Attitudes of Engineering Students from Underrepresented Groups Toward Service-Learning (original) (raw)
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Service Learning In Engineering Education: Impact On Faculty And Student Attitudes
2008 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
In the fall of 2004, a study was completed the Colorado School of Mines that compared engineering faculty and student attitudes with respect to community service. The primary purpose of the investigation was to acquire baseline data prior to the implementation of the new undergraduate Humanitarian Engineering Program. The purpose of this program is to prepare engineering students for careers that will interface with and directly benefit the underserved global community. Given this, it was anticipated that one outcome of the revised curriculum would be improved attitudes on the part of participants with respect to community service. The current paper compares student attitude data collected in a sophomore required course in 2004, before students had participated in the revised Humanitarian Engineering curriculum, to that of data collected from seniors in 2007, after students completed, or at least became aware of the revised curriculum. The results of this investigation indicate a difference in the students' attitudes between the two administration periods but a direct link could not be established between the differences in attitudes and the new program.
Service Learning: A Bridge to Engineering for Underrepresented Minorities
International Journal For Service Learning in Engineering Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship, 2014
Female, Black, Latino and Native American students are underrepresented in the STEM pipeline. Finding ways to increase underrepresented populations in STEM fields continues to be a major initiative in education. Many underrepresented student groups express a strong orientation toward service and community engagement. Informal Science Education (ISE) can be structured to include community engagement and to engage learners' interest and enhance their understanding of the theory and practice of science. Service learning is a strategy that can be used within an ISE pedagogy to highlight how engineering acts as a community engaged vocation. This report describes a service learning project that exposed underrepresented high school aged students to engineering via a community service activity in which students built irrigation equipment for use in a community garden. The objective of the project was to use the context of service learning to motivate high school students to consider STEM majors. To describe the impact of informal science education through service learning, a qualitative study was also conducted. Three themes emerged: experiential learning (learning while doing), broadening perspective and identity as performance. Lessons learned and strategies for improving the service learning design are also discussed.
Proceedings Frontiers in Education 35th Annual Conference
Now entering its second year, the Humanitarian Engineering Program, which is sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation, at the Colorado School of Mines, is creating curriculum that will support engineering students in developing an understanding of their responsibility for solving humanitarian problems that exist throughout the world. As part of this effort, baseline data has been collected on both the faculty and student attitudes towards service activities using the "Community Service Attitudes Scale" which was developed and validated by Shiarella, McCarthy, and Tucker 1. This paper uses this instrument to examine and compare the phase of development that faculty and students at the Colorado School of Mines have obtained with respect to service activities prior to the proposed intervention. During the fall of 2004, 78 students and 34 faculty responded to this assessment instrument. The results of this study suggest that the participating faculty were at a higher level of development with respect to service activities than were students.
Community Service Attitudes Of Engineering Students Engaged In Service Learning Projects
2008 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
One of the potential outcomes of incorporating service learning projects into engineering curriculum is that students may develop a greater sense of altruism and in their careers look for opportunities to use their skills to the benefit of society. It is of interest to see if service learning projects conducted in the context of a single semester design course can encourage students to value community service. The Community Service Attitudes Scale (CSAS) survey 1 was administered at the end of the semester in fall 2006 to a freshmen introductory Environmental Engineering course (EVEN 1000) and a senior design course in Environmental Engineering that incorporated service learning projects, and in fall 2007 at the end of an Engineering for the Developing World (EDW) course. Twelve students in the 2006 design course worked on a wastewater project for a community in Mexico, and the EDW students worked on a variety of domestic and international projects for developing communities. Some of the students in these courses were also participating in Engineers Without Borders (EWB) as an extracurricular activity. Based on the fall 2006 results, there were significant differences in the responses of the first-year versus senior design course for only 4 of the 61 questions. The fall 2007 EDW students were emailed the survey, and response rates were much lower than in the other two courses. Therefore, few differences due to gender, EWB participation, or other factors were evident. The results from this study are preliminary in nature due to the small number of survey respondents. However, at this time it appears that the curriculum made minimal impacts on community service attitudes. It also appears that differences in the attitudes of the senior/graduate student EWB participants in the EVEN design course on 10 questions (p<0.05; additional 4 questions with 0.1>p>0.05) were probably due to differences in what leads students to voluntarily participate in EWB as opposed to attitude changes due to the EWB experience itself.
2005 Annual Conference Proceedings
Now entering its second year, the Humanitarian Engineering Program, which is sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation, at the Colorado School of Mines is creating curriculum that will support engineering students in developing an understanding of their responsibility for solving humanitarian problems that exist throughout the world. As part of this effort, baseline data has been collected on both the faculty and student attitudes towards service activities using the "Community Service Attitudes Scale" which was developed and validated by Shiarella, McCarthy, and Tucker 1. During the fall of 2004, 78 students and 34 faculty responded to this assessment instrument. Student data were collected in the first semester of the Multidisciplinary Engineering Laboratory course sequence, a required course taken at the start of students' sophomore year before they have the opportunity to participate in the newly revised service learning courses. Faculty completed the attitudes survey during the first faculty meeting of the academic year. This paper describes and compares student and faculty attitudes with respect to service activities prior to the proposed intervention. Attention is given to attitudinal differences between male and female students and among students in different age groups.
International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research, 2020
Students find it hard to engage themselves in the community activities due to some factors related to their academics, personal and social life in college. Measuring the student outcomes from the service learning experiences could help the institution in assessing the relevance of curriculum with some student activities. This study aims to describe the learning experiences of engineering students from their community involvement based on the selected student outcomes in terms of cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of learning. Descriptive type of research was utilized in the study with 102 engineering students served as participants. Result showed that two (2) in every five (5) engineering students have average to high level of interest to participate in the community extension related activities. But they are willing to join primarily if they have free time together with their friends and classmates and if there will be additional points for their academic performance. Academic aspect is a major reason for students why most of them could not be able to join the community extension activities. Male engineering students have significantly higher learning experiences as defined in their student outcomes in developing their ability to function on multidisciplinary teams, ability to communicate effectively and having broad education to offer solutions for challenging issues of the society. Result also showed that those students who are not excited to participate and not confident to join with the group are most likely those with lower level of interest to join the community extension activities.
What Do Students Think About Service-learning in Required Engineering Courses?
2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Service-learning (S-L) has been integrated into an average of 30 engineering courses every year since 2004 in five undergraduate departments. Forty-three faculty members have tried S-L, over half the engineering faculty. In 2010-2011, 1267 students (out of an enrollment of 1600) engaged in S-L projects in 33 courses contributing an estimated 49,500 hours to the community. This approach to trying to develop better engineers and more engaged citizens was motivated by the growing body of research showing widespread benefits of S-L, the meeting of academic objectives through addressing real community needs in credit-bearing courses. But what do the students who are part of this program think about S-L? In this study surveys of student views were collected and analyzed. In general, the students are significantly positive in response to S-L. For example, two-thirds agree in principle with combining service and academic coursework. On average they agree that learning and interest in subject matter as well as professional skills are all improved with S-L. Two-thirds agree that S-L has helped keep them in engineering. Forty percent of those who knew about the S-L program said it was one of the factors for their coming to the engineering school. Significant large differences were found comparing female and male responses, with females more positive toward S-L. Over 75% of students indicate that service should be an expected part of the engineering profession. The implication is that service should be an expected and integrated part of the engineering curriculum.
Engineering Faculty Attitudes Towards Service-learning
2020
As the Engineering Service-Learning Coordinator, Linda Barrington, B.S.M.E., M.B.A., serves as a faculty resource to identify community needs, facilitate community partnerships, and provide logistical support in service-learning projects imbedded into required engineering courses. Last academic year, she supported 22 faculty in 35 courses to provide more than 1,600 S-L experiences for engineering students with 25 community partners.
Service Learning In Engineering Science Courses: Does It Work?
2009
In the fall of 2004 a college with five undergraduate academic programs decided to integrate service-learning (S-L) projects into required engineering courses throughout the curriculum so that students would be exposed to S-L in at least one course in each of eight semesters. The ultimate goal is to graduate better engineers and better citizens. Four of the degree programs have achieved on average one course each semester, with an actual coverage of 103 out of 128 semester courses, or 80% coverage over the four years. Of the 32 required courses in the academic year that had an average of 753 students each semester doing S-L projects related to the subject matter of the course, 19 of the courses (60%) were considered engineering science, that is, not explicitly design or first-year introduction courses. Eighteen different professors taught these engineering science courses with S-L projects, accounting for from 5 to 20% of the grades of the students. In addition, there were nine othe...
2017
Many barriers exist for American Indian students pursuing STEM degree programs. However, federally recognized Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) are uniquely suited to overcome these barriers because of their shared mission to provide 21st Century educational opportunities for American Indian students. Qualitative and quantitative findings suggest that appropriately designed service learning experiences offer an effective approach to overcome these barriers in an effort to recruit and retain a diverse population into STEM fields, and engaging this underrepresented group may hold the key to the United States continued economic prosperity.