles across disciplines in a virtual setting. The program consisted of 8 different modules as daily themed mini-camps covering the areas of mechatronics, CAD & 3D printing, cyber security, biological sciences, physical science, architectural design, environmental engineering, and chemical engineering. Through several hands-on activities and interactive simulations, students practiced many engineering concepts including the engineering design process, drafting and 3D modeling, energy conversions, sustainability and clean energy, microcontroller coding, and internet security. This program was one segment of a comprehensive on-going initiative to serve students and educators from underrepresented communities which also includes a professional development program for in-service STEM educators. The program for educators is ongoing and is designed to provide them with the tools and experiences that are necessary to offer continued support and specific instruction to their students at their local schools. This paper will serve as an investigation of such a program and detail both the delivery and specific challenges encountered as well as discuss the solutions that were implemented and lessons learned. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
In this research paper, we focus on evidence of successful and sustained faculty change as part of our design-based implementation research project contextualized in the COVID-19 pandemic. This work draws on previous collaborative change efforts implemented in a multidisciplinary engineering department at a Hispanic-serving research institution in the Southwest and supported by a multiple-year NSF-funded Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grant. The abrupt shifts in instructional environments and practices brought on by the pandemic provide a valuable opportunity for us to explore whether and how faculty changes inspired and supported by RED-related activities were sustained during a time of crisis and upheaval. By analyzing and triangulating qualitative data sources such as interviews, recorded faculty meetings and professional development workshops, archived emails, and student surveys, we identified and reported salient indicators of sustained faculty changes, including their awareness and care related to students' success, their readiness and implementation of online teaching pedagogy, and their initiatives in creating inclusive learning environments for diverse student needs. Results suggest the importance of fostering and sustaining change by creating collaborative spaces for faculty to reflect on and support each other's teaching practice. A departmental Community of Practice (COP) related to teaching provided faculty with existing space, norms, and practice supporting each other in reflecting on, adapting, and improving their teaching to support the needs of diverse learners. We share our findings and implications in a traditional lecture. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021