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Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play important instructional roles in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. However, current practices within graduate education do not reflect the importance of this teaching role. This missing support for developing professional identities that include teaching roles within graduate students is a driving factor for this paper. To this effect, we review recent literature related to graduate student development, provide background on ePortfolios, and suggest tips for utilizing ePortfolios as a reflective space for graduate students to track and monitor their own development as teachers and researchers. To that end, this paper presents a brief literature review of the current reflective practices used to develop professional identities of graduate students as teachers, researchers, and learners. The literature search focuses on two key themes - first, the typical professional practice of valuing research over teaching is explored and second, the creation of electronic portfolios is examined to determine their potential applications for teacher identity development in the face of this adversity. An electronic portfolio, or ePortfolio, is a digital archive or collection of artifacts (audio/video clips, text, and graphics are typical examples of the types of media incorporated) that represent its creator. Personal reflection on one's own work and the process of selecting the artifacts for inclusion are key elements in many ePortfolios. Findings from this review show that portfolios have previously been used in educational settings for a wide variety of purposes - among these are assessment, learning development, and professional presentation. Portfolio creation has also been used extensively for assessment purposes within student-teacher training programs, but only modest work has been done within a research-based framework for identity development for graduate students. Within engineering settings, portfolio research and practice has been mainly focused on the undergraduate population, not on graduate students. Therefore, our tricks of the trade focus on the use of ePortfolios specifically within the graduate student population, using it as a reflective space for development within professional roles. We argue that the potential uses of ePortfolios as a method for graduate students to develop integrative professional identities through the use of a narrative process would combine the theories and practices of teacher education programs with students in engineering disciplines; as these students are the future of the STEM professoriate, it is important that they develop as reflective practitioners who are able to use their multiple professional identities (in this case, focusing on being both a researcher and a teacher) together in order to accomplish the performance of professional tasks. Furthermore, the practice of creating an ePortfolio prompts graduate students to reflect on their actual achievements within each professional role, further developing their identification within those roles. Applying ePortfolio practices to graduate students can open a new avenue for future research into graduate professional identity development practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research being done on disciplinary culture of engineering students in different disciplines and how they perceive their majors. Topics include the impact of U.S. engineering education system on engineering culture for recruiting and retention efforts, and top develop more creativity and interdisciplinary fluency in engineers.

The article discusses comparative analysis of PhD programs in engineering education. The purpose of evaluation of engineering education is to increase the attraction and retention of students in engineering programs, as well as developing in engineering students, the required professional skills and competencies that are expected in industry to increase innovation in the globalized economy.

Teaching materials have evolved from mere text to multi- and hyper-media contents, leading to substantial growth in both information density and accessibility. One of the accompanying challenges with this evolution is the growing need to accurately quantify the degree of students' stimulation and engagement in this new environment. Game-aided pedagogy can stimulate students' interest and can complement their individual learning styles. It can also provide them with the appropriate amount of information density and accessibility, utilizing multimedia and hypermedia contents. This paper introduces a gravity model to measure the level of students' engagement in game-aided pedagogy. The output of this model is the students' engagement. Information density, ability of students to absorb knowledge, and knowledge delivery are considered in this model as impact factors. A multi-level web game was designed to enhance students' understanding of certain concepts in transportation engineering (driver behavior in dilemma zone) and is used as a platform for testing our proposed concept. Our objective is to increase the students' engagement and decrease the difficulty of knowledge-delivery. The game can simulate traffic operation scenarios and collect users' gameplay data using refined 3D scenes. Vivid scenes attract students and multi-level design increases the appeal of the game and thus can stimulate students. Gameplay data collected from users can monitor students' responses and gather their understanding of the delivered knowledge. This game has a "client" part and a "server" part. The client part interacts with students' operation and renders scenes, while the server part stores students' gameplay information and responds with different game levels accordingly. The client part was programmed with unity 3D and C# language together with HTML and Javascript. The server part was achieved by ASP.net and MS Access database. The output of this game can be used to assess the students' learning outcomes. The result of this research can be used to quantify the students' engagement gravity model's parameters, which can in turn be used to guide the revision and development of the next generation game-aided pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduate students balance the roles of teacher, researcher, and lifelong learner at a point in their careers when they are transitioning into professional identities. We examine the roles of students in engineering, education, and engineering education through a quantitative survey to better understand their unique experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which offered a game-aided pedagogy to improve students' learning outcomes and engagement in transportation engineering. Topics discussed include the benefits of educational games and simulations, proposed game modules in undergraduate transportation curriculum, and results of continuum of motivation constructs in self-determination theory.

The article provides information on the Rising Engineering Education Faculty Fellowship (REEFF), a collaborative venture by a research university and a teaching-focused university which aimed to support connections between research and practice and promote experiences in the profession for future faculty members. Topics discussed include description of the REEFF program, experiences of the graduate students, and professional identity development of the students.

The objective of this project is to improve undergraduate engineering education through the development of biologically-inspired educational tools, expose middle and high school students to exciting facets of engineering through the lens of biology, and enhance the educational programs at New Jersey Academy of Aquatic Sciences (NJAAS). To achieve this, a junior-level undergraduate course was developed and taught at Drexel University's Mechanical Engineering department. The course was closely coupled with the educational programs at NJAAS. The university and academy collaborated to simultaneously enrich the education of middle school, high school and undergraduate students through development and use of biologically-inspired educational devices. The experience of all students was recorded through surveys, observations and interviews. The partnership was assessed through surveys and interviews with the academy staff and observations and surveys of undergraduate students. The results suggested that the course, coupled with a real world partnership outside the university, improved the experience of undergraduate students by making it more engaging and practical and helped the undergraduate students develop a broader skill set. The results also suggested an increase in the interest of middle and high school students in learning about engineering through the use of biologicallyinspired devices. The partnership also improved the educational programs at the academy through the use of biologically-inspired educational tools and enabled NJAAS to expand their curriculum to teach engineering topics. The collaboration helped increase engagement of undergraduate students in a university course, improved retention of undergraduate students in the field, developed a broader skill set for undergraduate students, and enhanced education for middle and high school students in Philadelphia and Camden school district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Product archaeology refers to the process of reconstructing the lifecycle of a product to understand the decisions that led to its development and has been used as an educational framework for promoting students' consideration of the broader impacts of engineering on people, economics, and the environment. As a result, product archaeology offers students an opportunity to reconstruct and understand the customer requirements, design specifications, and manufacturing processes that led to the development and production of a product. This paper describes: 1) the identification and development of assessment tools for evaluating the impact of product archaeology, 2) the implementation of the product archaeology framework during two recent academic year semesters in undergraduate engineering courses at all levels across six universities, and 3) assessment results with evidence of the effectiveness of the product archaeology framework. This project uses existing survey instruments, including the Engineer of 2020 survey and the engineering design self-efficacy instrument to assess positive student attitudes and perceptions about engineering. Our assessment plan also uses two newly-developed design scenarios. These scenarios require students to respond to open-ended descriptions of real-world engineering problems to assess students' ability to extend and refine knowledge of broader contexts. Emerging pre-test/post-test comparison data reveal that the product archaeology activities lead to more positive student ratings of both their own knowledge of broader contexts and their self-efficacy regarding engineering design. Analysis of the design scenarios (used to assess students' ability to apply contextual knowledge to engineering design situations) includes results from the Spring and Fall 2013 semesters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]