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Work in Progress: Assessing Undergraduate Engineering Students' Career Social Capital

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Experiential Learning and Professional Skills and Competencies: Attainment, Assessment, and Evaluation.

Tagged Division

Cooperative and Experiential Education Division (CEED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

9

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44177

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44177

Download Count

119

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Paper Authors

biography

Adrian Nat Gentry Purdue University

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Adrian Nat Gentry is a Ph.D. student at Purdue University in Engineering Education. They completed their undergraduate degree in Materials Engineering from Purdue in May 2020. Adrian’s research interests include assessing student supports in cooperative education programs and the experiences and needs of nonbinary scientists. Adrian is involved with Purdue’s Engineering Education Graduate Association and the oSTEM chapter at Purdue.

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biography

Eric Holloway Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE) Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-0343-1709

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Dr. Eric Holloway currently serves as the Sr. Director of Industry Research in the College of Engineering at Purdue, where he focuses on industry research in the College of Engineering. He also holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the School of Engineering Education and the School of Mechanical Engineering.

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Kerrie A. Douglas Cornell University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-2693-5272

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Dr. Douglas is an Associate Professor in the Purdue School of Engineering Education. Her research is focused on improving methods of assessment in engineering learning environments and supporting engineering students.

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Abstract

Work-integrated learning (WIL) programs (e.g., Co-op programs, internships, and workforce development programs) provide students with crucial opportunities to build professional social networks. Based on social capital theory, we understand that students’ professional networks provide them access to career-related resources, information, and support. We utilize social capital theory and social cognitive theory to guide our understanding of how mentors support engineering students’ career development. Together, social capital theory highlights the need for students to build social networks with career professionals. Social cognitive career theory informs which mentoring efforts are instrumental for a student’s career development. The purpose of the study is to examine the item and scale level performance of the Mentoring Social Capital Instrument, an instrument developed to examine what career-related supports students access through their mentors. We ask the following questions: 1) to what extent are student interpretations of the Mentoring Social Capital items consistent with how the assessment questions are intended to be interpreted?; 2) to what extent do experts agree that the Mentoring Social Capital items are aligned with the theory? We conducted cognitive interviews with eight undergraduate students to explore the extent to which students interpreted the Mentoring Social Capital items. Additionally, expert review feedback was collected from 15 engineering education and educational psychology experts to determine how well items of the Mentoring Social Capital instrument align with the theoretical frameworks proposed. We made revisions to 20 items based on the cognitive interviews and expert review. The results of this study were used to improve the item clarity and interpretability of Mentoring Social Capital instrument for undergraduate engineering students in work-integrated learning programs. Future work will include piloting the Mentoring Social Capital scale with Co-op students at a large, midwestern R1 institution.

Gentry, A. N., & Holloway, E., & Douglas, K. A. (2023, June), Work in Progress: Assessing Undergraduate Engineering Students' Career Social Capital Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44177

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