Maloney, P., & Li, B., & Zhang, M., & Cong, W. (2022, August), The Cumulative Effects of an NSF-Funded Additive Manufacturing Course at Three Large State Universities and Their Surrounding Communities  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41967

\bibitem{asee_peer_41967}
  Maloney, P., \& Li, B., \& Zhang, M., \& Cong, W. (2022, August), \emph{The Cumulative Effects of an NSF-Funded Additive Manufacturing Course at Three Large State Universities and Their Surrounding Communities}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--41967

Patricia Maloney, Bingbing Li, Meng Zhang, and Weilong Cong.  "The Cumulative Effects of an NSF-Funded Additive Manufacturing Course at Three Large State Universities and Their Surrounding Communities".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/41967 Internet.  11 Jul, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_41967}
  Patricia Maloney, Bingbing Li, Meng Zhang, and Weilong Cong.
  "The Cumulative Effects of an NSF-Funded Additive Manufacturing Course at Three Large State Universities and Their Surrounding Communities".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/41967 Internet.  11 Jul, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_41967
author = "Patricia Maloney, Bingbing Li, Meng Zhang, and Weilong Cong"
title = "The Cumulative Effects of an NSF-Funded Additive Manufacturing Course at Three Large State Universities and Their Surrounding Communities"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/41967}
number = {10.18260/1-2--41967}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Abstract:  The proposed paper is the culmination of four years of an NSF-funded project implementing and assessing an undergraduate additive manufacturing course at three large state universities in Texas, Kansas, and California.  [Note to reviewers:  we will name and give specifics about the universities in the final paper.]  The project was originally supposed to be three years, but was extended due to COVID-19’s interruption of academic activities.



The research questions addressed are:

(1) What are the changes in skill and knowledge concerning additive manufacturing experienced by (a) the undergraduate students and (b) middle and high school students?

 (2) What is the effect of this course on attitudes towards engineering and self-efficacy in engineering for enrolled undergraduate students?

(3) What are the engineering attitudinal effects on middle and high school students of interacting with the above undergraduate students?



The sample for questions (1a) and (2) consists of four years of data from the undergraduate students enrolled in the course at all three universities (combined N = 196).  The sample for questions (1b) and (3) consists of three years of data from the middle and high school students who were mentored or taught on class visits by the undergraduates enrolled in the course (N = 212).  We were unable to conduct field trips or mentoring sessions during the fourth year due to COVID-19.  Given the large sample sizes, we have been able to decompose the groups based on salient characteristics like gender, first-generation college student status, race, and major.



Our method for data collection was similar in both the undergraduate students and the middle/high school students:  matched-pair surveys that contained both (i) an assessment for content knowledge (scaled to grade-level) and (ii) an attitudinal assessment previously validated in published research for data collection about attitudes towards engineering.  Matched-pair surveys means that we collected data from Student X at Time 1 (before being taught) and then again from at Time 2 (after being taught) and are able to directly compare any change in content knowledge or attitude within the same person.  We also collected demographic information to be able to see whether changes in, for example, female undergraduates operated differently than changes in male undergraduates.



While the full results will be presented at the conference, all undergraduates experienced statistically significant increases in content knowledge and additive manufacturing skills.  In an intriguing finding, female students (both undergraduate and middle/high school) outperformed male students, which fits with the research that indicates that engineering courses which emphasize pragmatic and real-world applications, as well as those that use group work, will disproportionately help underserved engineering populations like women and people of color succeed. Fitting with the above finding, undergraduates noted that they perceived that they had increased in teamwork, communication, and computer programming skills.  These gains were particularly high in female students and students of color.
AU  - Patricia Maloney
AU  - Bingbing Li
AU  - Meng Zhang
AU  - Weilong Cong
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - The Cumulative Effects of an NSF-Funded Additive Manufacturing Course at Three Large State Universities and Their Surrounding Communities
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41967
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41967
ER  -