Engineering Students’ Performance in Foundational Courses as a Predictor of Future Academic Success* (original) (raw)
2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Student graduation and retention rates are among the metrics that many academic institutions of higher education closely monitor because of their impact on the success of recruiting students and in some U.S. states, they can impact the level of state government funding of public academic institutions. For these reasons, many academic institutions explore innovative ways to improve their graduation and retention rates to levels as high as 95%, respectively. An example of an innovative and transformational approach to improving these metrics is presently taking place in a mid-western university, and the cornerstone of this approach are the development and implementation of engineering technology foundations and applications course for all incoming students. While this course uses active learning approaches and team projects, the scope of their contents distinguish them from similar courses that seek to achieve improved graduation and retention rates. For instance, in this course, soft skills such as technical writing, use of Excel, developing an individual academic plan of study, cooperative education, internships, cultural diversity, quality, safety, and ethics are covered. Basic technical skills covered include math, mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering technology. The rationale for this course is to expose students to these subjects and topics before they enroll in core engineering technology courses such as applied statics. Assessment of learning: While the author plans to conduct this study for at least a four-year period, when the students presently taking the engineering technology foundation course would be graduating so as to compare their graduation and retention rates with those of former graduates, preliminary results presented in this study compare performance of students taking the engineering technology foundation and application course with those of their classmates who were not presently enrolled in this course but were enrolled in the same 100-level engineering technology course.
In this paper, we will look at how the engineering skills acquired by the students in the freshmen Foundations of Engineering I (ENGR111) course helped them in their higher level courses in the university. As ENGR111 developed skills in students that they had previously not been exposed to, it was essential to understand their effect. Students in the sophomore, junior and senior were surveyed to collect this information. Results show that the students have found the impact of these skills in their higher level courses to be positive.
Increased Retention and Graduation Rates of Engineering Students
2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
School of Engineering. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Eindhoven on a research study into improving the participation of female high school students in physics. She holds a master's degree in physics from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She taught physics and mathematics in Dutch secondary schools and colleges and mathematics as an Adjunct at Pace University. She performed curriculum evaluation and academic and educational advising at
First-year Engineering Students and Their Perceptions of Academic Progress
2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings
Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Binghamton University. He has worked for Lockheed Martin, IBM, General Electric, BAE Systems, and Celestica Corporation. He has 25 years of experience in these companies designing military and commercial power electronic circuits and as a systems engineer for airborne and land vehicle electrical systems. He is a licensed professional engineer. He also received a B.A in philosophy and a M.Ed. from the University of Vermont. Before becoming an engineer he was a high school mathematics teacher.
Today's engineering graduates will solve tomorrow's problems in a world that is advancing faster and facing more critical challenges than ever before. This situation creates significant demand for engineering education to evolve in order to effectively prepare a diverse community of engineers for these challenges. Such concerns have led to the publication of visionary reports that help orient the work of those committed to the success of engineering education. Research in engineering education is central to all of these visions. The Need Research on the student experience is fundamental to informing the evolution of engineering education. A broad understanding of the engineering student experience involves thinking about diverse academic pathways, navigation of these pathways, and decision points-how students choose engineering programs, navigate through their programs, and then move on to jobs and careers. Further, looking at students' experiences broadly entails not just thinking about their learning (i.e., skill and knowledge development in both technical and professional areas) but also their motivation, their identification with engineering, their confidence, and their choices after graduation. In actuality, there is not one singular student experience, but rather many experiences. Research on engineering student experiences can look into systematic differences across demographics, disciplines, and campuses; gain insight into the experiences of underrepresented students; and create a rich portrait of how students change from first year through graduation. Such a broad understanding of the engineering student experience can serve as inspiration for designing innovative curricular experiences that support the many and varied pathways that students take on their way to becoming an engineer.
Measuring the Effects of Pre-College Engineering, Year 3
2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings, 2000
where he is a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and IDoTeach, a pre-service STEM teacher preparation program. His work focuses on the transition from pre-college to university engineering programs, how exposure to engineering prior to matriculation affects the experiences of engineering students, and engineering in the K-12 classroom. He has worked as a high school science, mathematics, and engineering and technology teacher, as well as several years of electrical and mechanical engineering design experience as a practicing engineer. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Swarthmore College, his Master's of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts, and a Master's of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Doctorate in Engineering Education from Purdue University.
Measuring the Effects of Pre-College Engineering Experiences, Year 2
2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings, 2015
where he is a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and IDoTeach, a pre-service STEM teacher preparation program. His work focuses on the transition from pre-college to university engineering programs, how exposure to engineering prior to matriculation affects the experiences of engineering students, and engineering in the K-12 classroom. He has worked as a high school science, mathematics, and engineering and technology teacher, as well as several years of electrical and mechanical engineering design experience as a practicing engineer. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Swarthmore College, a Masters of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts, and a Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Doctorate in Engineering Education from Purdue University.
In this study, we examine the relationship between student enrollment in a precollege engineering course, Project Lead The Way, and student achievement in science and mathematics. Using multiple regression analysis (N = 176), controlling for prior achievement, free/reduced lunch eligibility, and gender, students enrolled in PLTW courses performed marginally significantly better in mathematics than those who did not enroll in the course at 0.10 alpha level. However, there is no significant relationship between PLTW course enrollment and student achievement in science. We discuss the implications for these findings and provide recommendations focusing on: making explicit integration between academic content and pre-engineering principles; developing assessments that adequately represent students' learning experiences in pre-college engineering; and examining the impact of student prior achievement and social backgrounds on students' later academic development and career opportunities in engineering.
In this study, we examine the relationship between student enrollment in a pre-college engineering course, Project Lead The Way, and student achievement in science and mathematics. Using multiple regression analysis (N = 176), controlling for prior achievement, free/reduced lunch eligibility, and gender, students enrolled in PLTW courses performed marginally significant better in mathematics than those who did not enroll in the course at 0.10 alpha level. However, there is no significant relationship between PLTW course enrollment and student achievement in science. We discuss the implications for these findings and provide recommendations focusing on: making explicit integration between academic content and pre-engineering principles; developing assessments that adequately represent students' learning experiences in pre-college engineering; and examining the impact of student prior achievement and social backgrounds on students' later academic development and career opportunities in engineering.
2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
is a sophomore majoring in Engineering Education with a minor in Mathematics and an undergraduate research assistant. He is a Choose Ohio First scholar inducted during the 2012-2013 school year and the recipient of the Remsberg Creativity Award for 2013. Also, he is a member of the freshman honorary society (Alpha Lambda Delta / Phi Eta Sigma) and the mathematics honorary society (Kappa Mu Epsilon). His research interests involve improving mathematical perseverance and literacy in students and exploring general topics in K-12 engineering (student perceptions of engineering).
AC 2007-1862: FRESHMAN ENGINEERING STUDENT RESPONSES TO A PRE-COLLEGE PERCEPTION SURVEY
2007
Engineering educators are constantly modifying course offerings and course structure to meet the necessities of our society. One of the ongoing challenges is how to modify the initial contact with students that will encourage them to continue seeking a career in engineering. This involves student recruitment and retention. Our Fundamentals of Engineering and Computer Science (FECS) course at Wright State University has been in place for the past six years and has seen an increase in student retention from 45% to 70%. Improving this retention rate by raising the admission standards is not possible as we have an open enrollment policy set by the state. Therefore, to better understand our students and how they perceive themselves as they enter college, we have been collecting data for the past three years as they take their FECS course using a perception survey at the beginning of the course.
Board # 100 : Exploring Enculturation in the First-Year Engineering Program
2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
She received her Ph.D. and M.S.Ed.in Educational Psychology with the specialties in Gifted Education and Research Methods & Measurement, respectively from Purdue University. Her work centers on P-16 engineering education research, as a psychometrician, program evaluator, and institutional data analyst. She has authored/co-authored more than 30 journal articles and conference proceedings and served as a reviewer of journals in engineering education, STEM education, and educational psychology, as well as an external evaluator and an advisory board member on several NSF-funded projects.
Results From Replacing General Physics I With Introduction To Engineering In The First Year
2004 Annual Conference Proceedings
Results are reported from an engineering curriculum change involving moving general physics to the second half of the sophomore year, and using the introduction to engineering course to teach prerequisite material for sophomore year engineering courses. In the first year of this change, retention in engineering from the first to the second year increased from 17 to 73 percent. For the first group of students to have experienced this change, the available data suggest that there are no negative impacts on student performance in sophomore year classes. Hope College offers a ABET accredited BS engineering degree. In the 2001-2 academic year a sudden marked decrease in retention occurred affecting even students who started with a high interest in engineering and good scores on standardized college admission tests. To address this problem, changes were instituted including an increased effort to identify and advise first year engineering students, insuring students in their first semester were in a course taught by engineering faculty, and establishing a group identity among the first year engineering students. Additionally, general physics, a calculus-based physics course previously taken by engineering students in the first semester of the freshman year, was moved to the second semester of the sophomore year. In most engineering programs, general physics serves to introduce engineering students to concepts essential to sophomore engineering courses. To replace general physics in the first year, the introduction to engineering course was modified to include the teaching of basic concepts of kinematics and electromagnetism along with the usual engineering career exploration and engineering design activities. Under this new arrangement, student performance in the second year has been comparable to classes in previous years in which general physics served as a prerequisite. The class average on exams in the second year Introduction to Solid Mechanics and Introduction to Electronics courses has remained similar to previous years.
Can Students Flourish in Engineering Classrooms
Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research, 2017
This study investigated the role of a new paradigm in teaching large introductory, fundamental engineering mechanics (IFEM) courses that combined student-centered learning pedagogies and supplemental learning resources. Demographic characteristics in this study included a total of 405 students, of whom 347 (85.7%) are males and 58 are (14.3%) females. The students’ majors included aerospace engineering, agricultural engineering, civil engineering, construction engineering, industrial engineering, materials engineering, and mechanical engineering. Results of this study, as tested using an independent samples t-test, validated using a nonparametric independent samples test, and a general linear multivariate model analysis, indicated overwhelmingly that there is a difference between a class taught passively using the teacher-centered pedagogy and a class taught actively using student-centered pedagogy. The principal focus of this work was to determine if the new paradigm was successful...
Board 105: Exploring Enculturation in the First-year Engineering Program (Year III)
2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Station (TEES). She received a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with specialties in Gifted Education and a M.S.Ed. in Educational Psychology with specialties in Research Methods and Measurement both from Purdue University. She also holds a M.S. in Astronomy and Astrophysics and a B.S. in Astronomy and Meteorology both from Kyungpook National University in South Korea. Her work centers on engineering education research, as a psychometrician, program evaluator, and institutional data analyst. She has research interests on spatial ability, creativity, gifted education, STEM education, and meta-analyses. She has authored/co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings and served as a journal reviewer in engineering education, STEM education, and educational psychology, as well as a co-PI, an external evaluator or advisory board member on several NSF-funded projects (CA-REER, iCorps, REU, RIEF, etc.).
WIP: First-year Engineering Students’ Study Strategies and Their Academic Performance
2020
Utilizing effective study strategies is one of the key predictors of students’ academic performance (e.g., [1]). However, in engineering education, there are a few studies that explored this relationship in real classroom settings throughout an academic semester. This work in progress paper investigates the relationship of engineering students' study strategies and their academic performance in a required first-year engineering course. For this study, data was collected from 161 engineering students at a large Midwestern university. We collected data by asking students to reflect on their study strategies that they used for the preparation of course exams. This course had three exams for student evaluation over the semester. We used these exam scores as a measure of their academic performance, which were graded by the instructional team. From this data, we addressed two research questions: 1) To what degree do students’ selection of study strategies vary while preparing for exam...
Boosting Study Program Awareness via a Structured Introductory Experience to Engineering
2024
Campus (UPRM). Dr. Santiago earned a BS and MS in Industrial Engineering from UPRM and Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. Dr. Santiago has over 20 years of experience in academia and has been successful in obtaining funding and publishing for various research projects. She's also the founder and advisor of the first ASEE student chapter in Puerto Rico at UPRM. Her research interests include investigating students' understanding of difficult concepts in engineering sciences, especially for underrepresented populations (Hispanic students). She has studied the effectiveness engineering concept inventories (Statics Concept Inventory -CATS and the Thermal and Transport Concept Inventory -TTCI) for diagnostic assessment and cultural differences among bilingual students. She has also contributed to the training and development of faculty in developing and evaluating various engineering curriculum and courses at UPRM, applying the outcome-based educational framework. She has also incorporated theories on social cognitive career choices and student attrition mitigation to investigate the effectiveness of institutional interventions in increasing the retention and academic success of talented engineering students from economically disadvantaged families. She's also involved in a project that explores the relationship between the institutional policies at UPRM and faculty and graduate students' motivation to create good relationships between advisors and advisees.