Search

Introduction: Environmental education (EE) has been extensively studied and promoted in Latin America, particularly in Colombia, through educational policies and regulations at all educational stages. While EE is well-established, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is gaining increasing global importance, especially with the advent of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite this, there remains a lack of knowledge, application, and research of ESD within engineering programs in higher education. This study aims to explore these gaps and assess the acceptance of ESD compared to EE among engineering students in Colombia. Methods: A survey was conducted among 406 engineering students from eight universities in Colombia that offer undergraduate engineering programs. The survey included both Likert scale questions and open-ended questions. The objective was to measure students' knowledge and perception of ESD, identify the roots of EE within engineering programs, and evaluate the progressive integration of ESD in these curricula. Results: The results revealed the deep-rooted presence of EE in Colombian engineering programs and a gradual incorporation of ESD into these curricula. However, significant gaps were identified. The majority of students demonstrated limited knowledge of ESD and Sustainable Development (SD). Furthermore, there was a noticeable lack of academic areas or subjects within the engineering curriculum that specifically promote the knowledge and application of ESD. Students' responses also highlighted the unusual convergence between EE, a traditionally conservationist field, and ESD, which is more developmentoriented. Discussion: This research identifies several critical challenges faced by engineering education in Colombia. The limited awareness of ESD among students suggests a need for enhanced integration of sustainable development concepts within engineering curricula. The lack of academic subjects dedicated to ESD further exacerbates this issue. Based on these findings, a transition strategy is proposed to bridge the gap between EE and ESD in Colombian higher education. This strategy aims to provide a smoother transition and better integration of sustainable development principles within engineering programs, ultimately supporting the development of engineers equipped to address contemporary global challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the application of the epoxidation process of poly‐β‐myrcene, a constituent of the natural resin from Chios Mastic trees (Pistacia Lentiscus L.), as an educational instrument for teaching Green Chemistry and Engineering to students at various academic levels. The study provides a comprehensive presentation of foundational knowledge essential for interpreting the subsequent experimental data. Consequently, the production process that leads to the production of Mastic Epoxide (MASTEP) stands as an invaluable pedagogical resource, enabling educators to impart crucial principles of Green Chemistry and Engineering to both pre‐graduate and post‐graduate students. By employing MASTEP as a case study, this educational approach actively involves students in a dynamic learning environment. Through this methodology, learners develop a profound comprehension of sustainability, innovation, and good practices. The integration of the MASTEP concept into the curriculum would foster a deeper understanding of responsible methodologies among aspiring chemical engineers and scientists, equipping them to make substantial contributions towards a more sustainable global landscape. This educational model aims to contribute to preparing future generations for a pivotal role in fostering a sustainable world through their professional endeavors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution of Engineering Education to the sustainable development of the industry have shown its importance. In each phase of industry revolution, core engineering branches have played significant role by providing competent engineering graduates. Over the years' industry requirements are changed accordingly the employability skills of the graduates needs to be uphold. Further, the core engineering branches are facing challenges to adopt the revolution of allied engineering branches and courses. To address these issues, the students of core engineering branches to be trained in various dimensions for filling this gap. Thus, the paper discusses the development of students of core engineering through means of comprehensive training to make them employable with quality circle approach. The comprehensive training has been conducted for specific set of students of electrical engineering for placements in core companies with higher packages. Various surveys have been conducted to identify the skill-set requirements of students and expectations of industry. survey conducted. The outcome of the comprehensive training is found to be efficient in terms of placement opportunities and improvements in packages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Workshop on Seismic Design and Assessment for Resilience, Robustness and Sustainability of Slope Engineering was held on 13–15 January 2023 on line, focusing on the theme of "Seismic resilience of slope engineering and the concept of resilience-based seismic design (RBSD) for geological disaster prevention and control". In this workshop, a number of keynote and invited lectures provided an international exchange platform for researchers, industrial engineers and students to share their research, engineering practice and exchange novel ideas on seismic resilience for slope engineering in a way of online. At the same time, during this workshop, technical committee of the ICGdR-TC1 also took this opportunity to hold a working meeting on cutting-edge and strategic issues, and released the Shanghai Declaration on slope engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the differences in first-year and senior engineering students' engineering agency beliefs and career goals related to sustainable development. The authors also sought to understand how topics related to sustainable development in engineering courses affect senior engineering students' goals to address these issues in their careers. This work provides evidence of how students' agency beliefs may be shaped by higher education, which is essential to workforce development. Design/methodology/approach: Findings stem from two national surveys of engineering first-year (Sustainability and Gender in Engineering, n = 7,709) and senior students (Student Survey about Career Goals, College Experiences, n = 4,605). The authors compared both groups using pairwise testing by class standing. Findings: The results indicate that undergraduate studies tend to reinforce students' engineering agency beliefs to improve their quality of life and preserve the environment. Significantly more senior students selected career goals to address environmental issues compared to first-year students. In general, students undervalue their roles as engineers in addressing issues related to social inequities. Those topics are rarely addressed in engineering courses. Findings from this work suggest discussing sustainability in courses positively impact setting career goals to address such challenges. Research limitations/implications: The study compares results from two distinct surveys, conveyed at different periods. Nonetheless, the sample size and national spread of respondents across US colleges and universities are robust to offer relevant insights on sustainable development in engineering education. Practical implications: Adapting engineering curriculum by ensuring that engineering students are prepared to confront global problems related to sustainable development in their careers will have a positive societal impact. Social implications: This study highlights shortcomings of engineering education in promoting social and economic sustainability as related to the engineering field. Educational programs would benefit from emphasizing the interconnectedness of environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development. This approach could increase diversity in engineering education and the industry, and by ripple effect, benefit the communities and local governance. Originality/value: This work is a first step toward understanding how undergraduate experiences impact students' engineering agency beliefs and career goals related to sustainability. It explores potential factors that could increase students' engineering agency and goals to make a change through engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Formación Universitaria is the property of Centro de Informacion Tecnologica (CIT) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: Considering the requirements of sustainable development regarding professionals training and the challenges evidenced during Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, this study aims to contribute to the debates regarding the need to insert sustainability into engineering education in the current context. Design/methodology/approach: For this, the literature about sustainability in engineering education was considered, and the need for sustainability insertion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic was debated. It is important to emphasize that this debate was based on the authors' experience regarding sustainability research and teaching. Findings: The current moment unveiled companies' financial management problems, constantly evidenced by media. In this sense, the interest of engineering students in business management may lead them to believe that companies' survival depends only on financial aspects, neglecting environmental and social aspects. This study is characterized as a reminder to academic staff in the field of engineering to continue valuing the principles of sustainable development with their students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Originality/value: The need to make engineering students understand the importance of social projects in the current period is emphasized. The training of professionals to consider all the sustainability aspects even during crisis moments is evidenced now and should be used as a learning lesson for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to report on how programme directors address sustainability within engineering education at Swedish universities and engineering colleges. Design/methodology/approach: The study was performed as a survey with follow-up interviews around the following core questions: to what extent do programme directors possess a deep understanding of the subject of sustainable development? Which are the core competencies in sustainable development that programme directors identify as important for their engineering students to acquire during their basic training? To what extent are those competencies integrated into engineering education today and what kind of support do programme directors receive from their department to integrate these competencies into the curriculum? Findings: Programme directors believe that learning for sustainable development is important mainly based on their personal convictions. However, out of 10 potential learning objectives extracted from the literature, only four-six are implemented in degree programmes. Learning objectives and activities are not always aligned, as students are required to learn about interdisciplinary collaboration without working with students from other faculties. The programme directors receive some support from the department, but they express a need for additional support. Examples of support that they suggest are faculty training, efficient teaching material and incorporation of sustainability in the quality assessment instruments for degree programmes. Originality/value: This study is the first comprehensive, national survey of what programme directors think about sustainability in higher education. Their views are important in the attempt to accelerate the integration of sustainability in higher education curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Increasing engineering students' engagement with public welfare is central to promoting ethical responsibility among engineers and enhancing engineers' capacity to serve the public good. However, little research has investigated how student experience attempts to increase engagement with public welfare concerns. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study identifies and analyzes the challenges facing efforts to increase engineering students' engagement with the social and ethical implications of their work through a study of students' experiences at two engineering programs that emphasize public welfare engagement. Design/Methods: We conducted interviews with engineering students (n = 26) and ethnographic observations of program events, classes, presentations, and social groups (n = 60) at two engineering programs that focus on engagement with public welfare and foreground learning about the social context and social impacts of engineering. We analyzed these data to identify areas in which students experienced challenges integrating considerations of public welfare into their work. Results: We found that four main areas where engineering students experienced difficulty engaging with considerations of public welfare: (a) defining and defending their identities as engineers; (b) justifying the value of nontechnical work and relevance to engineering; (c) redefining engineering expertise and integrating community knowledge into projects; and (d) addressing ambiguous questions and ethics. Conclusions: This work contributes to knowledge about the barriers to increasing students' engagement with issues of public welfare, even when programs encourage such engagement. These findings are relevant to broader efforts to increase concerns for ethics, social responsibility, and public welfare among engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Project‐based learning has shown promise in improving learning outcomes for diverse students. However, studies on its impacts have largely focused on the perceptions of students and instructors or students' immediate performance. This study reports the impact of taking a project‐based introductory engineering course on students' subsequent academic success. Purpose/Hypothesis: This quantitative study examines characteristics related to enrollment in the project‐based introductory engineering course and subsequent academic performance. We hypothesized that participation in the course would be associated with higher academic performance in subsequent engineering courses. In addition, we examined heterogeneity effects for students traditionally underrepresented in engineering education. Design/Method: This study utilized data on students' demographics, academic preparation, course enrollment, and course performance from 1,318 engineering students from a large public university in Southern California. Logistic regression analysis with robust standard errors examined enrollment patterns. We applied propensity scores as inverse‐probability weights in multiple linear models to calculate the average treatment effect on the treated for participants from the project‐based introductory engineering course in five subsequent engineering courses. This analysis was conducted for all students and for selected student subgroups. Results: Enrollment in the project‐based introductory engineering course was positively associated with students' performance in some subsequent engineering courses and did not adversely affect students traditionally underrepresented in engineering. Conclusions: This study provides an example of a project‐based introductory engineering course that can support students' academic success in engineering. The benefits detected for some student populations (e.g., female) are encouraging for broadening engineering pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In higher education there seems to be a 'gap' between the levels of undergraduate student expectation of being confronted by ethical issues in engineering work, and the amount of effective ethics education. Within this context, the purpose of this empirical research is to investigate engineering students' views on two issues: a) How vital professional ethics are in their field, and b) whether they believe that professional ethics must be a part of the syllabus in their School. Findings indicate that lecturers should make special reference to and strongly emphasize in class the value of an engineer's ethical responsibility. Furthermore, they need to spend a number of teaching hours on tackling problems in professional ethics as well as organize conferences, workshops, lectures and discussions, where the main speakers would be experienced engineers and academics. That way the technical and technological education incorporates more the responsibility of building professional integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how peer advising affects student project teams' discussions of engineering ethics. Peer ethics advisors from non-engineering disciplines are expected to provide diverse perspectives and to help engineering student teams engage and sustain ethics discussions. To investigate how peer advising helps engineering student teams' ethics discussions, three student teams in different peer advising conditions were closely observed: without any advisor, with a single volunteer advisor, and with an advising team working on the ethics advising project. Micro-scale discourse analysis based on cognitive ethnography was conducted to find each team's cultural model of understanding of engineering ethics. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) analysis was also conducted to see what influenced each team's cultural model. In cultural model, the engineering team with an ethics advising team showed broader understanding in social implications of engineering. The results of CHAT analysis indicated that differences in rules, community, and division of labor among three teams influenced the teams' cultural models. The CHAT analysis also indicated that the peer advisors working on the ethics advising project and the engineering team working on engineering design project created a collaborative environment. The findings indicated that collaborative environment supported peer ethics advising to facilitate team discussions of engineering ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The ability to create a context is essential in writing the introduction of a research article (RA). This study explores the experience of engineering Ph.D. students in Australia, for whom English is an Additional Language (EAL), in using a problem-solution-based writing model to develop context-creating skills in writing RA introductions. Research question: What is the experience of engineering Ph.D. students in creating contexts through explicit learning of a problem-solution-based model for writing RA introductions? Literature review: Genre-based teaching is a common approach in the second language classroom. Recently, a genre-based approach for writing the introduction of engineering RAs has been proposed. The descriptive values of the model, PSP-CaRS, have been shown in corpus studies of published engineering RAs. However, its applicability has not been explored pedagogically. Methodology: Twenty-nine Ph.D. students were asked to respond to a questionnaire nine months after learning the model and reflect on their experience using it. The findings were then corroborated with data obtained from interviews, researcher observation, and writing samples. Results: The findings showed that the participants perceived PSP-CaRS to be useful and they continued using it after nine months despite some difficulties encountered in the writing process. Participants’ responses showed that explicit teaching of PSP-CaRS formed the foundation upon which more competent skills to create contexts were developed through practice and integration of subject knowledge. Discussion: Explicit teaching using a model can impart the basics of genre awareness to students. Once students gained an in-depth understanding of the model by working through their difficulties, they developed better genre awareness, and used the model adaptively to visualize and write their RA introductions. Conclusion: The results confirm the usefulness of the proposed model and reveal how a continuing process of learning and practicing using the model helps students develop their skills to create contexts and enhance their genre awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evidence shows that students who are actively engaged with learning materials demonstrate greater learning gains than those who are passively engaged. Indeed, cognitive engagement is often cited as a critical component of an educational experience. However, understanding how and in what ways cognitive engagement occurs remains a challenge for engineering educators. In particular, there exists a need to measure and evaluate engagement in ways that provide information for instructors to deploy concrete, actionable steps to foster students' cognitive engagement. The present study reports the development and gathering of validation evidence for a quantitative instrument to measure students' in-class cognitive engagement. The instrument was informed by Wylie and Chi's ICAP (Interactive Constructive Active Passive) model of active learning, as well as contextual concerns within engineering courses. Results: The process followed the classical measurement model of scale development. We provide a detailed overview of the item development and scale validation processes, focusing on the creation of individual subscales to measure different modes of cognition within learning contexts. Multiple rounds of testing the student course cognitive engagement instrument (SCCEI) in college engineering courses provided evidence of validity. This indicated the reliable measurement of student cognitive engagement in the context of notetaking, processing material, and interacting with peers in the classroom. Results suggest differentiating modes of cognitive engagement is indeed applicable when considering students' in-class notetaking and processing of material. Conclusions: Findings point towards the need for additional engagement scales that expand the instrument's ability to distinguish between particular activities within a mode of engagement as defined by ICAP. The present study contributes to the growing body of literature on cognitive engagement of engineering students. Results address the development of measurement tools with evidence of validity for use in STEM education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing engineering undergraduate students opportunities to connect realworld applications with a theory is key to preparing them for the workforce; however, this task often requires a balancing act between meeting course objectives in content-heavy core engineering undergraduate courses and providing experiences that connect real-world applications with theory. This study seeks to address this problem through the integration of online discussion prompts to promote a connection to real-world practical applications. The study included undergraduate students enrolled in three engineering core courses. The hypothesis was that participation in online discussions (using prompts) would lead to (a) an increase in student empowerment towards selfregulated learning and (b) enhanced student engagement and perception of participating in online discussions. Students participated in eight online discussions and were evaluated using pre- and post-assessments. Findings show students across disciplines liked online discussions because they allowed enough time to develop thoughts and promote critical thinking through extending class topics, which increased the control of their own learning. In addition, students were more active in the course activities and offered useful feedback and reflection, which enhanced student engagement. Such feedback included ideas to improve the online discussion, for example, the need for clearer instructions and instructor feedback, better scheduling of due dates, and more engaging discussion prompt. In summary, integrating online discussions into core engineering courses, without sacrificing class content, can indeed have positive implications for self-regulated learning and higher student engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in additive manufacturing (AM) has increased the use of AM in many industries, resulting in a commensurate need for a workforce skilled in AM. In order to meet this need, educational institutions have undertaken different initiatives to integrate design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) into the engineering curriculum. However, limited research has explored the impact of these educational interventions in bringing about changes in the technical goodness of students' design outcomes, particularly through the integration of DfAM concepts in an engineering classroom environment. This study explores this gap using an experimental study with 193 participants recruited from a junior-level course on mechanical engineering design. The participants were split into three educational intervention groups: (1) no DfAM, (2) restrictive DfAM, and (3) restrictive and opportunistic (dual) DfAM. The effects of the educational intervention on the participants' use of DfAM were measured through changes in (1) participants' DfAM self-efficacy, (2) technical goodness of their AM design outcomes, and (3) participants' use of DfAM-related concepts when describing and evaluating their AM designs. The results showed that while all three educational interventions result in similar changes in the participants' opportunistic DfAM self-efficacy, participants who receive only restrictive DfAM inputs show the greatest increase in their restrictive DfAM self-efficacy. Further, we see that despite these differences, all three groups show a similar decrease in the technical goodness of their AM designs, after attending the lectures. A content analysis of the participants' design descriptions and evaluations revealed a simplification of their design geometries, which provides a possible explanation for the decrease in their technical goodness, despite the encouragement to utilize the design freedom of AM to improve functionality or optimize the weight of the structure. These results emphasize the need for more in-depth DfAM education to encourage the use of both opportunistic and restrictive DfAM during student design challenges. The results also highlight the possible influence of how the design problem is stated on the use of DfAM in solving it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Graduate education literature tends to focus on faculty careers with little attention to industry careers. However, more than one‐third of U.S. engineering doctorates enter industry. Purpose Our purpose is to understand engineering graduate students' interest in industry, academia, and government careers as it relates to their graduate engineering identities. Design/Method: A total of 249 engineering thesis master's and doctoral students completed a survey about their graduate engineering identities and career preferences. We created regression models to predict students' likelihood of pursuing careers in industry, academia, and government. Then, we used cluster analysis to understand the extent to which students are considering multiple options and used chi‐squared and ANOVA tests to compare the clusters. Results: In the regression model predicting an academic career, research recognition and research performance/competence were positive predictors and engineering performance/competence was a negative predictor. Regression models of industry and government described less than 10% of the variance. Four clusters emerged, which collectively demonstrate that engineering graduate students are considering careers in multiple sectors. Students with internships during graduate study were more likely to pursue industry careers. Master's students were underrepresented in the cluster with highest likelihood of an academic career. International students were keeping more options open than some domestic students. There were also differences by engineering discipline. Conclusions: Engineering graduate students are considering multiple career sectors. Advisors and education researchers should focus not only on academic career preparation but also on industry and government career preparation, particularly on preparing for multiple options simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Engineering practice is meant to advance the human condition, yet curricula do not appear to fully promote the human‐centered philosophy of engineering in implementation. The educational system may inadvertently signal to students that engineering is a career choice better suited for those preferring to work with things rather than people. This framing of the profession prompts questions regarding student interests when compared to those of practicing engineers and how such interests become concrete through education and introduction into the profession. Purpose/Hypothesis: We compare engineering students' and practitioners' interest in working with people or things in their environment. We examine gender differences for each sample. Design/Methods: Multiple analysis of variance was used to examine the samples of practicing engineers (n = 339) and first‐year engineering students (n= 383). A multiple‐group confirmatory factor analysis provides evidence of measurement invariance and justifies the use of the person–thing orientation (PO–TO) scale structure for both samples. Results: Detailed PO values reveal that students' PO scores (n = 383, M = 3.313) are more than one and a half points lower than practicing engineer counterparts examined (n = 339, M = 4.836). However, no significant difference between practicing engineers and students was found for TO. Further, statistically significant differences in PO and TO were found between male and female participants within both samples, students and practicing engineers. Conclusions: Differences detected in PO and TO across the samples suggest possible environmental factors influencing student perspectives of the engineering profession. This condition may inadvertently discourage more diverse students from pursuing engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Humanitarian engineering (HE) is rapidly emerging in universities and professional workplaces worldwide. In HE, socio‐technical thinking is fundamental as HE projects exist at the intersection of engineering and sustainable community development. However, the literature still lacks an understanding of the key features of socio‐technical thinking. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this article is to investigate the key characteristics that distinguish the socio‐technical thinking of an expert from a novice in the context of HE projects. Design/Method: We distributed the Energy Conversion Playground (ECP) design task to students starting their engineering degree (n = 26) and practitioners (n = 16). We iteratively and inductively analyzed the responses to develop a rubric characterizing the key features of expert socio‐technical thinking. We then scored participants' responses and compared them to identify differences between students and practitioners. Results: The analysis showed that expert socio‐technical thinkers can provide high‐quality considerations across three domains: technology, people, and broader context. The comparison of the participants' scores showed that both students and practitioners scored highly in the technology domain. In contrast, students scored poorly in the people and broader contexts domains, identifying only simplistic considerations in these non‐technical areas, if at all. Conclusions: This study provides novel insights into the development of socio‐technical thinking and further validates the ECP as a trustworthy measure of socio‐technical thinking. Implications for engineering educators and multiple lines of future research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering students graduating now a days are expected to possess mandatory skills to 'think out of box' and be 'innovative'. However, most of the educational institutes do not provide any formal training to students to pick up/practice these skills and work with independent research groups under supervision of an expert or a Professor. As a consequence of this, students lack in team spirit, ability to discuss in groups, confidence in group presentations and writing skills. This paper presents a detailed survey about the challenges faced to imbibe the research related skill in the minds of students who are as young as only 18 years of age and the different strategies adopted to circumvent those challenges. For training 60 undergraduate students, 19 groups comprising of three/four students in each group were formed. Methodology adopted for providing in-depth research-based learning experience to undergraduate students included ease of access to Nature Master Classes contents, followed by a series of debates on research topics, group discussions on elements of research article, student-professor meetups and poster presentations. Results derived from sound evaluation strategies show students gradually enhance their Undergraduate Research Experience during the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to compare levels of emotional intelligence (EI) in a group of engineering students, according to the expected achievement of competence. The participants were 313 university students (M = 20.20 years, SD = 2.41; 61% women) enrolled in the School of Mechatronics Engineering of a private university in Lima (Peru) that uses the Competency Based Education Model. The EI was measured with the Emotional Intelligence of the Wong Scale Law (WLEIS). Gender differences were found in EI, and thus, comparative analyzes were performed separately by gender. Among men, there were no differences between the groups in EI (lower level vs. upper level). In contrast, women of the lowest level of higher scores than women of the highest level group in: emotional evaluation of others, use of emotion and total IE score. We suggest incorporating the competence of EI within the URP educational model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering education outcomes as prescribed by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology comprise technical and scientific student educational outcomes as well as "soft skills". The scientific and technical outcomes ensure that engineering graduates possess the requisite science, math, engineering and technology skills and capabilities that will enable them to practice competently in their disciplinary engineering profession with technical, scientific and engineering rigor. Soft skills, on the other hand, which are being increasingly emphasized as critically necessary for engineering graduates to be employable and successful in the professional workspace, focus on teamwork, communication, ethics, global awareness (including social, economic, environmental and global impacts of engineering), and lifelong learning. In this essay, we posit that migrating engineering education towards "peace engineering" not only requires that faculty place increased emphasis on these soft skills, but also needs the incorporation of true impact analyses – much like an Environmental Impact Assessment – on the social, environmental and economic impacts of the solutions that students develop to engineering projects and problems. This impact analysis must go beyond an assessment of those areas mentioned in the conference's informal definition of "peace engineering", which identifies components including "...promotion of prosperity, sustainability, social equality and diversity, culture of equality, ethics, innovation and entrepreneurship." While these issues are critically important for promoting and supporting an ethos of peace engineering, we suggest that they will have minimal impact unless the thinking and analyses extends to focus on justice , extending the justice paradigm from civil, social and environmental justice to include energy justice, resource justice, information justice and technology justice. Exposing engineering students to these concepts and ideas and incorporating the notion of justice into the impacts of technology research, development and implementation will move us from a "war" based socio-technological configuration to a global peace engineering agenda that might actually move us towards engineers educated to transform their world for peace and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary purpose of this work is to study the impact of motivational factors on the engineering educational result of students. Much of the current findings indicate that the major reason for poor time management is due to the lack of interest in the topic of study which in turn leads to procrastination. Following the several exemplary works of education specialists outside the Indian subcontinent, this paper attempts to study the motivational factors such as rewards, acknowledgment and supplemental resources against procrastination of engineering students in India. A hypothesis was constructed and tested in a reputed engineering university in South India. A survey was conducted at four notable engineering institutions in South India and the obtained result shows that 22% required a practical study approach for motivation, 18% wanted collaborative work and approximately 49% suggested the need for recognition in order to overcome procrastination. In conclusion, providing sufficient recognition was found to be one of the biggest motivational factors to reduce procrastination among engineering students and increase their interest in routine and technical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epistemic Curiosity is a trait that drives students to engage in learning and intellectual activities. Thispaper presents the results of a pilot study conducted to validate the hypothesis that epistemic curiosity levels influence the study practices of students. Understanding the relationship between epistemic curiosity and students study processes will enable teachers to design teaching-learning interventions that promote student motivation and engagement. This study uses available instruments of measuring epistemic curiosity and correlates it with thestudy approaches of first year engineering students. The I and D type epistemic curiosity scales are employed to measure the epistemic curiosity levels of first year engineering students. The study approaches are identified using the Revised Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ), which measures the tendencies of students to engage in deep or surface level learning motives and strategies. Results reveal that I and D type epistemic curiosity levels correlates positively with deep learning motives and strategies, and correlates negatively with surface learning motives and strategies. It is also observed that D-Type epistemic curiosity levels correlates more strongly with deep approach, than I-Type epistemic curiosity. The correlation of D-Type EC withdeep strategies was higher in comparison to deep motives. Results also reveal a higher I-Type disposition of epistemic curiosity in comparison with D-Type, among first year engineering students. Overall, the study validates the hypothesis of using epistemic curiosity levels as an effective tool in monitoring the study approaches of first year engineering students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the introduction of doing engineering through the "Engineering Project in Community Service (EPICS)" and the impact of a community-based learning approach on student motivation. Students get practical hands-on experience while working with non-profit organizations. Now a day's students find it difficult to learn in the traditional way of classroom teaching chalk and board. They want to work on real-time problems with community partners by applying engineering knowledge. EPICS program helps in grooming the students' skills in design, communication, teamwork, and develop leadership skills, facing the challenges, social awareness, multidisciplinary knowledge, solution-driven approach towards a problem and maintaining social relationships. EPICS is one of the IUCEE (Indo Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education) initiative where students are exposed to study the community needs and frame an engineering problem to work on further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of engineering education in India, a diverse set of students register for engineering programs, and it is observed that the ability of the students to excel in different courses vary and it is influenced by several factors. The demographic factor is one of the factors that can impact students' performance. Factors that include gender, rural/urban background are considered, and its impact is being studied through this research. Teamwork from the student's background perspective has been the focus of this study. The students are assessed from three perspectives that included self- assessment, peer assessment, and researcher in-person observation. The students considered for the study are the first-year engineering students in the course titled engineering exploration. This course is a project-based learning course, and teamwork is one of the enduring outcomes of this course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capstone engineering design projects are ideal for broad application of engineering concepts on open-ended research and design problems. These projects allow students to reinforce their skills and extend their expertise into specialized areas of interest. Often, the capstone projects serve as both test grounds and launch pads for students' engineering careers. Within the engineering curriculum, these projects typically span the final year of an engineering program and entail a single project within a single disciplinary area. While their significance to the educational experience is unequivocal, the benefits of a capstone project can be expanded to further reflect real-world experiences. Over the span of their careers, professional engineers work on a number of projects and assume a variety of roles within a team of engineers with a range of expertise. How do we model that experience for our students within engineering education? Rowan University's Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering adopted the Engineering Clinic Model (ECM) to replace capstone projects. With ECM students choose to work across traditional disciplinary boundaries on multiple projects over their junior and senior years. The Junior and Senior Engineering Clinics allow students to work on potentially four distinct projects with both juniors and seniors from any engineering discipline supervised by a faculty. The student teams focus on tangible objectives and present their outcomes for each term before moving to another team. The ECM has demonstrated tremendous resilience against enrollment growth and continues to be the most notable aspect of Rowan Engineering. Its resilience can be attributed to an automated process that prioritizes student preferences and faculty interests. The process begins with faculty from every engineering discipline pitching their projects at the start of the term. Students subsequently rank their preferences for those projects. A custom-developed Clinic Match algorithm assigns students to their projects based on a set criteria. The greatest benefit of this approach has been for the students to build desired competencies in a wide range of fields, regardless of the discipline. For the Spring 2019 semester, over 150 distinct projects, representing 5 engineering disciplines, were pitched to over 500 junior and senior engineering students. Students worked in teams typically ranging from 3-8 members on projects; often funded by the government and industry. This paper highlights the key features of engineering clinics within junior and senior years and supports the outcomes with quantitative trends gathered over the past 10 semesters. The Junior and Senior Engineering Clinics o ff er a powerful alternative for leveraging the capstone design project to impart a broad skill set among engineering graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Activity-based teaching-learning describes the range of pedagogical approaches that involve learning by doing hands-on experiments or activities. It encourages students to actively participate in the teaching-learning process through problem-solving or hands-on activities, also the group based activity instructions help students to develop soft skills. The engineering exploration course is an innovative course offered to the first-year curriculum in order to transfer the student's ideas into real-life products through a number of activities such as problem-solving, engineering design process, multi-disciplinary engineering skills, project planning, communication, teamwork, ethics, and sustainability. The course includes multidisciplinary modules that fulfill the requirement of the product development process and each module is designed to teach through activity-based instructions. The aim of the engineering exploration course implementation is to develop multi-disciplinary product development skills in engineering students in the first year. All the sessions of the course delivery were well planned by considering the need statements of each project group so that students can acquire the necessary skills during activity sessions and apply those during product development. The student groups are formed heterogeneously with a maximum of four students in each group. The activity kit was designed for each session by considering team size so that all team members take active participation during various activities and develop their technical as well as soft skills. The initial result of implementation shows that students have developed excellent multidisciplinary products in the group and acquired technical knowledge as well as soft skills. The responses of the students show that 68% of the students rated this activity 10 out of 10, and also gave some suggestions for improvement as it is implemented first time. The students were very positive about this initiative and involved in each activity during the product development process. From the attainment of the course outcomes, it is observed that all five outcomes were attained more than the targeted value of 75%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's youth is tomorrow's promise and tomorrow's promise is our students. It is said that youth period is like soft clay in the hands of a potter. We need to channelize the potentials and technical skills of the students to facilitate the growth of the society and nation. The engineering education should train the students with adequate technological skills and unfold them as best human beings along with a sense of socio-economic and civic responsibility. Today, requirements for engineering programs reflect a movement with a paradigm shift in the existing practices to resolve the current engineering education problems.Many engineering educators see service learning as a way to enhance their programs by exposing students to engineering context, moreovergiving them a chance to develop professional and interpersonal skills. During the process, qualitative and quantitative surveys were done to collect longitudinal data from electrical and electronics engineering undergraduates (n=65) who have been the winners for consecutive two years of National solar vehicle challenge (NSVC) contest. NSVC is an annual contest organized by dynamic motors with a vision to stir young technocrats to make way for India to become the largest renewable energy hub in the world. The pre-test and post-test survey consist of demographics and qualitative questions. The outcome variables analyzed are civic responsibility, eagerness in service participation, knowledge on eco-friendly projects and sustainable thinking level of the engineering undergraduates.Service participation showed significant positive effects on all the outcome measures among 25% of the actively participated engineering undergraduates. In addition, they were technically enhanced to design single /multi sitter, light weighed and efficient solar vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statement: Our engineering students must work in interdisciplinary domains, understand customer needs and solve real problems and build proof-of-concept (POC) and prototype products in four years. This process of product based learning must be developed from first year itself and sustained through-out four years in entrepreneurial eco-system. Motivation: With rapid advancements in Industry and pace of Industry 4.0 revolution, Engineering Education must enhance project based learning (Project BL) methodology to product based learning (Product BL). Our engineering students must work in interdisciplinary domains, understand customer needs and solve real problems. Our motivation is to transform engineering campuses into Product Innovation Centers. Statement of Methods: The product orientation starts in the first year of engineering with innovative engineering exploration course. This course is a unique Activity Based Learning Process. All engineering discipline students apply concepts to solve real time multidisciplinary problems. A specially designed Learning Studio and Thinkering Lab enhances learning outcome and students demonstrate their projects in an exhibition. The entrepreneurial talent development also starts in first year by an industry expert designed and delivered hands-on entrepreneurship development course. This elective course is delivered with the outcome of developing students for their own start-up incubation after graduation or before. In the second year, students enhance their product skills-set either through elective product design course or continue to enhance ideas from first year in the Thinkering Lab. In the third and fourth year, we have unique concept of "Living Labs". Under Living Labs, students develop proof-of-concept and proto-type products under the guidance of Industry experts in interdisciplinary and entrepreneurial environment. We have two platforms in institute, one is IOT and another is Autonomous Electric Vehicle (AEV) platform. In IOT, three departments; Electronics, Computer Science and IT students work together in SMART campus, Agriculture, Healthcare domains to develop IOT prototypes, install them in customer environment for field trials and have at least one key customer. All products have end to end loop taking data from sensors, storing them into cloud and driving output sensors after analytics. In AEV, all seven departments - Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, Automobile, Electronics, Computer Science and IT are involved for their student's final year Capstone project and built prototype partial Automated Electric Car. The objective of AEV is to provide students interdisciplinary industry environment at the institute and develop product mind-set, quality and customer orientation. After ideas are validated, prototypes are built, students with entrepreneurial mind-set are encouraged form start-up in campus Technology Business Incubator (TBI) and mentored by Industry Experts for start-ups. In summary, product based learning in all four years in interdisciplinary environment under the guidance of industry experts enhances learnings and jump start students to face industry life while in campus itself. We have two Industry Experts in our Institute working with our students, faculty and TBI. Results: The results described here are for one year. We have all 450 first year students completed engineering exploration course and demonstrated 120 mini products in an exhibition. In IOT, we have 15 students, demonstrated 5 products with one start-up formed by students/faculty together. In AEV, we have 50 students, worked on 8 projects and demonstrated working proof of concept of partial autonomous Electric Vehicle. Our Technology Business Incubator has 7 start-ups and received Maharashtra State Innovation Society Rs5Cr funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Final course grades and professionalism grades were compared to determine statistically significant differences for (1) students with 90% or higher final course grades, (2) students with 80-90% final course grades, (3) students with 70-80% final course grades, (4) students with 0-70% final course grades, and (5) all students with a final course grade. Forty-one engineering technology courses were offered over 16 semesters (fall 2013 through fall 2018) in 100% online, face-to-face, and hybrid formats. Student populations were both undergraduate and graduate (master's) students in engineering technology courses at one Midwestern university. A total of 729 students were involved in the study. Study results indicate that professionalism grades, in terms of attendance and punctuality, were high (median of 93.33-100%) for students earning 80-100% median final course grades. Students earning 70-80% mean final course grades were less motivated to earn high professionalism grades--earning a 75.20% mean. There was little difference between final course grades and professionalism grades for students earning less than a 70% median for a final course grade. The aggregate of all student final course grades (median of 91.35%) in comparison to professionalism grades (median of 98.28%) yielded a significant difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards propose that students learn core ideas and practices related to engineering as well as science. To do so, students will need high‐quality curricular materials designed to meet these goals. We report an efficacy study of an elementary engineering curriculum, Engineering is Elementary (EiE) that includes a set of hypothesized critical components designed to encourage student engagement in practices, connect engineering and science learning, and reach diverse students. To measure the impact of the curriculum, we conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial in 604 classrooms in 152 schools in three states. Schools were randomly assigned to either the treatment curriculum or to a comparison curriculum that addressed the same learning goals but did not include several critical components. Results show that students who used the treatment curriculum (EiE) regardless of demographic characteristics outperformed students in the comparison group on outcome measures of both engineering and science content learning. The results show that curriculum design affects student‐learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon architecture and environmental engineering students' approaches to health and wellbeing issues in design studio project briefs. The design studio project is a key aspect of the students' fourth year programme in a dual accredited (RIBA/ARB and CIBSE) BEng course in the SW of England. Whilst the overarching site and brief are set by the studio leader, each student develops their own project agenda drawing on extensive urban and site analysis as well as precedent research. Particular detailed aspects of the brief are then further analysed and researched as part of an engineering report study. The research draws on first author's earlier work on effects of non-prescriptive briefs on transdisciplinary studio working in architecture and engineering programmes. Drawing on visual ethnography methods, the preliminary observations drawn out of the study begin to consider key intrinsic/extrinsic motivations and assumptions students draw on to develop a health and wellbeing agenda in their projects and the way these motivations further inform analysis in the engineering reports. The implications of the research are twofold. First, the preliminary analysis enables new insights into assumptions graduating architecture and engineering students draw on to develop a health and wellbeing motivated agenda. Second the study has benefits for design studio education brief setting approaches in particular, increasingly drawn upon in engineering and multidisciplinary built environment pedagogy. Practical application : This paper enables new initial insights into ways designers (architects and building services engineers) approach health and wellbeing issues at early stages of design, drawing on a higher education empirical setting. It is particularly relevant to professionals as well as educators in the built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a method of analysis and, potentially, design of innovative engineering programmes, mainly focusing on the level of interaction between engineering disciplines, meeting requirements for professional accreditation and meeting requirements for the skilled work-force in the place of implementation. The programmes are in line with the standards of the UK Engineering Council. Hence, design of curricula had to encompass a number of elements, and demonstrate that they are safeguarding the quality requirements of the professional engineering institutions. The core building construct is outlined. The proposition is developed that sharing components of engineering programmes of study across diverse disciplines is beneficial in preparing students for engineering of the future. Some metrics are proposed, based on fuzzy logic approach to establish membership functions for measuring interaction between the programmes, and the emphasis of the programmes on particular aspects of engineering learning outcomes. It is demonstrated how such metrics can be used in designing and analysis of modern engineering programmes. Furthermore, to exemplify the proposed approach, the paper outlines the methodology of establishing and analysing the link between academic contents and practical "shop-floor" skills, both of which are required from engineers in modern industry. It is felt that the approach used and the experiences gained may assist academics who are considering establishing similar or related type programmes of study and may also be of value to institutions undergoing transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The engineering education discourse increasingly recognizes the role of empathy in preparing students for 21st century challenges. This pedagogical and theoretical interest is not supported by an empirical understanding of the role empathy plays in students' professional formation. Purpose This study investigated how undergraduate engineering students made sense of empathy during a series of empathic communication modules as part of a mechanical engineering design course. Methodology: Post‐module reflections from 146 students were collected in two iterations of the course. The data were qualitatively analyzed using social phenomenology to focus on participants' meaning making in the context of their overall experiences. A model of empathy as interrelated skills, orientations, and ways of being theoretically framed the data gathering and analysis. Findings Three analytic categories structured the significant variation in students' meaning making. (a) Relationships with Others captured students' understandings of the relationship with and role of others along the three dimensions of Distance, Difference, and Power. (b) The Act of Learning identified varying degrees of resonance or disconnect between students' expectations of engineering learning and the forms of learning encountered in the modules. (c) Empathy as a Conceptual Object described the variation of students' own understandings of the nature and function of empathy in the context of their engineering learning. Conclusions: The experiential significance of engaging with empathy makes visible and pedagogically accessible students' value orientations that frame their relationships toward others and their self‐understanding as engineers, thus providing potential new avenues for research and education to engage less tangible facets of engineering formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used a mixed methodology to investigates the possibility of using blended assessment for engineering education in a challenging learning environment. It discussed the outcome of the evaluation, which is problematized by the influences of an encumbered learning environment. It used the blended engineering models to investigate the circumstances of assessments and its outcomes in a university situated in the sub-Sahara African region. It revealed the experiences of post-internship engineering students using a single blended course. The survey showed that students' knowledge of factors impeding thorough assessment for productivity in the region and advocated ways of improvement. It disclosed past and present assessment percentage shares in addition to suggesting a preferred assessment percentage share required for graduating skilled engineers. The result uncovered where assessment might be situated so that there is a satisfactory learning outcome for engineering programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the ASEE publication Engineering by the Numbers, student retention and persistence to graduation are ongoing problems for engineering and engineering technology (ET) programs around the country. It is a well-established fact that the quality of interaction between a student and a concerned individual on campus, often through academic advising, is a key contributor to college retention. Over the years, academic advisors have developed effective advising strategies that research shows have positively impacted students’ retention and their persistence to graduation. In this study, a national survey was conducted among academic advisors of ET programs in the USA. Results show that for ET students, retention and persistence to graduation are improved by personalized and caring advising, being proactive, keeping students focused on their plan of study, actively listening to students’ complaints and concerns, acting on those concerns, and believing in the student. On the other hand, being passive, ignoring students’ issues, embarrassing them on their academic struggles and limited knowledge about the curriculum and departmental procedures and practices are found to be the least effective. Overall, this study contributes to ET body of knowledge by providing ET academic advisors a set of best practices for student success. The findings of the study will also benefit ET faculty members, who directly or indirectly advise students, by sharpening their advising practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we investigate how faculty and students think about engineering using a technique new to engineering education: card sorting. In card sorting participants sort stimuli (cards) into groups, in the process revealing how they categorize information. Here we examine how both engineering faculty (n=23) and first-year undergraduate students (n=62) categorize engineering scenarios. We found engineering faculty sort based on crossdisciplinary engineering activities rather than engineering disciplines. This is a surprising result as our educational frameworks are based around disciplines, and yet they are not the primary way in which faculty think. First-year students, on the other hand, showed little consensus on how to sort the scenarios. As a part of this paper we unveil an online card sorting platform Collection and Analysis of Research Data for Sorting (CARDS). CARDS allows researchers to create card sorting tasks, distribute them to participants for remote data collection, and analyze quantitative results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sketch is one of the most important tools for industrial designers to solve problems and is actively utilized early in the process of developing ideas. In the engineering field, sketches are generally used as an important means of visualizing when designing structures and systems, but there is no systematic sketch education process for students of engineering, except during CAD classes. However, current engineering undergraduate students greatly need sketch education but lack confidence in their sketching abilities and lack opportunities for actual education as well. In this study, we conducted a four-week sketch education course after establishing a detailed sketch training curriculum for engineering students. The sketch training course consists of eight stages, in steps of 1 to 8, and includes the concepts of straight lines, curves, projection views, perspective, the adding and subtracting of three-dimensional objects, emphasis, and synthetic exercises. Four weeks of sketching classes were held for engineering undergraduate students. After these classes, the sketching abilities of the students were compared and various opinions about the sketch education were gathered. An expert evaluation shows that first- and second-year undergraduates who received the sketch education improved their sketching abilities more than those who did not receive the sketch education, with the former group showing increased confidence in sketching after the education. This study shows the process and the result of a field study of a sketch education course for these students of engineering. We expect that engineering students will be able to communicate with each other more effectively using their sketches. Furthermore, we hope they expand their thinking more freely with their sketches from the idea-development stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biopharmaceutical engineering is a newly established undergraduate degree in China, and a lot of issues regarding students' training remain to be explored and refined, particularly the curriculum reflecting the industrial needs for students with applied (hands-on) skills, which has been limited. To narrow the gap between industrial demands and students' training and to provide undergraduates with rational curriculum, in the present investigation, we proposed to reconstruct the curriculum system for applied (hands-on) training of undergraduates of biopharmaceutical engineering based on the life cycle of medicinal products for the first time. A total of 52 subjects on the curriculum were selected and included in different stages of the medicinal products life cycle. After surveying from a recruitment website and biopharmaceutical enterprises, eight applied positions, including drug screening engineer, cell culture engineer, molecular biology technician, fermentation engineer, microorganism engineer, protein purification engineer, protein analysis technician and bio-preparation engineer, were then selected. According to the requirements of each position, 31 subjects were finally chosen from the above-mentioned 52 subjects that are involved in the life cycle of medicinal products. These subjects belong to four clusters and constitute the basis of the curriculum system for applied training of undergraduates of biopharmaceutical engineering. The results obtained from this work are expected to provide evidence for the training of biopharmaceutical students as well as the implementation of collaborative education between university and industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In engineering education, laboratory experience is powerful in building up the specialized aptitudes and skills of the engineering graduates by structuring and conducting practical experiments. In engineering laboratories, the student often deals with complex laboratory equipment to perform the experiment. Oscilloscope and function generator are frequently used electronic equipment in electronics engineering laboratories. Augmented reality (AR) technology has the capacity to provide a unique learning experience to the students which can ease down the difficulties faced by students while operating laboratory equipment. In this paper, an augmented reality learning environment (ARLE) is developed which could help the student in operating the laboratory equipment. The study aims to determine the impact of AR intervention on student laboratory skills, cognitive load, and learning motivation. The experiment was conducted amongst 60 first‐year undergraduate engineering students. The participants were randomly divided into two groups: Experimental group and Control group. The participants of the experimental group were given ARLE treatment while the participants from the control group were given traditional teaching treatment. The experimental results suggest that AR intervention has a significant positive impact on student laboratory skills. Also, ARLE is an effective tool in reducing the cognitive load of students while operating laboratory equipment. The student feedback indicates that the students of the experimental group operated the equipment without any fear of damaging the equipment as they were already familiarized with the equipment in ARLE. The results of this study recommend AR as an adequate technology for developing unique AR experiences for engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering educators face a rapidly changing, and ever more challenging world. Rapidly evolving industry demands, accreditation agencies, and students themselves are calling for an engineering education with integrated multidisciplinary design knowledge, leadership, communication, business, education, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and lifelong learning explicitly included in their undergraduate programs. Students still need the core content knowledge of thermodynamics, mass, energy, and momentum balances and fluxes. They also need integrated socio‐contextual knowledge to evaluate a design for sustainability and demonstrate a net positive social benefit. There is only so much time available in an undergraduate program and learning takes time. These challenges are driving changes to both what and how we teach our students to integrate broader competencies and enhance engineering student graduate attribute achievement. A framework for engineering education includes fundamental and socio‐contextual knowledge integrated with metacognitive and professional skill development. This contribution provides practical ideas for how to infuse these dimensions into courses, support the developing engineering practice, and deepen student engagement with their courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The use of metacognition is critical to learning, especially in fields such as engineering that involve problem‐solving and difficult conceptual material. Due to limitations with current methodological approaches, new methods are needed to investigate engineering students' metacognitive engagement in learning situations that are self‐directed, such as study groups. Purpose: Our purpose was to develop an approach to investigate the metacognitive engagement of undergraduate engineering students in self‐directed learning environments. The Naturalistic Observations of Metacognition in Engineering (NOME) Observational Protocol and Coding Strategy is a qualitative data collection method that allows researchers to observe the behaviors of students who are studying in groups to determine the student's engagement in different metacognitive practices. The NOME is intended to be used by researchers interested in studying online metacognitive behaviors without the direct interference of a methodological approach. Design/Method: We observed three study groups where students were working on an engineering problem‐solving homework assignment. Using a taxonomic definition of metacognition, we coded episodes of observation transcripts to identify behaviors that represented key definitions in the taxonomy. Results: We combined subcodes and descriptions of behaviors with key definitions to develop a coding strategy useful for future observational studies. Evidence of intercoder agreement and agreement in unitizing indicates that the coding strategy can reliably be used by multiple trained coders to identify metacognitive engagement. Conclusions: The reliability evidence shows that the NOME may be a useful tool for researchers in engineering education interested in studying the metacognitive habits of engineering students in self‐directed study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]