Welcome

Welcome to the wiki page for the CAEE APS-SEED workshop session held at PN-ASEE/WCERTE 2008 at the University of Washington in November, 2008.  Details about the workshop, the associated engineering education research (APS and SEED studies), and notes from the small-group discussions that took place during the workshop are below.  The workshop was titled, "Linking research findings on engineering student learning and engineering teaching:  Implications for engineering education".  Co-presenters Cindy Atman, Debbie Chachra, and Ken Yasuhara acknowledge the contributions of Sheri Sheppard, Deborah Kilgore, Lorraine Fleming, Ron Miller, Karl Smith, Reed Stevens, Ruth Streveler, and other CAEE team members.  For notes from the earlier FIE and POD/NCSPOD versions of this workshop, see this wiki's front page.

About CAEE, APS, and SEED

The Academic Pathways Study (APS) is an extensive research study of engineering students conducted by the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE).  Find out more about CAEE by visiting our web site.  In addition, the following overview paper is a good place to start to find out more about APS:

Sheppard, Sheri, Cynthia J. Atman, Reed Stevens, Lorraine Fleming, Ruth Streveler, Robin S. Adams, Theresa Barker. 2004. Studying the Engineering Experience: Design of a Longitudinal Study. In Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, June 20-23, 2004. (PDF)

For more about the Studies of Engineering Educator Decisions (SEED) and related studies, see the CAEE web page about the Scholarship on Teaching Engineering element of the center.  The "Publications and Resources" page on the CAEE web lists more papers, including some reporting on APS and SEED findings in depth.

About the workshops

Workshop attendees were provided an overview of CAEE and research findings about engineering students (from APS) and educators (from SEED).  In small groups, they then selected an APS finding to focus on and discussed its implications on undergraduate engineering education.  Attendees selected from the following three findings:

A.  Engineering students become increasingly disengaged in both engineering and non-engineering courses over their undergraduate years.

B.  Male engineering students have significantly higher self-confidence than female students in math, science, and open-ended problem solving.

C.  Among first-year engineering students, females tend to situate engineering design problems in a broader context than males do.

Discussion notes

These notes were transcribed directly from the note-taking forms submitted by the discussion groups.

Discussion related to Finding A (increasing academic disengagement)

• selection and implementation of assignments that have added value
• clarifying benefit/value of assignments
• "marketing" of effective choices; promoting professional choices
• credit for attendance and participation in class
• who and when to advise and mentor regarding attendance, etc.
• decisions involving coordination with faculty teaching other courses the students are taking
• decisions that impact how we model engagement

Discussion related to Finding B (gender and confidence)

• How does this affect how you put male and female students into lab groups (design teams)?
• Does feedback need to be different for males vs. females?
• Peer evals in design group could be biased by gender; also, self-assessments
• Does female lack of self-confidence impact on instructors personal assessment of their abilities?
• How do you get the proper student frame of reference for each student's self-assessment?
• Have the females selectged more "female-friendly" majors so only the top ones go into engineering?  (Is the problem earlier in the academic experience)

Discussion related to Finding C (gender and consideration of broad context)

• Will I include context/global student presentations as part of my class?  Or should it take a different form or not at all?  Do I have the energy to pull it off?  Is it worth limited students' time?
• How to choose leaders for class projects?  Maybe consider choosing women if they may think more broadly, in addition to other factors (such as industry experience).
• What reflective activity should students do to think about context?  In class/out of class, group/individual, poster/collect images/drama/debate
• challenges - time it takes, struggle student have to get 'right' answer
• trusting self as teacher enough to actually do it - this is out of my comfort zone

Discussion related to SEED findings

Regarding teaching decisions

• Testing on familiarity with handbook (vs. textbook), exam design
• How much to change an existing course
• Time to allocate to assessment vs. evaluation (formative, summative)
• Forms of reflective practice
• Responding to unexpected problem in class, involving students in process
• Coverage vs. (?) active learning
• Design project rubric...detail level for sharing w/ students

   

Continuing the discussion

This is a wiki site, which means anyone with the wiki invite key can update or add pages as they see fit.  Feel free to clarify points or add links in the above notes, add remarks in the Comments section below, or, if you're really ambitious, add entire sections or pages to the site.  To get this wiki's invite key, contact a workshop attendee or the site maintainer.