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Open-ended design projects for engineering students can lead to the integration of technical skills between courses, expose gaps in knowledge, and encourage students to engage with a relevant design context. The second and third "middle year" curricula of typical undergraduate electrical and computer engineering (ECE) programs consist of technical classes that teach students the fundamentals of their field. Project-based learning that engages students in more authentic applications of knowledge is often absent from these courses. These years have notable attrition, but relevant design projects can motivate engineering students by reminding them what they enjoy about the field and showing them that their work can benefit society [1], [2]. In this paper, we describe development of a project in a fourth-semester ECE laboratory design course that engages students in designing an autonomous tractor. This project was created to use skills across first- and second-year courses to make a challenging but achievable capstone project aligned with the university's ECE curriculum revision that expands the range of disciplinary experiences for students. The foundational knowledge students will be required to integrate into their design are a simple controls system, microcontroller programming, Bluetooth communication, and circuit design. Following Prince and Felder's findings that it is more likely that students can connect their learning to existing cognitive models when engineering work is related to a local context, we chose to situate technological design in autonomous farming because the university is in a rural area [2]. The effectiveness of this project in terms of encouraging student engagement, the alignment of skills to course goals, and appropriateness to the relevant population were qualitatively assessed by pilot studies of usability and faculty assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Complete Evidence-Based Practice paper describes the use of reflection in a first-year engineering design course. Reflection is an essential part of learning, but it is not widely used in engineering curricula. However, using reflective learning techniques in the classroom can help students develop critical thinking skills [1] [2], which are highly valued in the modern workplace [3]. Critical thinking consists of an objective analysis and reconstruction of available information, often from multiple sources, before deciding what to accept as valid. While we expect that the ability to think critically develops with practice and time, it would be useful to discern how well our students could learn to reflect and think critically during their first year of college, even with minimal guidance in reflection. Two theoretical models are useful when evaluating student performance on reflective learning tasks. The Perry Model of intellectual development [4], as interpreted by Pavelich and Moore [5] suggests that students with extensive practice in open-ended problem solving involving reflection will be more successful than their peers. Similarly, the King and Kitchener Reflective Judgment Stages model [6] contains a scale which is useful for measuring increased complexity of reflective thinking over time, another indicator of future success. Both models emphasize that knowledge is largely contextual, meaning that it is sometimes true, and sometimes not true, depending on the applicable context. Thus, context is another important factor to consider when evaluating students' reflective learning performance or ability. In the present study, we assess the extent to which students use reflective judgment when writing about their experiences in a semester long introductory design course. Based on our theoretical models, we hypothesized that students whose reflections acknowledge the role of context in learning will additionally show a higher intellectual level of thinking over the course of the semester, as well as earn a higher grade on successive assignments. Therefore, we wanted to determine whether students' ability to reflect on their experiences in the course improved over time. Sixty-five first year engineering students completed a series of five graded short essays. Four essays incorporated reflection about a specific three-week period in the course, while the fifth essay prompted reflection about the entire course content. In each case, students answered three questions whereby they identified the most important item of knowledge that they learned, why it was important, and where else they could use this knowledge, outside of the course. Assignment prompts also stipulated that reflection should extend beyond the specific needs of the course. We operationalized the ability to exercise reflective judgment by using the Perry Model and King and Kitchener's Reflective Judgment Stages in parallel with an internally-developed grading rubric. Rubric criteria included the extent of relevant detail in describing items of knowledge and their context, and the application of specific knowledge to aspects of lifelong learning. By comparing the grades for each assignment over time, in conjunction with corresponding Perry Model and King and Kitchener stages, we expect to find a mixture of continual, sporadic or lack of progress. These results will help further develop this course in the future and can provide new insights as to how students view the importance of reflection for their learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ways in which students encounter school can markedly shape how they form professional identities and continue into the engineering workforce. This is particularly true for those students who experience a variety of disabilities, as they must simultaneously manage and navigate disability-related cultural, academic, physical, and bureaucratic university structures and form professional identities. In this paper, we describe the evolution of an ongoing NSF-sponsored project exploring professional identity formation in undergraduate civil engineering students with disabilities as they experience their undergraduate careers and move into the workforce. To provide context for this ongoing work, we summarize the background, sensitizing concepts, and updated research procedures underpinning this study. We then focus our discussion on our emergent findings to-date, which include the identification of a sub-process referred to as Establishing Definitions of Self. Overall, these findings begin to highlight the nuance and fluidity of disability identity as students form professional identities as civil engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work in progress studies the impact on students and faculty and their perceived value of integrating project-based labs with lectures on student learning in a sophomore-level electrical and computer engineering course. Historically, engineering courses have been structured with a division between the theoretical lecture and the applied lab, preventing students from making clear connections between the two. Today's students do not find this legacy approach effective [1], [2]. In order to enhance student learning and concept retention in a large electrical and computer engineering program, a faculty team is redesigning the sophomore year experience using a project-based learning approach. This study describes the work of one instructor teaching a freshman-level course as part of the experience of exploring the full integration of labs and lectures that incorporate industry-level, real-world problems. The questions we seek to address are: ● How does integration of project-based lab and lecture contribute to students' perceptions of value, motivation and success? ● How does integration of project-based lab and lecture contribute to instructors' perceptions of value and motivation to modernize instruction? In this paper we discuss the historical approach to the design of the course, which we discovered was from the early 1980s, the time of the last major curriculum revision. In addition, using the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation together with course data, we present baseline data from current students and instructors in regards to overall performance. Finally, using the MUSIC Model and course data from instructors and students in the revised course, we report some insight on perceived value and performance in order to make comparisons between the old and revised curriculum. Additional data sources were pulled from student feedback as well as analytic memos from the instructor. For the purpose of this paper, the combination and cross-analysis of this data resulted in a set of lessons learned and recommendations for faculty looking to adjust the design of their course to be more integrative. For the broader purpose of this grant project, this data will be used to influence the trajectory of the course and refine methods for more thorough integration of the labs. While our original expectation was that the integration of project-based labs would increase student success, as measured by course grade distribution as well as self-reported perceptions through the use of the MUSIC survey, we actually found little to no change in these measures. In addition, we anticipated the results from the research would reveal that having students participate in industry-level, real-world scenarios would contribute to increased authenticity students assign to the course content, also to which we found little to no change. Even though our original presumptions were unfounded in these two specific quantitative measurements, there are several other factors that have arisen that allow us to nevertheless make meaningful recommendations to other electrical and computer engineering instructors, as well as department administration, as we continue to modernize the student experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some have hailed the emergence of maker spaces as an opportunity to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, engaging participants in open, creative, and supportive spaces for learning and applying practical STEM knowledge. Others have questioned the potential of these spaces, as many maker and hacker spaces seem to be enacting norms that are more conducive to participation of white, male, middle-class, able-bodied hobbyists. So while there are maker spaces noted for their engagement of homeless makers, women, people of color, veterans, LGBTQ+ folks and people with disabilities, there are many more maker spaces that intentionally or unintentionally exclude these populations. This project considers how diverse maker spaces are conceived, constructed and operated to actively involve groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM, and collectively identify practices that can inform the design and operation of campus and community maker or hacker spaces that presently struggle to achieve diversity. In 2018, we report an update on the project's data collection and the June 2018 unconference where we will bring all our partners together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent calls throughout the engineering education community have focused on increasing diversity and broadening participation in STEM, these conversations typically center on race and gender with little to no work addressing disability. But research in higher education broadly suggests that cognitive, physical, and learning disabilities can markedly impact the ways in which students perceive and experience school, develop professional identities, and move into the engineering workforce. To address this gap, we build on emerging conversations that explore the ways in which students experience disability within the context of engineering education. In particular, we conducted an initial grounded theory analysis of interviews examining professional identity formation in undergraduate civil engineering students who experience disabilities. From our analysis, we observed three themes that begin to highlight ways in which the experience of students with disabilities may contribute to their development as emerging civil engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Funded by a recently awarded NSF RED grant, we aim to transform the curriculum and culture of a large electrical and computer engineering department with a model that foregrounds design and innovation to offer students a variety of pathways to a degree. We are developing a combination of approaches to create a program with disciplinary depth and a range of learning experiences, including a participatory design approach that involves not only curriculum redesign, but also engagement of faculty and students in industry and K-12 outreach. Through these combined approaches, we hope to increase the diversity of students entering the program, the variety of pathways through the program, and the kinds of careers graduates pursue. We begin with the goal of effectively employing the Threshold Concepts Framework to identify transformative targets for curricular revisions. Our first step in approaching the RED grant from the perspective of curriculum develop includes a literature review that both systematically canvases existing resources and summarizes and synthesizes themes that enable us to answer the following questions: 1. What research findings have been reported about threshold concepts across disciplines, in the field of engineering, and in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science? 2. What are the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the threshold concepts framework, both in theory and practice? 3. Which methods are most effective for identifying threshold concepts? 4. How have threshold concepts been used to enact change? In exploring these questions, we investigate the history and evolution of the threshold concepts framework with attention to sociotechnical patterns such as whether and how "professional" and "technical" concepts are delineated. In terms of methodology, we consider whether data collection prompts guide people away from the center of their discipline, and whether there is less of a dichotomy between social and technical than often portrayed in engineering education narratives. Finally, we are employing a participatory design process in which we are not only asking department stakeholders to identify sites of threshold concepts, but also to enroll them in a grassroots, transformative effort. To that end, we explore ways that the process of understanding threshold concepts serves as an opportunity for dialog that can kick-start the culture shift of the department. This paper will be framed as a literature review beginning with the seminal three volume collection on threshold concepts (edited by subsets of the team Ray Land, Jan Meyer, Jan Smith, Caroline Baillie, and Michael Flanagan), a search of ASEE and Frontiers in Education proceedings, then concluding with the Education Research Complete database for other relevant articles between 2003 and 2016. In this review, we will (1) summarize the theory of threshold concepts, (2) identify what threshold concepts have been proposed in both Electrical and Computer Engineering, (3) explain how the concepts have been used in curriculum development to enact change, and (4) discuss how the existing literature will inform our participatory design process in revolutionizing the ECE department. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]