Paper ID #38810Work in Progress: Cultivating Reflective Engineers: Does providing areflective ePortfolio experience in a first-year design course leadstudents to be more reflective in later courses?Dr. Rebecca Thomas, Bucknell University Rebecca Thomas is the inaugural director for the Pathways Program at Bucknell University, where she oversees the rollout of Bucknell’s E-Portfolio initiative. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering since 2018 and currently instructs the first-year course for ECE majors. She holds a B.S. and M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from
) fields: a strong sense of STEM identity [1],[2], scientificself-efficacy [3], a sense of belonging [4], and a psychological sense of community [5]. This isespecially true for first year and transfer students pursuing STEM undergraduate degrees. Avariety of studies have been published that go into detail about why these characteristics havesuch a significant effect on student performance and retention [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. This paperbuilds on past research focused on the intersections between reflection, metacognition, andSTEM professional skills [6]. We present Critical Self-Reflection [7] to integrate development ofthese characteristics into student research experiences to foster experiential learning. STEMstudents are not often trained to
the design of a first-year seminar (FYS) course and itsimpacts on student self-assessments and measures of retention among first year undergraduatestudents in engineering and mathematical sciences programs. Student self-reflections and self-assessment of learning were used to gain insight to students’ personal definitions of success,sense of preparedness, and sense of belonging, as well as the influence of the course activities onkey learning outcomes and student decision making after the first semester of college. The goalof this work is to evaluate the impact of a college-wide FYS course on student self-assessment,student flow, and one-year retention rates for the first three years that the course has been offered(Fall 2020, Fall 2021. Fall
. After each lesson and after thelesson series, students completed a written reflection on what they had learned, totaling to fivereflections over the semester. Their responses will be explored with a thematic qualitativeanalysis to answer the research questions above. The lessons continue to be adapted to thiscontext and are being taught to all sections of the course this semester. A rollout to all incomingfirst-year engineering students is planned for the Fall of 2023, so this analysis is ongoing, and allconclusions drawn so far are from Fall of 2022 and are denoted as a WIP.Definition of EmpathyDuring a pilot study in the Fall of 2022, 59 first-year students in the honors sections of“Introduction to Engineering” at a large R1 university
using the Engineering Design Process (EDP)within the context of the accomplishments and mindset of Da Vinci. The course exploredengineering mechanics and design topics concurrent with applying physics topics in anengineering laboratory. A qualitative analysis was performed using a new reflective tool,PhotoVoice. The purpose of the assessment was to better understand the impact of the course onthe student vision, the operation of the course relative to what they have encountered in theireducational careers, and student-perceived learning outcomes. Analysis of student reflectionsrevealed themes of “Changed Perspectives,” “Engagement in the Classroom,” and“Brainstorming Benefits” when describing the impact of the course on their career visions
. The course taught skills related to engineering practice,such as unit systems, dimensional analysis, and technical communications. While these skills areimportant for engineering students to master, learning them outside of any specific applicationwas not as engaging or as applicable for students. Furthermore, the content and delivery formatof the course did not allow for much “face-time” to cover the topics in enough detail or withopportunities for exploration or application in context. In addition, students conductedassignments individually, with minimal collaboration. Assessments were memorization basedusing multiple choice questions and with not much opportunity for reflection. The final paperthat students had to submit, based on their
dedication to student suc- cess, her innovative approach to program design, and her collaborative spirit, Sahar Mari is a true asset to the field of student support services.Ms. Sara AlBanna, SLB Sara AlBanna is a recent graduate from Texas A&M University at Qatar with a degree in petroleum engi- neering. She currently works as an field engineer at SLB. As a dedicated engineer, she is passionate about creating positive change in the industry. Her diverse undergraduate research projects, ranging from the impacts of migration on education to the development of multilateral wells, reflect her interests in multi- disciplinary pursuits. AlBanna is a multifaceted individual, identifying as an author, artist, and petroleum
workshop series provides teaching assistants with the ability to recognize andconfront bias among individuals and within teams, helps them develop an understanding ofpower, privilege, and oppression, and equips them with the tools to employ their knowledgeprofessionally. The workshops feature individual reflection activities and small groupdiscussions, culminating in a community-wide discussion on lessons learned and actionableitems to build an inclusive community within our first-year program.To understand the value of this training for the undergraduate teaching assistants, a survey wasconducted of participants before and after participation in the workshops. The survey aims tocapture the practicality of the training and the teaching assistants
on how students learnand included many practices useful for developing student learning; these included retrievalpractices, increasing sense of belonging & decreasing stereotype threat, metacognition & self-regulated learning, and transparency in teaching and learning. The workshop presentedresearch on these topics and provided time for faculty to brainstorm class changes based onthese ideas. The goal of this workshop was to communicate to all faculty teaching practicesbased on learning theories while also giving faculty time to reflect on their current practicesand propose course modifications.The course modifications focused on the first of a two-semester first-year engineeringsequence for honors designated students at The Ohio
learning,perseverance, reflection, commitment [5] [25]. Despite the challenges, it is important forengineering programs (and faculty) to commit to doing this work as it is an essential componentof educating future engineers.Internal Motivation & Course Development ProcessWestern Washington University (WWU) is a public institution with approximately 15,000 full-time undergraduate students. The Engineering and Design Department (ENGD) at WWU hasfour undergraduate-only programs: Electrical & Computer Engineering (EECE), IndustrialDesign (ID), Manufacturing Engineering (MFGE), and Polymer Materials Engineering (PME).Students interested in majoring in engineering at WWU must formally apply to a program aftercompleting a series of prerequisite
learning (CBL) is a student-centered pedagogical approach that makes use of specificoccasions or ‘cases’ to contextualize the learning of discipline-specific knowledge. CBLoriginated in professional education, specifically in medicine, business, and law [21] and hassince also been applied in science and engineering education [e.g., 22,23].CBL helps students develop conceptual understanding and thinking skills as they work throughand reflect on the process of solving cases [21]. Working on cases in groups can also facilitatethe development of students' interpersonal skills [21,24]. Implementations of CBL vary by thedegree of student autonomy (control) over their learning, from lecture-based on the low end toproblem-based on the high end of student
. His research includes undergraduate engineering education with focus on engineering design, problem-based learning, co-curricular involvement and its impact on professional formation, and the role of reflection practices in supporting engineering undergraduates as they transition from student to professional. ©American Society for Engineering Education, 2023 Using the CAP model to Equitably Redesign a First-Year Engineering SeminarIntroductionThe student body in higher education keeps changing, making it critical to pay attention to newgenerations' challenges toward achieving their academic goals [1]. Generation Z students are the core ofthe current student population at colleges and
out that not all the student outcomes are technical and that non-technical skills are required to be a successful engineer. This is followed by a discussion of thecareer-ready competencies identified by the National Association of Colleges and Employers(NACE) which are listed in Table 1 [10]. After review of the outcomes and competencies,students are asked to reflect on the competencies in which they are most confident at this stage oftheir education and then participate in an exercise to assess the competencies needed whendeveloping a new product.The Poll Everywhere platform was used to crowdsource responses to the question, “Which of thefollowing competencies have you developed during your first year at the university or based onyour
activitiesdeveloped for the pilot offering of a new first-year experience course for all engineering andcomputing majors in our college. The course is multi-disciplinary, with hands-on projects fromseveral different areas. The course introduces engineering and computing design principles andpractices, with a particular focus on an agile methodology. The first activity is part of the teambuilding phase of the course, and it is a kinesthetic activity where students develop a process thatsatisfies constraints and meets an objective. The activity involves several sprints wherein thestudents measure their results, reflect, and improve their processes. It is adapted from an industryactivity using balls; we use balloons because they are more cost effective and
-yearstudents. These 84 studies examined what students learned in their first-year and addressed thenature of preparation and composition of students entering engineering. Experiential learningwas mostly measured through the lens of student performance (89%) through different forms ofevaluations including performance checks, surveys, and individual interviews. A second lens wasfaculty evaluations (7%) including instructors’ observations, feedback, and reflections ofstudents’ performance and experience. Finally, a third lens was industry feedback (4%), obtainedto inform capstone design courses where students work at industrial sites on company basedprojects with industry mentors.From our literature survey, we identified four key elements with
these areas, creating a challenging environment particularly forunderrepresented engineering students. To combat this issue, a video and activities weredeveloped to emphasize teamwork and inclusion. The video was created by two students whohad taken the course in the previous year. It presented background information, mindful teachingabout inclusion, some discussion of the students’ personal experiences in the course, and anintroduction to the activities. The three activities that were developed were (1) a communicationgame, which allowed students to practice clear and respectful communication, (2) a teamworkand collaboration game, which aimed to show that each member of a team had somethingvaluable to contribute, and (3) a reflection and
objectives of the module 0% Lesson Theory-focused passive content with 10% automatically graded quizzes at the end of the content. Emulate Long-form video showing worked 20% example problems using a think-aloud protocol. Students are required to submit the emulated problem solution. Activity Akin to traditional homework, these are 30% new problems that can be solved using the tools and techniques shown in the emulate and lesson content. Reflection Self-reflective survey about the students’ 3% learning. Next Steps Project mini-milestones aimed at
assistants, and 2 instructors. The coursework consisted ofasynchronous online learning assignments, lecture reflections, lab worksheets, four codingprojects, and four online assessments.Description of Flexible Deadline PolicyWe implemented a generous flexible deadline policy during the Fall 2022 academic semester. Themajority of assignments were eligible for submissions after the deadline through the last day ofclasses. Students could submit assignments eligible for the policy by the original deadline for upto 100%. Depending on the assignment eligible for flexible deadlines, submissions after thedeadline could earn up to around 90%-95% of the original assignment’s points. Since this was thefirst semester in which we piloted this policy, we informed
[2,3] showed that students have high self-reported IL skills but are in factlacking in their academic ability; finding, evaluating, citing, and synthesizing information.Providing a way to link IL to the field makes it more relevant and worthwhile for students. Thisalso is a way to support students in the development of their writing skills in a supportive,content-related way.ObjectivesLearning objectives for the collaboration between the engineering faculty and librarian includedteaching the first-year engineering students information literacy skills; the set of integratedabilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of howinformation is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new
and thus effective teamwork?InterventionWe have adopted several modules of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Tools for Teamwork:Asset Mapping and Team Processing Handbook [11] to introduce students to important teamconcepts. Prior to forming groups and as part of the Handbook, students are asked to reflect ontheir identities, strengths, communication and conflict styles. As part of this, they complete aseries of self-assessments [12] and generate an asset map where they give thought to how theirlife experiences, not only educational experiences, will benefit a team. For an example of whatan asset map looks like, see examples in [4], [13]. Further, students read several articleshighlighting diversity and engineering and write a short
for him that throughout his definition and defining engineering, we never see him falterin his belief that he may not be able to live up to what he sees an engineer as. In fact, as hedescribes engineering as full of those with “intelligent minds,” we see that he counts himselfamong those with the potential to join them. Demonstrating that on a subconscious level, hecounts himself among those that fit the mold, and because of that, we see an immense boost tobelonging and confidence that he can become an engineer. This is directly contrasted with howour female participant Chad feels about the mold. When prompted to reflect on what she wouldchange in engineering to make herself feel like she was more welcome in engineering, this washer response
were guided by specific pedagogicalprinciples: small-group work with trained facilitators, group-worthy open-ended problems todevelop critical thinking and interest-based design projects to connect students to the material.Curricular development was supported by regular collaboration meetings with expert guidanceon pedagogy and incorporating social justice content. Altogether, more than 1500 students wereenrolled in the first-year program during the academic year. A student survey each term resultedin an average of over 900 survey responses across the three-course series. Reflections were alsocollected from participating faculty. This paper focuses on the adoption of promoted pedagogicalprinciples by the faculty, and the resulting outcomes and
,individual scenario assignments, a team-based ethics simulation (previously developed andpresented at ASEE), design project reflections, discussions of ethics through the lens of the threepillars of sustainability, and an individual final paper related to an on campus sustainabilityethics scenario. In addition to providing an overview of ethics activities and assignments, thispaper will compare course-level student learning outcomes between the current and prior yearsand how content in the course affected students’ perception of engineering ethics. We expect thatby more closely integrating ethics content with the student projects, students will engage moredeeply with ethics and appreciate how engineering ethics affects everyday engineering practice
., psychic assumptions reassessment of values and self- 4 Recognition that one’s discontent and the process of reflection transformation are shared and that others have negotiated a similar change 5 Exploration of options for new roles, relationships, and actions 6 Planning of a course of action Affirming & Connecting, i.e., shifted 7 Acquisition of knowledge and skills for perspective that allows one to cope implementing one’s plan with those situations more easily in 8 Provisional trying new roles the future 9 Building competence and self-confidence in new roles
classesAbstractIn this evidence-based practice paper, we report on peer oral exams, a cross between oral examsand peer assessment, as implemented in a high-enrollment undergraduate computerprogramming course for engineers. The idea was to leverage the educational andimplementational advantages of both evidence-based approaches simultaneously. Oral exams,for instance, have been argued to promote conceptual understanding, self-reflection,communication competency, and professional identity formation in students – but theirdeployment in large classes is resource-demanding and nontrivial, stifling their broader adoption.Peer assessment, on the other hand, is highly scalable and affords students many potentialeducational benefits of its own, including the
participated in the aforementionedsummer program are granted a degree of autonomy in how they approach teamwork in theircourses and chose to implement the equitable teaming tools from the Summer 2022 workshop tovarious degrees in their classes in the Fall 2022 semester. The full list of available teaming toolsincluded: 1) pre-readings related to the importance of diversity on teams, 2) individual assetmaps encouraging students to explore how their own backgrounds could be valuable and appliedin the course, 3) team asset charts designed to facilitate a breakdown of work for teamassignments in a way that draws upon the diverse backgrounds of all team members, and 4) teamprocessing documents guiding students through reflective questions regarding their
transfer status, both out of the school ofengineering and out of SW-PWI. The rosters also included students’ term grade point average(GPA) and term hours completed for Fall 2022, which were used as measures of academicoutcomes. Term hours completed refer to the credit hours that students passed and completed ina semester, and do not reflect students’ initial credit hour enrollment. We selected both GPA andterm hours completed as measurement metrics because SW-PWI uses these variables to measurestudent persistence and to predict students’ retention and graduation.Second, we requested and received access to a retention dashboard at SW-PWI. This dashboardcontains historical retention data both within the school of engineering and at the institution
before submission oftheir “final” product [7]. This would be to the benefit of both faculty and students as it wouldreduce the burden on faculty to provide feedback to all students in a large group while alsoincreasing the feedback and timeliness of the feedback that students receive. Arguably for anassessment mechanism the most important factors considered are the reliability and validityof the assessment tool. The validity of ACJ refers to the validity of the rank-order that isproduced and is directly tied to the cohort of judges which is assembled [18]. The reliabilityof ACJ sessions is described by the Scale Separation Reliability (SSR) coefficient which, inthe context of comparative judgement, has strong indications that it reflects an
notstraightforward.In this study, the authors surveyed faculty teaching introductory courses in engineering toexplore the range of projects already developed, the basic details of the projects, and topicsaddressed in each. The online survey was utilized to collect faculty members’ teachingapproaches, preparation, activities, and materials needed, as well as self-reflection. Data analysiscategorized first-year engineering projects (N=32) by the project outcomes, themes, extentwithin the course coverage, grading system, institutions’ educational model, and the projects’inclusivity of other power/holistic skills. There were common features among the first-yearintroductory engineering courses including the engineering design process, teamwork, andprofessional
can be done through a course that focuses on teaching the conceptsand skills, or it can be embedded within the engineering classroom experience. For example, areview of growth mindset approaches identified effective interventions including courses andother learning experiences like workshops, discussions, reflective writing, online tutorials, andcourse-embedded tutors [10]. Metacognitive strategies are also commonly taught outside theclassroom through campus teaching and learning centers. There is an emerging focus onmetacognition and self-regulated learning embedded within STEM classrooms [14], [15], [16].Proactive identification and advising of studentsProactive advising, built on the concept of intrusive advising [17], [18], involves