Towards Development of an Engineering Design Value-expectancy Scale (EDVES)

J. Blake Hylton; Patrick James Herak; Todd France; Sherri Youssef

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Conference: 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual Conference
Publication Date: July 26, 2021
Start Date: July 26, 2021
End Date: July 19, 2022
Conference Session: Design Methodologies 2
Tagged Division: Design in Engineering Education
Page Count: 10
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--37920
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/37920
Download Count: 282

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Paper Authors

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J. Blake Hylton Ohio Northern University orcid.org/0000-0001-9766-971X

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Dr. Hylton is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Coordinator of the First-Year Engineering experience for the T.J. Smull College of Engineering at Ohio Northern University. He previously completed his graduate studies in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, where he conducted research in both the School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Engineering Education. Prior to Purdue, he completed his undergraduate work at the University of Tulsa, also in Mechanical Engineering. He currently teaches first-year engineering courses as well as various courses in Mechanical Engineering, primarily in the mechanics area. His pedagogical research areas include standards-based assessment and curriculum design, including the incorporation of entrepreneurial thinking into the engineering curriculum and especially as pertains to First-Year Engineering.

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Patrick James Herak Ohio State University

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Dr. Herak is a five time graduate of The Ohio State University: BSE (Science Education), MS (Env Sci), MS (Civil Eng), MA (Foreign, Second, and Multilingual Education) and PhD (STEM Education). As an undergrad he was a member of The Ohio State University Marching Band for 5-years and can still be found playing with the TBDBITL Alumni Band.

While at university, Dr. Herak had several jobs including as a lab assistant (in Science Education, Mechanical Engineering and Entomology) as well as a GTA (in Science Education and the first-year Engineering Program). He also worked for 4-summers on the show staff for the Columbus Zoo, training various species of birds and other animals.

Dr. Herak was a secondary science teacher for 18-years, primarily for Westerville City Schools. However, he did take a leave of absence to teach at Aldenham School near London (UK). Dr. Herak has served as an adjunct professor at Central Ohio Technical College (Environmental Science) and adjunct professor position at Ashland University - Columbus Branch (Science Education), a position he still currently holds. Dr. Herak currently serves as a Senior Lecturer in the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University.

Dr. Herak has presented at education conferences at the state, national and international level including the Science Education Council of Ohio, National Science Teachers Association, International Consortium of Research in Science and Math Education, First Year Engineering Education conference and American Society for Engineering Education conference.

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Todd France Ohio Northern University

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Todd France is the director of Ohio Northern University's Engineering Education program, which strives to prepare engineering educators for grades 7-12. Dr. France also helps coordinate the first-year engineering experience at ONU. He earned his PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder in Architectural Engineering, and conducted research in K-12 engineering education and project-based learning.

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Sherri Youssef Ohio State University

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Sherri Youssef is pursuing her Masters of Science degree in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and is involved in the Department of Engineering Education as a Graduate Teaching and Research Associate at The Ohio State University. She completed her Bachelors of Science in Materials Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University as well in May of 2018.

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Abstract

As high school programs are increasingly incorporating engineering content into their curricula, a question is raised as to the impacts of those programs on student attitudes towards engineering, in particular engineering design. From a collegiate perspective, there is a related question as to how first-year engineering programs at the college level should adapt to a greater percentage of incoming students with prior conceptions about engineering design and how to efficaciously uncover what those conceptions may be. Further, there is a broader question within engineering design as to how various design experiences, especially introductory experiences, may influence student attitudes towards the subject and towards engineering more broadly. Student attitudes is a broad and well-studied area and a wide array of instruments have been shown to be valid and reliable assessments of various aspects of student motivation, self-efficacy, and interests. In terms of career interests, the STEM Career Interest Survey (STEM-CIS) has been widely used in grade school settings to gauge student intentions to pursue STEM careers, with a subscale focused on engineering. In self-efficacy and motivation, the Value-Expectancy STEM Assessment Scale (VESAS) is a STEM-focused adaptation of the broader Values, Interest, and Expectations Scale (VIES), which in turns builds upon Eccles’ Value-Expectancy model of self-efficacy. When it comes to engineering design, there have been a few attempts to develop more focused instruments, such as Carberry’s Design Self-Efficacy Instrument. For the purposes of this work, evaluating novice and beginning designer attitudes about engineering design, the available instruments were not found to assess the desired attributes. Design-focused instruments such as Carberry’s were too narrowly focused on the stages of the design process, many of which required a certain a priori knowledge to effectively evaluate. Broader instruments such as the VESAS were too focused on working and studying engineering, rather than doing or identifying with engineering. A new instrument, the Engineering Design Value-Expectancy Scale (EDVES) was developed to meet this need. In its current form the EDVES includes 38 items across several subscales covering expectancy of success in, perceived value of, and identification with engineering and design. This work presents the EDVES and discusses the development process of the instrument. It presents validity evidence following the Cook validation evidence model, including scoring, generalization, and extrapolation validity evidence. This validation study was conducted using pre- and post-course deployment with 192 first-year engineering students enrolled in a foundational engineering design course.

Citation
Format

Hylton, J. B., & Herak, P. J., & France, T., & Youssef, S. (2021, July), Towards Development of an Engineering Design Value-expectancy Scale (EDVES) Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37920

TY - CPAPER
AB - As high school programs are increasingly incorporating engineering content into their curricula, a question is raised as to the impacts of those programs on student attitudes towards engineering, in particular engineering design. From a collegiate perspective, there is a related question as to how first-year engineering programs at the college level should adapt to a greater percentage of incoming students with prior conceptions about engineering design and how to efficaciously uncover what those conceptions may be. Further, there is a broader question within engineering design as to how various design experiences, especially introductory experiences, may influence student attitudes towards the subject and towards engineering more broadly.
Student attitudes is a broad and well-studied area and a wide array of instruments have been shown to be valid and reliable assessments of various aspects of student motivation, self-efficacy, and interests. In terms of career interests, the STEM Career Interest Survey (STEM-CIS) has been widely used in grade school settings to gauge student intentions to pursue STEM careers, with a subscale focused on engineering. In self-efficacy and motivation, the Value-Expectancy STEM Assessment Scale (VESAS) is a STEM-focused adaptation of the broader Values, Interest, and Expectations Scale (VIES), which in turns builds upon Eccles’ Value-Expectancy model of self-efficacy. When it comes to engineering design, there have been a few attempts to develop more focused instruments, such as Carberry’s Design Self-Efficacy Instrument.
For the purposes of this work, evaluating novice and beginning designer attitudes about engineering design, the available instruments were not found to assess the desired attributes. Design-focused instruments such as Carberry’s were too narrowly focused on the stages of the design process, many of which required a certain a priori knowledge to effectively evaluate. Broader instruments such as the VESAS were too focused on working and studying engineering, rather than doing or identifying with engineering. A new instrument, the Engineering Design Value-Expectancy Scale (EDVES) was developed to meet this need. In its current form the EDVES includes 38 items across several subscales covering expectancy of success in, perceived value of, and identification with engineering and design.
This work presents the EDVES and discusses the development process of the instrument. It presents validity evidence following the Cook validation evidence model, including scoring, generalization, and extrapolation validity evidence. This validation study was conducted using pre- and post-course deployment with 192 first-year engineering students enrolled in a foundational engineering design course.
AU - J. Blake Hylton
AU - Patrick James Herak
AU - Todd France
AU - Sherri Youssef
CY - Virtual Conference
DA - 2021/07/26
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Towards Development of an Engineering Design Value-expectancy Scale (EDVES)
UR - https://peer.asee.org/37920
DO - 10.18260/1-2--37920
ER -