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Engineering Time: Learning Analytics Initiative to Understand how First-year Engineering Students Spend their Time

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Conference

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Tampa, Florida

Publication Date

June 15, 2019

Start Date

June 15, 2019

End Date

June 19, 2019

Conference Session

First-Year Programs: Focusing on Student Success

Tagged Division

First-Year Programs

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--32742

Permanent URL

https://sftp.asee.org/32742

Download Count

433

Paper Authors

biography

Cory Brozina Youngstown State University

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Dr. Cory Brozina is an assistant professor and the Director of First Year Engineering at Youngstown State University. He completed his B.S. and M.S. in Industrial & Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech, and his PhD is in Engineering Education, also from Virginia Tech. His research interests include: Learning Analytics, First-Year Engineering and Assessment.

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biography

Aditya Johri George Mason University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9018-7574

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Aditya Johri is Associate Professor in the department of Information Sciences & Technology. Dr. Johri studies the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for learning and knowledge sharing, with a focus on cognition in informal environments. He also examine the role of ICT in supporting distributed work among globally dispersed workers and in furthering social development in emerging economies. He received the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Early Career Award in 2009. He is co-editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research (CHEER) published by Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. Dr. Johri earned his Ph.D. in Learning Sciences and Technology Design at Stanford University and a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering at Delhi College of Engineering.

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Nazanin Naderi Youngstown State University

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Abstract

This Complete Research paper describes a learning analytics (LA) informed initiative to collect a detailed account of how first-year engineering students spend their time. With a plethora of calls to increase the number of engineering graduates, it is imperative to set students up for success during their first year. While there are multiple strategies infused in students’ first year of college, and as many focused towards engineering students, there are still gaps in our understanding of what students do with their time outside of the classroom. This paper presents a study that uses a learning analytics initiative to uncover what students are doing outside the classroom and how they spend their time. Specifically, this study addresses one research question: How do first-year engineering students manage their time? Time management is one of the most critical aspects of a student’s success in college. Analyzing time management practices of students can provide valuable information about how they work and what helps them succeed. Our research details a pilot study of 14 first-year engineering students across two weeks during the Fall semester of 2017. Students used a shared Google Sheet to keep track of their activities in half-hour increments using a template created by the research team. The template includes six categories for students to fill-in: date, time, location, activity, course, and notes. Results of the study highlight the daily habits of first-year engineering students with sleep (36.94%), leisure (19.22%), other (11.04%), studying short- and long-term (8.93%), and class (7.89%) as the top four categories where students spend their time.

Brozina, C., & Johri, A., & Naderi, N. (2019, June), Engineering Time: Learning Analytics Initiative to Understand how First-year Engineering Students Spend their Time Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32742

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