Beem, H. (2022, August), Exploring the role of the physical environment in building self-efficacy in first-year African engineering students  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41799

\bibitem{asee_peer_41799}
  Beem, H. (2022, August), \emph{Exploring the role of the physical environment in building self-efficacy in first-year African engineering students}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--41799

Heather Beem.  "Exploring the role of the physical environment in building self-efficacy in first-year African engineering students".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/41799 Internet.  26 Apr, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_41799}
  Heather Beem.
  "Exploring the role of the physical environment in building self-efficacy in first-year African engineering students".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/41799 Internet.  26 Apr, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_41799
author = "Heather Beem"
title = "Exploring the role of the physical environment in building self-efficacy in first-year African engineering students"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/41799}
number = {10.18260/1-2--41799}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - African engineering students find themselves facing stereotype threat fueled by negative global narratives. Responsive pedagogies have the potential to counter these narratives. Specific pedagogical approaches and mechanisms that build self-efficacy should be elucidated, so as to enable more African educators to leverage transformative tools in their teaching. 

This paper explores the hypothesis that in addition to mastery experiences, which can be experienced through project-based learning, the physical environment also plays a role in affecting African students’ sense of possibility and therefore self-efficacy. By restricting students from entering the campus environment, as necessarily happened with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, conditions for a experiment were naturally created. By comparing responses to the same surveys administered to XX University’s engineering students between the cohorts who conducted their first year in person versus online, the author studies the extent to which the physical environment influences students’ self-efficacy levels.

The results suggest that the original hypothesis does not fully hold, and it may require a more nuanced view. While the author expected the initial self-efficacy measures towards design and fabrication reported by the 2020 cohort (online) to be lower, they were somewhat higher than the 2019 cohort (in person), with small effect size for both genders (g_males = 0.172, g_females = 0.281). The change in self-efficacy levels over the semester were also equally to more significant for the cohort who attended online compared to in-person.
These results may suggest that intangible sources of self-efficacy have a greater influence than the tangible items in the physical environment. They may also suggest that the students’ presence in the physical environment can equally be substituted with the assurance of the accessibility of the requisite facilities. Further studies should continue unpacking the role of different variables in driving self-efficacy levels of first year African engineering students.
AU  - Heather Beem
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Exploring the role of the physical environment in building self-efficacy in first-year African engineering students
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41799
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41799
ER  -