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The Wright State Model (WSM) for Engineering Mathematics Education is a meaningful disruption to the traditional required engineering calculus sequence as it offers a one-semester laboratory-based immersion into the ways mathematical concepts--including trigonometry, vectors, derivatives, integrals, and differential equations--are actually used by engineers. Research from Wright State, as well as other implementation sites, has robustly demonstrated that completing the WSM course during the first semester of college leads to boosts in retention rates and engineering persistence, important factors for all institutions seeking to keep engineering students on track for a future in engineering. However, the challenges of starting up a new implementation of the WSM at any institution are numerous and indicative of the obstacles inherent to making any significant curricular change within the rigidly sequenced course flows of traditional engineering degree programs. At the University of Colorado Boulder, the local implementation of the WSM has just completed its second full iteration. In year one, the pilot course featured less than twenty-five students, one instructor, and two teaching assistants, with all course activities housed in a single room dedicated to the class. Based on positive outcomes from the first year, administrators decided to scale-up the WSM course dramatically: the second year of the course featured over one hundred students, one instructor, and five teaching assistants, with course activities spread across multiple lecture, lab, and recitation sections meeting at different places in time and space. This research paper explores the consequences of this scaling for the students enrolled in the course, as well as for the instructors, teaching assistants, and facilities involved in course implementation. A mixed-methods approach featuring quantitative data including student academic performance metrics, demographic characteristics, and pre- and post-survey results related to attitudes and motivations to persist in engineering are combined with qualitative data from individual student interviews and textual responses to biweekly reflection questions to understand how the course changed from year one to year two. Overall, we find that while scaling-up presents unavoidable challenges to the instructional team with regards to resource constraints, logistics, and engagement of a larger audience with a wider distribution of incoming preparation levels, the larger size of the course also presents some unexpected benefits to students. Mainly, the research team was surprised to find that even students who dropped the course derived substantial benefits from the informal social relationships forged during the first few weeks of classes. We share our findings with the first-year engineering education audience to continue the conversation about how to meaningfully create learning environments - at-scale - which can support the needs of all incoming first-year students in engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper investigates how a renowned national model for engineering mathematics education is adapted and adjusted for implementation within a new large public university site, and the consequences of these modifications for students, instructors, administrators, and institutions. By examining how elements of the original Wright State Model are replicated or mutated in the process of starting a pilot course, we illustrate not just the challenges inherent to creating a new course in a new place but also the ways seemingly neutral and benign objects (such as course numbers and course titles) are transformed and modified to suit local contexts. Further, we show what is lost and gained through the adaptation and conversion processes of moving an established course model from one institution to another. We argue that these negotiations and local compromises are worthy of detailed examination to understand more about the existing social organization of academic institutions in order to reveal structures that both limit and enable the success or failure of educational initiatives and innovations. This paper integrates ethnographic data, institutional artifacts, and student survey responses to demonstrate how the pilot course implementation is not a one-to-one replication of the original model; rather it is a mutation of how the course exists at Wright State. Viewing the course as a mutation enables a deeper analysis of the institutional processes required to instantiate a new educational initiative within existing systems, curricula, and infrastructures, with implications for engineering educators looking to make positive change within their home institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper employs data from the study of a novel next-tier broadening participation access program to illustrate the challenge of maintaining awareness and understanding of our students as individuals within institutional systems of assessment and record-keeping that treat all students as the same in the interests of standardization. These standardized practices are intended to aid in the production of high numbers of engineering graduates--not unlike a factory that takes in raw materials in the form of students and outputs finished goods in the shape of engineering graduates. This factory model of engineering education, like any high-quality mass production system, optimizes for efficiency by standardizing processes. In undergraduate engineering degree programs, this is apparent from the relatively inflexible standard curricular paths within any given major and the use of midterm and final exams as "go or no-go" measurement gauges to determine which "products" (students) are of sufficient quality to move onto the next step (or class) in the assembly line of curricular requirements. An important aspect of this factory model is that colleges are systematically indifferent as to which students graduate and which go elsewhere since standardization of the process and objective assessments are presumed to ensure fair treatment for all students. This paper integrates findings across student performance, focus group, interview, and observational data to demonstrate the tension inherent in maintaining a broadening participation access program's high-touch, personalized values within its larger institution's methodical indifference towards students as individuals. This clash is exemplified through our investigation of the development and implementation of a pre-calculus course intended to support students' progression towards "calculus readiness." This paper describes the evolution of this pre-calculus course as its successful pilot becomes absorbed by the larger institution and expanded beyond the high-touch access model, with detrimental consequences for student success as the course moves from specialized to standardized. We propose alternative methods of preserving students as whole people within these reductionist, mechanistic environments of large-scale undergraduate engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread need to address both science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and STEM workforce development is persistent. Underscored by the Next Generation Science Standards, demand is high for P-12 engineering-centered curricula. TeachEngineering is a free, standards-aligned NSF-funded digital library of more than 1,500 hands-on, design-rich K- 12 engineering lessons and activities. Beyond anonymous site-user counts, the impact of the TeachEngineering collection and outreach initiatives on the education of children and their teachers was previously unknown. Thus, the project team wrestled with the question of how to meaningfully ascertain classroom impacts of the digital engineering education library and--more broadly--how to ascertain the impacts of teacher-focused P-12 engineering education initiatives. In this paper, the authors approach the classroom impact question through probing self-reported differentials in 1) teachers' confidence in teaching engineering concepts and 2) changes in their teaching practices as a result of exposure to (and experiences with) K-12 engineering education resources and outreach opportunities. In 2016, four quantitative and qualitative surveys were implemented to probe the impact of the TeachEngineering digital library and outreach on four populations of K-12 teachers' confidence and practices, including the frequency with which they integrate engineering into their pre-college classrooms. Survey results document the teacher experience and perception of using hands-on K-12 engineering curricular materials in the classroom and help create a data-driven understanding of where to best invest future resources. The results suggest that the TeachEngineering curricular resources and outreach initiatives help teachers build confidence in their use of engineering curriculum and pedagogy in K-12 classrooms, impact their teaching practices, and increase their likelihood of teaching engineering in the classroom in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering programs commonly offer students few opportunities to choose their own courses as compared to their non-engineering campus peers. A previous exploratory study found positive correlations between the extent to which engineering degree programs afford students with course choice opportunities (such as free electives, technical electives, etc.) and the percentage of their bachelor's degrees earned by women. The results pointed to the need for additional research to ascertain whether undergraduate engineering programs can attract and graduate more women by providing more customizable degree program options. Similar to engineering, many undergraduate computing programs offer minimal course choice opportunities, thus constraining students in their ability to realize a broad and balanced education. And, a shortage of women is prevalent in undergraduate computing programs. This study delineated the course choice opportunities and balance of required technical and non-technical coursework in 37 computer science and computer engineering programs spanning 25 U.S. News & World Report top-ranked U.S. engineering colleges and looked for correlations between curricular choice, curricular balance and the percentage of bachelor's degrees earned by women. A positive correlation was found between the computing programs' curricular customizability and their percentage of bachelor's degrees earned by women; a positive correlation was also found between the extent to which the computing programs afforded students opportunities for technical--non-technical curricular balance and their percentage of bachelor's degrees earned by women. These preliminary results suggest that providing more flexible, customizable computing program options and/or opportunities to pursue a broad, balanced education may be a means of attracting more women to undergraduate computing programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having choices is linked to both human satisfaction and motivation. A quantitative exploration of curricular choice opportunities across dozens of undergraduate engineering programs yielded evidence of a low-choice culture in engineering education, with engineering students commonly afforded minimal curricular choice and few opportunities to pursue a broad, balanced education compared to their campus peers. Exceptional, highly regarded and accredited engineering programs, while few in number, demonstrated the feasibility of highly flexible, customizable, and balanced programs. Though hypothesized that the low-choice, highly technical engineering curricular model may be a barrier to participation in engineering education, correlations between curricular choice/balance and educational outcomes had not been explored. In this pilot study, curricula and program outcome data were delineated for 21 engineering, math, natural science, and physical science degree programs (nine ABET-accredited, 12 non-accredited) at the University of Colorado Boulder to probe correlations between the amount of course choice and technical--non-technical curricular balance provided by a given program and the program's 1) median time to degree, 2) six-year graduation rate, 3) average GPA, and 4) percentage of bachelor's degrees earned by women. Results were mixed as to the potential benefits of flexible, balanced engineering programs, and numerous confounding factors were present in the study. Cross-institutional research that mitigates confounding factors is needed to further explore correlations between engineering program curricular choice opportunities, balance and educational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Colorado Boulder Engineering GoldShirt Program was created and launched in 2009, with the aim of providing an alternative pathway to and through university engineering programs. Using an Inclusive Excellence framework, the program provides a system of initiatives to broaden the participation of students traditionally underrepresented in engineering. The Engineering GoldShirt Program is committed to a research→practice→research cycle. This paper focuses on the implementation of research driven program changes in one facet of the Engineering GoldShirt Program-- the Explorations through Physics course--an essential first year preparatory course preceding calculus-based physics. Results from our work demonstrate the need to combine and carefully weigh quantitative and qualitative research results real-time to make well-informed and timely programmatic decisions that directly impact student performance and retention. We advocate for engineering colleges to move away from single intervention approaches for bolstering diversity to systems approaches that encompass myriad academic, social and engineering identity development components to attract and retain underrepresented students in engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational environments that support autonomy have been shown to foster self-motivation, increased engagement, higher-quality learning, and personal well-being--all outcomes that could positively impact access and retention in engineering programs. Increasing course choice opportunities for students seeking an engineering degree could therefore encourage them to meet their innate psychological need for autonomy within the context of an engineering education and possibly benefit educational and program outcomes. This preliminary study explores the extent of curricular choice that undergraduate students encounter in working towards engineering degrees, compared to their non-engineering peers on campus. The course choices that students are given the autonomy to make while earning ABET-accredited engineering degrees in various disciplines are compared to those of students earning degrees in physics, chemistry, math, economics and psychology. "Choice Values" for degree programs at five regionally diverse universities are presented, including both public and private institutions, a large research university, a small liberal arts college and a historically black college & university (HBCU). For the purposes of this study, Choice Value is a quantified representation of the aggregate curricular choice opportunity for a given degree program, and is a function of total course choice opportunities, the proportion of degree credit hours that provide curricular choice, and the number of courses from which students may choose. Choice Values were determined using the published curriculum in the university catalogs, as well as counts for the number of individual course options for each choice opportunity. Choice opportunity examples include menus of course options, technical electives, humanities and social science electives, and free electives. Findings reveal a significant course choice opportunity disparity between engineering and nonengineering students at the five universities studied. The differentially limited curricular choices available to engineering students across all five universities and degree programs included in the study are revealed. Engineering degree program Choice Values were an average of more than 17 times fewer than non-engineering degree program Choice Values, with a median value of 4.7 and a range of 1.8 to 96.1 times lower Choice Values in engineering. Engineering degree programs allocated an average of 4.3% of total degree credit hours to free electives, compared to 19.8% of total degree credit hours for non-engineering degree programs included in the study. The comparatively dismal curricular course opportunities available to students pursuing engineering degrees leads to the question of how degree programs might provide more course choice opportunities, and if doing so might positively impact efforts at broadening participation in engineering enrollments and improve graduation rates. The General Engineering Plus (GE+) degree program, a new (2013) undergraduate degree program in the College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) at the University of Colorado Boulder is presented. The GE+ degree program combines interdisciplinary hands-on engineering design plus an engineering emphasis with a student-chosen technical or non-technical concentration, providing students with degrees of curricular choice previously unprecedented in the college's engineering programs, a Choice Value of 405.3 compared to the average Choice Value for CU Boulder's accredited engineering degree programs of 155.7. The GE+ program plans to seek accreditation under ABET's general engineering program criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how a learning community and group identity can be created between engineering students enrolled in an engineering degree program at a large public university. The authors examine the ways in which community is created among the first-year and returning students enrolled in the program.

The article focuses on the efficacy of various spatial visualization implementation approaches in a first-year engineering projects course. Varying approaches to the addition of formal spatial visualization curricula were implemented and tested during five semesters to augment the first-year design experience of entry-level engineering students.

The article discusses the impact of mathematics course along with calculus for undergraduate engineering students in engineering education of engineering school in U.S.. The legitimacy of students in a diversity promoting program was contested, both by the students themselves and by the institutions.

The article discusses the need to start the quantification of the pool of engineering-eligible prospective students through a survey of access practices. It says that to educate the number of engineers needed to attain the demand and push the nation's competitiveness, as well as to continuously populate an engineering labor supply reflective of the rich diversity of the nation, everyone must encourage people to participate from backgrounds underrepresented in engineering: women and minorities.

The article discusses a study which examined the university admission process for women students in the field of engineering. Particular focus is given to the women-targeted tactics at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) at University of Colorado Boulder. Also mentioned are recruiting event attendance, influence of events on the decision of female students to attend the college of engineering, and outreach materials.