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New Directions in Engineering Excellence - Practical guides to Build Career Awareness, Recruit, Retain, and Advance Women in Engineering --booklets, videos, and presentation slides providing teachers, faculty, and outreach volunteers with research-based guidance on engaging, retaining, and academically advancing girls and women in engineering degree programs.
Applying Research to Achieve Improved Practice in Gender Equity and Engineering Education - audio highlights and PDF documents
CASEE's Research to Practice Series in Engineering Education
EEES Proposal Writing and Project Management Guide
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New Directions in Engineering Excellence -- Practical Guides to Recruit, Retain, and Advance Women in Engineering
This series of videos, booklets, presentation slides, is aimed at helping (middle school through collegiate) educators and outreach volunteers increase awareness of engineering as a field of study and as a career, attract more female students – including women of color and women with physical disabilities – into engineering study, retain those students once they make the choice to pursue engineering, and assist them as they advance through academic levels toward achievement of baccalaureate and graduate degrees. See the an overview as well as download the various components at http://www.caseeconduit.org/ndeeindex.html
Applying Research to Achieve Improved Practices in Gender Equity and Engineering Education
The EEES project and SWE/AWE the EEES project have developed two complementary product lines. CHANGE and ARP, to transition the emerging and established gender equity research base into the hands of teachers, faculty, and administrators.
Change and Awareness Necessary for Global Engineering
Each of these two page briefs provide an overview of a key finding from the gender equity research literature and then summarize practical steps that faculty can take to enhance the success of female undergraduates by exploiting the implications of the research. Topics covered include
1. Stereotype Threat: Causes, Effects, and Remedies Members of groups who are stereotyped to perform poorly in certain subjects (e.g. women in math and science) may experience Stereotype Threat as a result of those negative expectations and the corresponding anxiety arising from internal pressure to disprove the stereotype. This document describes the wealth of research on stereotype threat as well as ways to counteract it in testing situations. Although a pervasive phenomenon, stereotype threat can be reduced with simple interventions.
2. Changing Problem Solving in Engineering Courses The global and social nature of engineering requires graduates have the ability to incorporate contextual information into their solutions to given problems. However, traditionally engineering education has presented problems in terms of abstract objects subjected to forces rather than presenting the situation in which the objects respond to those forces. This document illustrates the research on how realistic problem-solving in engineering courses can improve problem-solving in the real world and offers advice on curricular change to promote those abilities.
3. The Use of Questions in the Classroom Appropriate questions asked of or by students in a classroom can improve understanding of the material at hand as well as develop the critical thinking skills crucial to lifelong learning. When teachers unconsciously call more on male students than on female students or give males more time to answer a question than females before giving them the answer, female students are put at a disadvantage. This document provides insight into appropriate types of questions, ways to ask questions, and methods of encouraging all students to find answers to their questions.
4. Motivational Factors for Women in Engineering: Self-Efficacy and Academic Self-Confidence While self-efficacy involves one’s belief in skills and abilities in a specific domain, academic self-confidence extends to a wider range of academic experiences. Both factors affect students’ motivation to study and excel in engineering, and both can be affected by subtle cues from teachers or peers about their ability. This document reviews the research on self-confidence and self-efficacy, how they relate, and how they affect academic performance.
5. Factors Supporting the Retention/Persistence of Female Undergraduates The overall retention rate of female undergraduates in engineering has been relatively flat or rising slowly for the past decade despite concerted, dedicated efforts at many institutions. One conclusion that can be drawn is that there are entrenched barriers, both institutional and personal, to the retention/persistence of female undergraduates in engineering to graduation. This document identifies five factors which may ameliorate certain institutional barriers for female undergraduates in engineering based on a review of programs that have consistently conferred at least 30%, on average, of their baccalaureate degrees to females since AY 2001. The identification of these supportive factors is the first step in changing institutional characteristics that are not supportive of female undergraduate engineering students.
6. Cooperative Learning Active learning is a category of pedagogies established as being extremely effective in engaging and maintaining student interest, thereby leading to better student performance and retention of subject matter. The responsibility for learning is focused on the learner. Many active learning strategies involve some form of group work. Group work covers all kinds of multiple-person active instructional activities along formal – informal and structured – unstructured spectra, thereby parsing out as “cooperative” and “collaborative” learning activities. In this issue of CHANGE, we provide a review of cooperative learning, a pedagogy that has been proven to be a good fit with the preferred learning and working styles of millenials in general and students from underrepresented populations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), including females, in particular.
CASEE-SWE/AWE Applying Research to Practice Series
Developed in collaboration with the Assessing Women and Men in Engineering (AWE) project of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), this series of document suites written by experts in their fields highlight the research base on gender equity in engineering education. Each document suite consists of (1) an approximately 300 word Abstract that includes brief descriptions of the literature overview and the information sheet, (2) a 900 to 1300 word Information Sheet designed to be a quick reference guide for educators and outreach administrators that emphasizes practical real-world application of research discussed in depth in the Literature Overview, and (3) a 3500 to 4500 word Literature Overview that summarizes and synthesizes research on a topic or construct, describes how the topic impacts gender in engineering and science, and provides examples or recommendations on how to address issues or implement interventions. Topics covered include the following:
1. Girls' Experience in the Classroom: Is it different? Does it matter? By: K. R. O. Bachman, Michelle R. Hebl, Larry Ross Martinez, & Ashley D. Rittmayer Rice University Over the last half century, the classroom experience is one that is becoming less and less divergent for male and female students. Today, the mere presence of female students in high school and college STEM classes– sometimes equal to and often outnumbering male students – is perhaps the most impressive sign of the changing times.
2. Mentoring: Making it work By: Catherine T. Amelink, Ph.D., Virginia Tech Mentoring provides women in STEM fields an opportunity to observe and interact with successful colleagues and more experienced professionals. By mitigating feelings of isolation in a male dominated field, mentoring relationships encourage positive socialization among women to STEM disciplines.
3. Motivational Factors in STEM: Interest and Academic Self-Concept: Identifying what keeps students motivated to persist in STEM. By: Margaret E. Beier, Ph.D., Rice University nterest and self-concept influence the choice of pursuing study in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and achievement in STEM. Pervasive gender differences, favoring men, are found in STEM-related interests and self-concept.
4. Stereotype Threat: Do stereotypes hold us back? By: Sarah L. Singletary, Enrica N. Ruggs, Michelle R. Hebl, Rice University and Paul G. Davies, PhD, University of British Columbia, Okanagan This ARP Information Sheet and Literature Review define and describe stereotype threat, a situational predicament that affects individuals when they are at risk of confirming and being personally reduced to a negative group stereotype, which may serve to disrupt and undermine performance and aspirations.
5. Self-Efficacy: Does she think she can? And how important is that? By: Ashley D. Rittmayer, M.A., Rice University Self-efficacy is defined as judgments regarding one’s ability to organize and execute the courses of action necessary to attain a specific goal. Self-efficacy is a significant predictor of both the level of motivation for a task and ultimately, task performance.
In Development:
Academic Self-Confidence
Gender Differences in Math Performance
Gender Differences in Science Performance
Mentoring and Women in Engineering
Minority Retention
Motivational Factors: Self-efficacy
Self-Authorship
Talent Crisis in S & E
The Application of Title IX to Science and Engineering
Thanks to the ARP reviewers Reviewer LIst
CASEE Research to Practice in Engineering Education Series -- Audio Highlights and PDF documents
The research into practice series, compiled by CASEE staff, summarizes and distills current literature in educational psychology, sociology, and behavioral science into single page briefs targeted for use by engineering faculty (Teachers Integrating Prior Scholarship, TIPS and Data-driven Engineering Education Practices, DEEP) and administrators (Responding to Administrative Priorities, RAP). Audio and text summaries are provided here; the full reports are available CASEEconduit Store at http://stores.lulu.com/caseeconduit or by clicking on the title.
Teachers Integrating Prior Scholarship (TIPS)
These two to four page information resources distill information from the social and behavioral science literature in order to provide practical guidance on instruction to engineering faculty.
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1. Balancing Teams through Accountability: If all members of a group can benefit from collective action, the only deterrent from benefiting without contribution is the avoidance of punishment. This has implications in encouraging group members in lab groups and other cooperative activities to demand accountability and withhold rewards based on participation.
2. Believing Achieving Succeeding: In the case of stereotypical or preconceived thoughts of below average abilities, a brief intervention reaffirming a student’s self-worth has shown long-term improvements in academic performance
3. Engineering Jigsaw Puzzle: Competitive classroom atmospheres can cause students to fear public humiliation and resist class participation. Encouraging a cooperative teaching method called the jigsaw classroom technique can improve student academic performance and social aptitude.
4. More you Know: Over time, learning about a topic causes the brain to form a mental schema, or scaffolding, after which one can more effectively learn and assimilate information about parallel topics.
5. Testing as a Memory Booster: Testing and allowing students to have more time to complete the test has been shown to increase longer term retention of material, even material not on the exam, than additional time spent studying.
6. Cramming: While short term memory is increased by repeatedly learning a topic over a short period of time, long term retention does not benefit from repetition once a topic has been mastered.
7. More Aspirations Than Time: Psychological studies have shown people tend to over-commit to activities because they perceive that they have more time in the future than in the present.
8. Set Their own Goals: Studies have found that students who are more involved in setting their educational goals are more likely to reach them. External motivations and rewards can have a negative effect on intrinsic motivation.
9. Training Intuition: Good intuition is an important part of education, but it is important that rapid and frequent feedback is given in order to “train” student intuition.
10. Diversity in Teams: While there is increasing recognition of that diversity in team’s benefits creativity in problem solving, it is important to recognize potential social divisions, divisiveness, and stereotyping that can create negative group outcomes.
11. Quieting the Ego: Self-assessment is frequently inconsistent of with actual performance and skill, translating to the over-estimation of knowledge retention and judgment quality. This can be addressed through several educational practices
12. Opinion Formation: A Cautionary Tale: Research has shown that hearing an opinion multiple times from a single person can make the listener believe the opinion is the majority viewpoint. This underscores needs for educating students to process scientific information with a certain level of skepticism.
13. The divergence of science education, Japan & US: As a result of curriculum variation and instructional methods, Americans begin to fall behind Japanese students in the time period between 4th and 8th grade in science proficiency. The instructional methods used in Japanese school systems are an example system for engineering education at higher levels.
14. Visualization and Integration: Assessment methods most commonly evaluate the recall of scientific information rather than knowledge integration, leaving students with a disconnect between individual ideas. Interactive and visualization tools can aid in the formation of integrated concepts and learning in STEM education.
15. The Fear of Failure: In situations where a student perceives poor performance indicates low intellectual capability, some may put forth less of an effort in order to avoid damaging their own feelings of self-worth. This has been shown to be the case in woman studying mathematics, where high self-worth protective students performed poorer that low self-worth protective students on mathematics tasks.
Scroll and click text headlines within the media player for audio
16. Note Taking: Studies have found the note-taking and note-reviewing process to benefit students, in cases more so than being provided instructor notes. The importance of this finding underscores the importance to encourage note-taking, even with increasing use of technology in the classroom.
17. Question Friendly Environment: A student’s motivation and propensity for asking questions in class can be related to their learning style, as well as the environment of the classroom.
18. Tools for the Online Learning: Effective teaching from online and flexible delivery methods depends on intrinsic characteristics of the student. Research has shown the two most critical factors associated with success in online learning as a student’s self-management of learning and comfort with online collaboration
19. Rereading: While rereading material is commonplace amongst students in preparing for an exam, research shows that distributed rereading increases exam performance beyond massed rereading whenever there is a delay between studying and testing.
20. Textbooks and Misconceptions: The importance of accurate prior knowledge in the reading and comprehension of textbooks is important both for real-time formation of scientific inferences as well as long term retention.
21. Math and Gender: Gender differences in math test scores seem to be correlated with a country’s level of gender equality: the more gender-equal a country’s culture, the smaller the gap, if one exists, between the standardized math test scores of girls and boys. In several countries with high levels of gender equality, girls outperformed boys on the test.
22. Misperceptions and Confabulations: Misperceptions and confabulations, two sources of misconceptions, are discussed. Awareness of how misconceptions are developed is important to their remediation.
23. Optimizing the Syllabus: Suggestions Informed by Research: The syllabus is an important course management tool. It also provides documentation for several academic activities and functions. Because of these considerations, it is critical that a syllabus be as complete and understandable as possible; however, studies have found that syllabi may be lacking essential information or otherwise not be optimal. Research whose findings could lead to the development of more effective syllabi is reviewed.
24. The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature: Directed attention is a cognitive process subject to fatigue. Engaging its complimentary type of selective attention, involuntary attention, provides opportunities for restoration through distraction and disengagement. A central tenet of Attention Restorative Theory is that exposure to nature is a reliable means of engaging involuntary attention, an assertion supported by the results of the reviewed research.
25. Content-Focused Learning Doesn’t Necessarily Result in Acquisition of Scientific Reasoning Skills: A study of first-year students’ knowledge of basic physics concepts and scientific reasoning abilities conducted at several mid-level universities in China and the United States provides evidence that scientific reasoning skills need to be explicitly, not implicitly, taught. Their acquisition is not a natural consequence of content-focused learning. The ability to apply scientific reasoning skills correctly is critical to the solution of the open-ended, poorly defined problems often encountered in the practice of engineering.
26. Using Awareness of Goal Orientation to Interpret and Inform Negotiations: Negotiations between students and instructors regarding academic requirements may become a positive experience if the parties involved consider the possible goal orientations motivating the exchange and respond accordingly.
27. Aligning Learning Goals and Supporting Evidence: An example of learning goal/evidence alignment from the Chemistry in Context curriculum is provided. Alignment provides a solid base for evaluating goal attainment. This report is a companion to Donohue (2009), which discusses learning goal/evidence alignment from an administrative point of view.
28. Strategy Writing: Strategy writing is a "promising practice" aiding in the transformation of students from novices to experts through fostering understanding and application of relevant concepts and principles. Reinforcement of student learning comes from instructor modeling of expected behavior through the consistent use of strategies.
Data-driven Engineering Education Practices (DEEP)
These two to four page information resources distill information from the emerging literature in engineering education research in order to provide practical and validated guidance on instruction to engineering faculty.
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1. Advantages of Direct Mastery Learning Activities: Direct mastery learning experiences conducted in a non-competitive environment lead to enhanced levels of psychosocial factors believed to have an impact on the recruitment and retention of females in engineering.
2. The Impact of Faculty Attitudes and Activities on Student Recruitment and Retention: Faculty’s roles in creating and maintaining a supportive environment for female undergraduates in engineering are discussed.
2A. The Impact of Faculty Attitudes and Activities on Academic Climate and Culture: Academic climate and culture, at all levels from department to institution, are important factors in student recruitment and retention to graduation especially with respect to students from underrepresented populations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Faculty play crucial roles in developing and maintaining climate and culture; the impact of faculty attitudes and activities, especially with respect to faculty-student (non)interactions, should not be underestimated.
3. Pair Programming: A Model for Cooperative Learning: A basic overview of pair programming, a cooperative learning strategy, is presented. This strategy has been successfully employed in various educational environments, and provides a good model for instructors who would like to incorporate cooperative learning into their classes but who may have reservations about teamwork or be unfamiliar with the concept.
4. Benefits of Matching Instructional Delivery Pace to Prior Levels of Knowledge: Subject matter retention in an introductory circuits analysis course was maximized when students using a computer-based instructional module were able to transition from worked examples to independent problem solving at a rate compatible with their prior knowledge level of the covered topics.
5. Factors Affecting Student Satisfaction with Teamwork Factors affecting students’ satisfaction with teamwork experiences are discussed. Teams are more likely to be effective and productive, and students more satisfied with the experience, when factors such as composition, training, and instructor oversight and guidance are considered.
6. Deductive and Inductive Learning Strategies: Room for Both in the Engineering Curriculum Examples of deductive and inductive learning strategies are reviewed as a preface to a discussion of the synergy instructors can create by using a mix of strategies in their instructional plans.
7. Evaluating Team Performance: Two Studies Two studies on the topic of evaluating the effectiveness and performance of post-secondary student teams are reviewed. This topic is important to the process of professional development, since expectations are that students will learn teamwork skills during their undergraduate career.
8. Developing a Predictive Model of Academic Success Using Emotional Intelligence and Self-Efficacy: The results of a survey eliciting data on undergraduates’ use of coping strategies and level of emotional intelligence indicate that emotional intelligence is a predictor of self-efficacy and self-efficacy is a predictor of academic success for computing students and plausibly, by extension, for non-traditional students in STEM.
9. Assessing Misconceptions Affecting Student Achievement: The development of concepts – mental constructs, models, or schema which help us organize knowledge – is critical to the development of higher order cognitive skills necessary for success in engineering studies. A flawed development process may lead to misconceptions which can negatively affect student progress. Two methods of assessing correctness of students’ conceptual knowledge of STEM topics are discussed.
10. Adaptive Expertise: Developing an Important Metaskill: The ability to be a “lifelong learner” is crucial to maintaining the relevancy of a practicing engineer’s knowledge base, especially given the current and projected rate of technological change. Important to the success of this process is the development of adaptive expertise, a metaskill.
11. Points of Consideration in the Teaching and Learning of General Engineering Skills: Six considerations informing the design and delivery of instructional activities are presented. The considerations are derived from a discussion of concepts from studies of thinking and learning processes.
12. Identifying Key Engineering Design Process Competencies Through Comparison Analysis: Key engineering design competencies identified through a comparison of the performances of practicing engineers and undergraduate students on a design project include problem scoping, information gathering, and project realization. These skills tend to improve with repetition and experience.
Responding to Administrative Priorities (RAP)
These two to four page information resources distill information from the social and behavioral science literature as well as the emerging engineering education research literature in order to provide practical guidance on curricular and instructional matters suited to the information needs of deans and department chairs.
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1. Broader Assessment of Ability: In the modern era, IQ and assessment tests have served to identify talented students coming from all walks of life; however, an expansion of this evaluation to include common sense, creativity, and social aptitude serves as a better indicator of long term educational and career success.
2. Shrinking Classes: Education research has shown a relative improvement in the comprehension and retention of material in classes 50-75% smaller than a comparison class.
3. The Problem with being Outnumbered: Situational cues can influence a student’s physiological awareness while making them vulnerable to social identity threat, explicitly a feeling of not belonging. One study demonstrates this process in the case of women in STEM education, where a feeling of being outnumbered can affect expectations and performance.
4. Video Games and Spatial Cognition: There exists a gender disparity in spatial attention and cognition, an important aspect of engineering and mathematical sciences. Research shows that action video games increase spatial attention and mental rotation, with women benefiting more than men and closing this gap.
5. The Impact of the Interaction on Economic Self=Interest and "Moral Sentiments" on Actor Behavior: The assumption that the effects of (financial) incentives and one's social conscious and behaviors (other-regarding motives, or "moral sentiments") have separate additive impacts on actor behavior in a contractual situation fails in the majority of cases reviewed in the featured study. The interaction between incentives and motives often leads to an increase in economic self-interest at the expense of the actor's "moral sentiments."
6. The Impact on Others of the Pre-Decision Learning Process: The Effect of Indirect Social Influence Learning activities undertaken in preparation for making a decision are invariably affected by the amount and type of knowledge and experiences to which we are exposed through our social relationships.
7. Promoting Diversity in Engineering through the Development of "Safe Spaces:" In required multicultural education classes, preservice K-12 teachers are asked to consider and confront issues and threats to student engagement in the classroom among all vectors of marginalization, not just race and culture, thereby providing an even more “safe space” for learning. The establishment of similar full-scale “safe spaces” in postsecondary education environments is crucial for the recruitment and retention of an engineering student body – and, eventually a profession – that is truly diverse in talent, interests, background, and orientation.
8. An Organizational Model Supporting Retention through Fostering Loyalty: Positioning the undergraduate engineering experience as belonging to an exclusive club provides the opportunity to build loyalty to an institution and the profession while taking advantage of an existing attitude that engineering students naturally belong to a “meritocracy of difficulty.”
9. Developing Engineering Leaders: The Role of Emotional Intelligence in the Development of Soft Skills: It’s well-established that development of technical knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) is only part of the curriculum for the education of the “well-rounded” engineer; the development of “soft skills” is also essential. Research indicates that a person’s level of emotional intelligence is the most effective predictor of his/her success as a leader, suggesting that emotional maturity enables competence in soft skills.
10. The Role of Cultural Capital in Decisions to Enroll and Persist in STEM Studies: Female students who would be expected to persist in engineering studies given their academic and social backgrounds still “leak” from the pipeline during their undergraduate careers. This result suggests that other factors, such as institutional climate, may be as predictive of persistence decisions as personal characteristics.
11. Removing Barriers to Acceptance of Educational Innovations by Fostering Positive Relationships Between Researchers and Practitioners: Some of the barriers to the implementation of educational innovations among university physics faculty can be found in the nature of relationships between physics educational research practitioners and other faculty. Similar relationships likely exist among engineering education researchers and other faculty in schools of engineering. Administrators seeking to transform curricula and instructional practices according to the recommendations of various reports are advised to address the nature of these relationships in order to mitigate factors which could potentially sabotage the process, such as marginalization of participants and their contributions.
12. Implications of Perceiving Intelligence as Either Fixed or Malleable: Holding a belief that intelligence is either fixed or malleable has an impact on behavior and performance; the latter is more likely to lead to behavior patterns supportive of achievement. Articles representative of the research on this topic are reviewed and implications of their results discussed.
13. Promising Practices Supporting Institutional-Level Transformation of Undergraduate STEM Studies: Two reports commissioned for the National Academies’ National Research Council Board of Science Education explore issues related to institutional-level transformation of undergraduate STEM studies through the implementation of promising practices. Their findings and recommendations may be of interest to administrators and faculty involved in educational reform projects.
14. Decision Support for Instructional Design Efforts with respect to the Evaluation of "Promising Practices": A method for rating instructional practices along dimensions pertinent to main constituencies in the university community is discussed. An example using “promising practices” is provided.
15. A Case for the Evidence based Assessment of Learning Outcomes: A case for the purposeful evidence based assessment of learning outcomes on both course and institutional levels is presented. The evidence needs to be aligned to learning goals in order to provide useful evaluation data. Examples of goal/evidence alignment are provided.
EEES Proposal Writing and Project Management Guide
This 71-page prototype guidebook on proposing and managing education-focused projects (especially those submitted to NSF's education directorate) is targeted to engineering faculty with a strong interest in educational innovation and vigorous responses to the NSF Broader Impacts Criterion.