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Development of a Survey Instrument for Measuring Affective Pathways

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Conference

2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Minneapolis, MN

Publication Date

August 23, 2022

Start Date

June 26, 2022

End Date

June 29, 2022

Conference Session

Educational Research and Methods (ERM) Division Poster Session

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--40955

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/40955

Download Count

284

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Paper Authors

biography

Emma Treadway Trinity University

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Emma Treadway received the B.S. degree in Engineering Science from Trinity University in 2011, and her M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2017 and 2019, respectively. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Science at Trinity University, San Antonio. Her primary research interests include human-robot interaction and haptics.

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biography

Jessica Swenson University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

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Jessica Swenson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo. She was awarded her doctorate and masters from Tufts University in mechanical engineering and STEM education respectively, and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Michigan Her current research involves examining different types of homework problems in undergraduate engineering science courses, flexible classroom spaces, active learning, responsive teaching, and elementary school engineering teachers.

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Melissa Caserto University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

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Abstract

This research paper examines a pilot survey question to measure students’ affective pathways when solving open-ended, ill-defined modeling problems. Research on affect in mathematics has discovered that students’ emotions tend to fall into familiar patterns, or affective pathways, that students have developed over time. These pathways are in part influenced by their global affect, or student attitudes and values about a subject. It is inevitable that frustration will occur at some point when solving a challenging problem; however, from the point of frustration, some students experience positive pathways in which they move from those challenges into eventual satisfaction, while other students’ affect falls into negative pathways that move from anxiety into fear or despair and rote procedures or avoidance of the problem. Just as students’ global attitudes influences the emotions experienced throughout the problem, the traces of the affective pathways over time can in turn influence global affect - following a negative pathway repeatedly can, over time, build global hatred of themselves or the subject.

These affective pathways have typically been assessed primarily through qualitative methods. In this study, we sought to measure students’ affective pathways while undertaking ill-defined problems in engineering science courses. We included a pilot question in a survey given to students at three universities in four different courses solving open-ended modeling problems in one semester, asking them to drag and drop positive and negative affective words derived from our prior work into the pathway they took when solving the problem. Our goal in piloting this survey question is to have an effective way to measure students’ affective pathways at scale in situations across their engineering education, in order to understand the implications on their global affect about engineering. We believe that the development of an effective tool for measuring affective pathways will facilitate future studies on retention in engineering.

Keywords: affect, emotions, problem-solving, undergraduate engineering

Treadway, E., & Swenson, J., & Caserto, M. (2022, August), Development of a Survey Instrument for Measuring Affective Pathways Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40955

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