College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences (CLAHS)
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Browsing College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences (CLAHS) by Department "Engineering Education"
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- Assessing systems thinking: A tool to measure complex reasoning through ill-structured problemsGrohs, Jacob R.; Kirk, Gary R.; Soledad, Michelle M.; Knight, David B. (2018-06)An increasingly important aim of higher education is to develop graduates capable of addressing complex, interdependent problems. Systems thinking is a critical interdisciplinary skill that describes the cognitive flexibility needed to collaboratively work on problems facing society. Although institutions of higher education are asked to develop systems thinkers and many programs strive towards such an aim, mechanisms to assess this competency are lacking. This paper (1) presents a framework for operationalizing systems thinking competency, and (2) shares a novel scenario-based assessment tool based on the framework. The paper describes the iterative development of the community-level problem scenario and associated scoring rubric based on a set of 93 student responses. Appendices contain the full tool consisting of the problem scenario, scoring rubric, and other guiding documents to enable others to adopt the tool for research purposes or to assess student outcomes from university programs.
- Definitions of Interdisciplinary Research: Toward Graduate-Level Interdisciplinary Learning OutcomesBorrego, Maura Jenkins; Newswander, L. K. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010)Combining the interdisciplinary studies (primarily humanities) literature with the content analysis of 129 successful National Science Foundation proposals written predominantly by science and engineering faculty members, the authors identify five categories of learning outcomes for interdisciplinary graduate education: disciplinary grounding, integration, teamwork, communication, and critical awareness. They identify important parallels between humanities-based descriptions of interdisciplinary integration and implicit graduate learning outcomes hinted at by engineering and science faculty who more frequently work in teams. Applying the lens of interdisciplinary studies (humanities) to science and engineering provides important depth and focus to engineering and science interdisciplinary learning outcomes, particularly in detailing integration processes.
- Illuminating inequality in access: Variation in enrollment in undergraduate engineering programs across Virginia's high schoolsKnight, David B.; Grohs, Jacob R.; Bradburn, Isabel S.; Kinoshita, Timothy J.; Vaziri, Stacey; Matusovich, Holly M.; Carrico, Cheryl (2020-10-06)Background Determining the root causes of persistent underrepresentation of different subpopulations in engineering remains a continued challenge. Because place-based variation of resource distribution is not random and because school and community contexts influence high school outcomes, considering variation across those contexts should be paramount in broadening participation research. Purpose/Hypothesis This study takes a macroscopic systems view of engineering enrollments to understand variation across one state's public high school rates of engineering matriculation. Design/Method This study uses a dataset from the Virginia Longitudinal Data System that includes all students who completed high school from a Virginia public school from 2007 to 2014 (N= 685,429). We explore geographic variation in four-year undergraduate engineering enrollment as a function of gender, race/ethnicity, and economically disadvantaged status. Additionally, we investigate the relationship between characteristics of the high school and community contexts and undergraduate engineering enrollment across Virginia's high schools using regression analysis. Results Our findings illuminate inequality in enrollment in engineering programs at four-year institutions across high schools by gender, race, and socioeconomic status (and the intersections among those demographics). Different high schools have different engineering enrollment rates among students who attend four-year postsecondary institutions. We show strong associations between high schools' engineering enrollment rates and four-year institution enrollment rates as well as moderate associations for high schools' community socioeconomic status. Conclusions Strong systemic forces need to be overcome to broaden participation in engineering. We demonstrate the insights that state longitudinal data systems can illuminate in engineering education research.
- Middle School Children's Thinking in Technology Education: A Review of LiteratureSherman, Thomas M.; Sanders, Mark E.; Kwon, Hyuksoo; Pembridge, James J. (Council on Technology Teacher Education and the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association, 2009)