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Mastery of mathematical literacy is essential for developing life skills in the 21st century. Mathematical literacy is even more critical in elementary schools as it forms the basis for mastery at the junior and senior high school levels. Elementary school students differ in their characteristics from students at the higher education level. They, therefore, require an appropriate learning model to improve their mathematical literacy. This research aims to develop a learning model, termed Realistic Mathematics Engineering (RMEng), that combines the Realistic Mathematics Education approach with the steps of the Engineering Design Process and determines the model's effectiveness. The model was validated by seven experts from three universities in Indonesia and had an Aiken validity index value of 0.786, indicating that it was valid. The RMEng model contains the following steps: understanding realistic problems, solving problems in informal ways, developing formal mathematics, developing products, and drilling. Discussions and presentations can be incorporated into each of these five steps. The RMEng model was subjected to the stages of preliminary and main field testing and was revised based on the suggestions of teachers and observers. Through experimental research compared to a control group, the RMEng model was proven more effective in increasing elementary school students' mathematical literacy at the 0.000 significance level.

Background: Engineers are professionally obligated to protect the safety and well-being of the public impacted by the technologies they design and maintain. In an increasingly complex sociotechnical world, engineering educators and professional institutions have a duty to train engineers in these responsibilities. Purpose/Hypothesis: This article asks, where are engineers trained in their public welfare responsibilities, and how effective is this training? We argue that engineers trained in public welfare responsibilities, especially within engineering education, will demonstrate greater understanding of their duty to recognize and respond to public welfare concerns. We expect training in formal engineering classes to be more broadly impactful than training in contexts like work or professional societies. Data/Methods: We analyze unique survey data from a representative sample of US practicing engineers using descriptive and regression techniques. Results: Consistent with expectations, engineers who received public welfare responsibility training in engineering classes are more likely than other engineers to understand their responsibilities to protect public health and safety and problem-solve collectively, to recognize the importance of social consequences and ethical responsibilities in their own jobs, to have noticed ethical issues in their workplace, and to have taken action about an issue that concerned them. Training through other parts of college, workplaces, or professional societies has comparatively little impact. Concerningly, nearly a third of engineers reported never being trained in public welfare responsibilities. Conclusion: These results suggest that training in engineering education can shape engineers' long-term understanding of their public welfare responsibilities. They underscore the need for these responsibilities to be taught as a core, non-negotiable part of engineering education.

Background: Since the advent of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there has been an increasing focus on engineering in K-12 education. As educators and researchers have gained a better understanding of the nature of engineering in the decade following the release of the NGSS, there are new opportunities for growth and complexity. Purpose: This study used an epistemological approach to seek insights from experts in the science and engineering communities about the prominent aspects of engineering for K-12 education. Design/Method: This mixed-methods study employed a three-round Delphi study and a focus group meeting to elicit experts' opinions on the epistemic aspects of engineering that could shed light on the nature of engineering knowledge and practices. Constructivist grounded theory methodology was used to identify preliminary themes concerning the epistemic aspects of engineering and then to develop main themes by combining relevant themes together. Results: The analysis process yielded 21 preliminary themes that reflect key ideas about the engineering knowledge base, engineering design activities, and values and norms of the engineering community. Additionally, the current study identified eight main themes that captured the broader patterns in the data. Conclusions: The outcome of this study, including the preliminary themes and main themes concerning the epistemic aspects of engineering, could serve as a conceptual tool for establishing and improving students' conceptions of engineering and as a guide for designing and implementing engineering design activities in K-12 education settings.

Background: Engineering curricula are built around faculty and accreditors' perceptions of what knowledge, skills, and abilities graduates will need in engineering careers. However, the people making these decisions may not be fully aware of what industry employers require for engineering graduates. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study is to determine how industry employer-sought professional and technical skills vary among engineering disciplines and levels of education. Design/Method: Using a large sample (n = 26,103) of mined job advertisements, we use the O*NET skills database to determine the frequencies of different professional and technical skills for biomedical, civil, chemical, electrical, environmental, and mechanical engineers with bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees. Results: The most frequently sought professional skill is problem-solving; the most frequently sought technical skills across disciplines are Microsoft Office software and computer-aided design software. Although not the most frequently requested skills, job advertisements including the Python and MATLAB programming languages paid significantly higher salaries than those without. Conclusions: The findings of this study have important implications for engineering program leaders and curriculum designers choosing which skills to teach students so that they are best prepared to get and excel in engineering jobs. The results also show which skills students can prioritize investing their time in so that they receive the largest financial return on their investment.

Background: Engineering culture research to date has described the culture as rigid, chilly, and posing many barriers to entry. However, the COVID-19 pandemic provided an important opportunity to explore how engineering culture responds to a major disruption. Purpose: The purposes of this study are to understand how elements of engineering culture emerged in mechanical engineering students' perceptions of their classroom experiences during the pandemic and how their experiences varied across two national contexts. Method: This qualitative comparative case study examines undergraduate mechanical engineering students' perceptions of their experiences taking courses during the pandemic at two universities--one in the United States and one in South Africa. Semistructured interviews were conducted across both sites with 21 students and contextualized with 3 faculty member interviews. Student interviews were analyzed using an iterative process of deductive coding, inductive coding, and pattern coding. Results: We identified two key themes that characterized participants' experiences during the pandemic: hardness and access to resources. We found that students at both sites experienced two types of hardness--intrinsic and constructed--and were more critical of constructed forms of hardness. We found that the South African university's response to facilitating student access to resources was viewed by students as more effective when compared with the US university. Conclusions: We found that hardness remained a central feature of engineering culture, based on student perceptions, and found that students expressed awareness of resource-related differences. A key distinction emerged between intrinsic and constructed hardness.

Transdisciplinary learning--where students develop and apply knowledge from multiple disciplines to solve open-ended problems--is necessary to prepare students for the most pressing real-world problems. Because transdisciplinary education often requires reimagining the content and design of undergraduate science courses, it can be a challenge for instructors to envision how such work might take place. In this article, we share an example of an undergraduate course developed at the intersection of animal sensory biology and robotics engineering. Students in the course developed knowledge from both disciplines to design a robot that could mimic the sensory behaviors of some animals to achieve a predetermined task. We share examples of students' work in the course and evidence of how students' perceptions of science and engineering changed throughout their participation in the course. Additionally, we describe how we adapted a hybrid model of collaboration that made it feasible for students to work together on an open-ended project requiring access to robotics equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. This course can serve as a model for instructors working to incorporate more interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary perspectives into existing science courses.

Email filters classify new messages as either spam or not spam based on word frequency, syntax, and metadata. A "classifier" is an algorithm that maps input data into categories based on distinguishing characteristics, or "features." Features can be raw data or attributes derived from that data. "Feature engineering" is the process of identifying or extracting features that can be used to capture relevant patterns in data. The project that the author introduces in this article uses feature engineering with a dataset called the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology dataset (MNIST). MNIST is a modified version of a NIST dataset that contains 70,000 grayscale images of handwritten digits, and the goal with this dataset is to build a classifier that can accurately recognize digits from those images. Students use feature engineering to build a classifier that can accurately recognize digits from images.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-generated environment with noteworthy didactic applications in different educational levels and areas of knowledge. The study of the perceptions of the agents involved about the use of VR in lectures is a fruitful line of research because it has implications in terms of the measures to be taken to improve the training and competence of professors in its use. In this paper, a quantitative, descriptive, and correlational research is carried out on the assessments of a sample of 1638 Latin American university professors on both (i) the didactic use of VR and (ii) the influence of the professors' area of knowledge on these assessments. For this purpose, a validated questionnaire was used, the responses to which were subjected to statistical analysis. As a result, it was found that the ratings of VR are very high, but professors believe that their digital skills for its use are insufficient. In addition, the professors' area of knowledge significantly influences their ratings, being higher in the areas of knowledge in which professors have a better self-concept of their digital skills. Furthermore, gender gaps have also been identified in the answers given, which behave differently according to the area of knowledge. Finally, some conclusions, implications, and recommendations are drawn from the results obtained.

Design processes can be decomposed into several steps, including information acquisition and application. Retrieving prior knowledge and experience is an important method of acquiring design information, thus designers' precedents retrieval styles reflect their design thinking. The obvious difference between industrial (ID) and mechanical design (MD) education is well known: ID education focuses on cultivating design thinking abilities, while MD education focuses on cultivating technical abilities. The background discipline influences design thinking methods. This study aims at exploring the similarities and differences between ID and MD students' precedents retrieval styles in the design process. Forty-eight junior and senior undergraduate students participated in a brainstorming experiment using the think-aloud method. Participants' prior knowledge and experience retrieved during brainstorming were coded and the frequency ratios were analyzed. We conclude that ID students are more inclined to extract and apply episodic precedents than MD students. Compared with semantic precedents, episodic precedents have a greater possibility for being applied to the final solution.

Background: To prepare engineers who can address complex sociotechnical problems, a deep understanding of engineers' complex problem-solving approaches is needed. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study operationalizes comprehensive systems thinking as an analysis framework that attends to aspects of engineering work and relationships among those aspects. Leveraging this framework to analyze engineers' complex problem-solving approaches enables attention to social and technical dimensions. Design/Method: We interviewed 46 engineers about their specific complex problem-solving experiences. To explore a range of perspectives, we purposely sampled participants with varying academic, professional, and personal backgrounds and experiences. Data analysis focused on operationalizing comprehensive systems thinking; we first developed a set of aspects that captured the variety of considerations that participants discussed in their descriptions of solving a complex problem. We then inductively developed a scoring guide to differentiate response quality. Results: The scoring approach differentiated the quality of consideration based on a combination of the number of details provided, the degree of specificity, and analytical depth. While most participants discussed the consideration of a wide range of aspects of engineering work, they discussed far fewer possible relationships between these aspects. Contextual aspects of engineering work were consistently the least commonly identified and least likely to be considered in relation to other aspects of a given problem. Conclusions: Our differentiation of various complex problem-solving approaches can guide the development of educational interventions and tools, ultimately facilitating more comprehensive consideration of aspects--and in particular relationships among aspects--and setting up engineers to be more successful at developing appropriate solutions.

Background: Undergraduate students consistently struggle with mastering concepts related to thermodynamics. Prior work has shown that haptic technology and intensive hands-on workshops help improve learning outcomes relative to traditional lecture-based thermodynamics instruction. The current study takes a more feasible approach to improving thermal understanding by incorporating simple mechanical objects into individual problem-solving exercises. Purpose/Hypotheses: This study tests the impact of simple mechanical objects on learning outcomes (specifically, problem-solving performance and conceptual understanding) for third-year undergraduate engineering students in a thermodynamics course across a semester. Design/Method: During the semester, 119 engineering students in two sections of an undergraduate thermodynamics course completed three 15-min, self-guided problem-solving tasks, one section without and the other with a simple and relevant physical object. Performance on the tasks and improvements in thermodynamics comprehension (measured via Thermal and Transport Concept Inventory scores) were compared between the two sections. Results: Students who had a simple, relevant object available to solve three thermodynamics problems consistently outperformed their counterparts without objects, although only to statistical significance when examining the simple effects for the third problem. At the end of the semester, students who had completed the tasks with the objects displayed significantly greater improvements in thermodynamics comprehension than their peers without the relevant object. Higher mechanical aptitude facilitated the beneficial effect of object availability on comprehension improvements. Conclusion: Findings suggest that the incorporation of simple mechanical objects into active learning exercises in thermodynamics curricula could facilitate student learning in thermodynamics and potentially other abstract domains.

Background: Engineering's introduction into K-12 classrooms has been purported to support meaningful and inclusive learning environments. However, teachers must contend with dominant discourses embedded in US schooling that justify inequitable distributions of resources. Purpose: Drawing on Gee's notion of discourses, we examine how teachers incorporate language legitimizing socially and culturally constructed values and beliefs. In particular, we focus on the discourse of ability hierarchy--reflecting dominant values of sorting and ranking students based on perceived academic abilities--and the discourse of individual blame--reflecting dominant framings of educational problems as solely the responsibility of individual students or families. We aim to understand how these discourses surface in teachers' reasoning about teaching engineering. Method: We interviewed 15 teachers enrolled in an online graduate program in engineering education. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, we analyzed how teachers drew on discourses of blame and ability hierarchy when reasoning about problems of practice in engineering. Results: Teachers drew on engineering education concepts to reinforce dominant discourses (echoing specific language and preserving given roles) as well as to disrupt (utilizing different language or roles that [implicitly] challenge) dominant discourses. Importantly, teachers could also retool discourses of ability hierarchy (arguing for a more equitable distribution of resources but problematically preserving the values of ranking and sorting students). Conclusions: K-12 schooling's sociohistorical context can shape how teachers make sense of engineering in ways that implicate race, gender, disability, and language, suggesting a need to grapple with how discourses from schooling--and engineering culture--maintain marginalizing environments for students.

This paper explores the transformative potential of Large Language Models Artificial Intelligence (LLM AI) in educational contexts, particularly focusing on the innovative practice of prompt engineering. Prompt engineering, characterized by three essential components of content knowledge, critical thinking, and iterative design, emerges as a key mechanism to access the transformative capabilities of LLM AI in the learning process. This paper charts the evolving trajectory of LLM AI as a tool poised to reshape educational practices and assumptions. In particular, this paper breaks down the potential of prompt engineering practices to enhance learning by fostering personalized, engaging, and equitable educational experiences. The paper underscores how the natural language capabilities of LLM AI tools can help students and educators transition from passive recipients to active co-creators of their learning experiences. Critical thinking skills, particularly information literacy, media literacy, and digital citizenship, are identified as crucial for using LLM AI tools effectively and responsibly. Looking forward, the paper advocates for continued research to validate the benefits of prompt engineering practices across diverse learning contexts while simultaneously promoting potential defects, biases, and ethical concerns related to LLM AI use in education. It calls upon practitioners to explore and train educational stakeholders in best practices around prompt engineering for LLM AI, fostering progress towards a more engaging and equitable educational future.

Background: The number of artificial intelligence (AI) literacy studies in K-12 education has recently increased, with most research focusing on primary and secondary education contexts. Little research focuses on AI literacy programs in early childhood education. Objectives: The aim of this mixed-methods study is to examine the feasibility of an AI literacy program called "AI4KG" and explore how it might affect kindergarteners' perceptions of robots and attitudes towards engineering and science. Methods: A total of 26 child-parent dyads recruited from a Hong Kong kindergarten were involved in this study, consisting of 26 children (M[subscript age] = 4 years, SD = 0.28) and their parents. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through surveys and interviews designed to explore children's perceptions of robots and attitudes towards engineering and science, and parents' perceptions of the AI4KG intervention. Results: It is found that children have increased their perceptions of robots after the AI literacy program, but the AI4KG curriculum had no significant effects on kindergarten children's engineering and science attitudes. Most parents (22 out of 26) agreed that their children's AI knowledge, AI skills, and AI attitudes have been enhanced after learning through the AI4KG curriculum. Conclusions: This study suggests that the AI4KG curriculum is potentially effective in promoting early AI literacy and favourable attitudes towards the technology, but further research is needed to develop age-appropriate measures and assess its long-term impact on children's education and career paths.

This paper reports on how the concept and technologies of GIS are included in the telecommunications engineering curriculum at the undergraduate level. The course of Fundamentals of GIS is described in detail. The usage of GIS software is necessary part of GIS technology education. In order to evaluate available GIS software, several criteria are defined. For this purpose, the authors used Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology according to the goal to find the most appropriate GIS software in education of telecommunications engineers. The following software tools are considered: GRASS, uDig, SAGA, Prune and OpenJUMP. Each proposed criterion was given relative importance through pair-wise comparison. Taking into account proposed criteria, uDig software tools showed the most promising results to be used for education of future telecommunications engineers.

Students are expected to have developed their engineering judgement throughout the course of their studies as part of their accreditation requirements (as stipulated by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology for example), and yet conceptually it is often ill-defined and therefore difficult to teach. This work was carried out in an attempt to better conceptualise engineering judgement for use in higher education. As such, semi-structured interviews were conducted with established members of academic staff who additionally had extensive industrial experience - who were asked to define engineering judgement and which aspects students ought to develop in their studies. A pragmatic grounded theory approach was used, based on the assumption that a theoretical idea/framework could be developed, enabling us to refer to previous literature and the emerging categories from our data set to help clarify engineering judgement. Several terms help define engineering judgement, including accumulated experience, fundamental theoretical knowledge, and imagination/intuition. Essential criteria for developing judgement includes students' ability to identify and reduce complex problems, and embrace failure. A theoretical framework has been proposed accommodating a more enhanced definition and conceptualisation of engineering judgement which can be applied and adapted for use within engineering education for students' ultimate benefit.

National reform documents all around the world issue an urgent need for the development of integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) curricula. With the emphasis on the development of STEM curricula, there is also a need for improving teachers' and future teachers' conceptions of the integrated STEM approach. This study responds to this call by providing a context to develop pre-service science teachers' understanding of STEM disciplines. Query: In this study, we explored how the engineering design-based intervention developed the pre-service science teachers' understanding of integrated STEM education. For this purpose, four STEM activities that focus on a daily-life problem and an iterative engineering design process to solve the problem were adopted. The results revealed that participants' understanding of science was developed throughout the activities (i.e., from the first to the last activity). Similarly, there was an enrichment in their understanding of the engineering design process. On the other hand, there was no gradual development in participants' understanding of mathematics implying that participants had difficulties in making explicit connections with mathematics throughout the activities. Implications for effective STEM courses for developing pre-service science teachers' understanding of STEM disciplines and STEM courses in pre-service science teacher education programs were discussed.

Using administrative data from nearly 270,000 transfer-intending students who began at 70 community colleges across three state systems, this paper seeks to identify a set of metrics that will be useful to community college leaders as they formatively assess their colleges' efforts to improve STEM transfer outcomes. We find that a relatively simple set of STEM momentum metrics--notably Calculus and other non-math science and engineering coursework specified on statewide STEM transfer pathways, and to a lesser degree the pre-requisites to these types of courses--are reliable indicators of subsequent STEM transfer success across a wide-ranging set of state and institutional contexts, as well as across race/ethnicity and gender. However, community colleges have relatively low rates of completion of these key STEM courses, and disparities in completion of these courses by race/ethnicity and gender are common.

The STEM climate is overall less welcoming for queer students, and is especially harrowing for transgender, nonbinary, and students with additional gender non-conforming identities (TNBGNC+). Professional STEM societies provide students with a range of resources that help them persist in STEM, though qualitative research shows that such societies geared toward queer and trans students may offer less professional and academic resources and prioritize identity management. The objective of our research is to identify, among queer and trans students, whether there are differences between how TNBGNC+ students and gender majoritized students access resources important in STEM persistence across professional society types, including those societies organized to serve women, racial/ethnic minoritized groups, queer and trans groups, as well as those science societies and chapters without a stated group focus. The society resources we focus on include: sense of community, social networking, professional resources, leadership skills, academic resources, reduced isolation related to identities, and perceptions that societies in which they may participate are helpful to them in their degree progress. This study offers an analysis of survey data from 477 queer and trans STEM undergraduates relating to their participation in STEM professional societies. To conduct this research, we embraced and enacted recommendations by scholars on strategies and frameworks to queer our methodology, survey, and analysis. We found that at oSTEM, TNBGNC+ students may not be benefitting to the same extent as gender majoritized students when it comes to feeling in community with other members and having opportunities for social networking. However, TNBGNC+ students may benefit more from a reduction in isolation related to their identities. Differences in how SWE served TNBGNC+ students echoes previous work, and may speak to the society's organization around the cisgender, patriarchal framework. SHPE's relative success with TNBGNC+ students also reproduces existing work, suggesting the society may be more largely scaffolded for more affirming environments writ large. As well, that science in comparison to industry chapters were more beneficial to TNBGNC+ students brings forward possible differences between science and industry chapters, in which the former may be influenced more by the scholarship and science of gender, while the latter, with its more business and public focus, could be more influenced by dominant narratives in STEM. This work has implications for societies when it comes to enacting policies to cultivate more inclusive community environments and buttress potentially unequal access to social networking as well as professional and academic resources. At the same time, there is room for oSTEM to augment how it supports TNBGNC+ students with academic and professional resources and benefit students' progress in their degree programs.

This study examined the impact of an intensive professional development series on early childhood educators' content knowledge of engineering and their self-efficacy towards teaching engineering. Seventeen early childhood teachers participated and responded to questionnaires, surveys, and focus-group interviews before and after the professional development. The results show that these early childhood educators significantly (1) increased their knowledge of engineering; (2) improved their engineering teaching self-efficacy; and (3) enhanced their confidence level towards teaching engineering for young children. This study is important because it provides an example of an effective approach to enhance early childhood teachers' preparation in teaching engineering activities for young children. It also sheds light on the urgency to improve overall teacher preparation and continuous education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics for young children.

Despite the importance of undergraduate research for student learning and development, not enough work has been done to clarify its effects in different disciplinary contexts. Using data from the China College Student Survey, this research adopts Becher and Trowler's theory of discipline classification to understand the relationship between undergraduate research and students' learning outcomes in different disciplines. It indicates that first, contributing to journals/conferences correlates with students' self-reported learning outcomes in Physics, History, and Engineering, but these relationships can be explained by process-centered activities, except in Physics. Second, early-year undergraduates' learning outcomes are relatively weakly related to conducting research with faculty in pure disciplines. By contrast, such relationships are distinct in applied disciplines. Third, in soft disciplines, participating in competitions significantly correlates with more types of students' learning outcomes than conducting research with faculty, while in hard disciplines, they both play quite important roles. It makes recommendations for future research and practice, which enrich insight into how universities can best engage undergraduates in research.

Maker education can enhance learners' creativity. Design thinking can facilitate the innovative resolution of complex problems. The design thinking literature and most maker teaching modes are limited in their promotion of learning and ability development in various dimensions. Learners have stereotypes about some professions; interventions can help change these stereotypes. This research used quantitative and qualitative analyses to determine the impacts of the design thinking-maker education intervention on primary school students to prove its effectiveness in improving the learners' academic level and in developing their creative tendencies, and whether the design thinking-maker education intervention can help change the learners' stereotypes of engineers. Herein, 136 Year 4 students took a course called Movement of Objects. Traditional instruction and a design thinking-maker education intervention were applied to the control and experimental groups (n = 68 each), respectively. All students underwent an academic pretest and posttest. Stereotypes of engineers were examined through the Draw-an-Engineer Test (DAET). Creative tendencies were investigated through a pretest and posttest questionnaire. Interviews were conducted to obtain course feedback and information on the participants' perceptions of engineers. The significant between-group difference in preexisting knowledge disappeared on the posttest, and the experimental group exhibited a more significant improvement in their academic level (p < 0.01) than did the control group (p < 0.05). Regarding creative tendencies, significant pretest-posttest differences in adventure, curiosity, imagination, and the total score were observed in the experimental group. On the posttest of the DAET, the control group depicted significantly less facial hair but significantly more helmets and symbols of research and knowledge, whereas the experimental group depicted significantly less facial hair but significantly more helmets, symbols, and relevant captions. The design thinking-maker education intervention improved the learners' academic performance, developed their creative tendencies, and changed their stereotypes of engineers.

Games have been used as a learning tool for centuries. Gamification and game-based learning are becoming more prominent in educational settings for several reasons. When it comes to learning, being focused and immersed can massively improve a student's experience. The purpose of this study is to map the emerging trends of gamification and game-based learning (GBL) in the Vocational and Education Training (VET) sector. For this purpose, a Systematic Literature Review was conducted through the three most relevant scientific databases -- Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and PubMed with Google Scholar as a supporting database. The obtained sample was further selected following the PRISMA guidelines with screening and eligibility processes conducted based on inclusion criteria that were defined with consideration to the research's aim. This review comprised seventeen studies. The findings revealed a growing interest in the Asian continents in research from 2020 onwards. Furthermore, most of the study is centred on vocational schools and colleges in the engineering and healthcare fields. According to the overview, the digital learning platform and simulation technology are the most promising tools used in the research. The findings support the conclusion that gamification and game-based learning can improve academic performance, engagement, and motivation in vocational education learners. As a result, this study suggests that more research is needed to determine the gamification strategies that are most suited for vocational education and learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced challenges to delivering laboratory-based STEM curricula. This study evaluates students' learning experience in a synchronous team design activity within the laboratory component of an undergraduate Computer Engineering course during the pandemic. Using the EduPad digital platform, students collaborated in small groups to develop a working design for a software simulator. The researchers measured students' social, cognitive, and teaching presences during the remote team design activities and gathered their feedback on the learning experience. The findings demonstrate that students exhibited high levels of cognitive presence during the remote team design activities, suggesting effective strategies for promoting cognitive presence in synchronous engineering laboratory instruction. This study contributes to the community of inquiry framework and expands the existing repertoire of techniques for enhancing cognitive presence in online synchronous instruction. The implications for further research are also discussed.

Contribution: This article presents an engineering outreach activity that aims to teach K-12 students how to develop a tendon-based soft robotic finger. The primary objectives of this STEM activity are to introduce students to the fundamentals of soft robotics, its interdisciplinary nature, and to offer them a hands-on and engaging learning experience using the project-based- learning approach. Background: Soft robotics, an interdisciplinary field combining chemistry, materials science, and robotics, has the potential to revolutionize the design and development of robots. However, introducing the fundamental concepts of soft robotics to K-12 students can be challenging since traditional robotic activities often require complex programming, technical expertise and expensive equipment and software. Intended Outcomes: Increasing the students' understanding of soft robotics principles, materials, and polymer processing. Positively impacting students' perception of engineering as a potential career path by enhancing their attitudes toward STEM. Application Design: Students could develop manually actuated soft robotic fingers within a 45-min workshop by utilizing 3-D printed molds, rapidly curing elastomeric materials, and the basic mold casting method. The outreach activity is intentionally designed to simplify the technology used by eliminating the need for complex programming, and to focus on utilizing novel materials and basic concepts to construct actuating soft robots, providing an effective and engaging STEM activity for K-12 students. Findings: The success/effectiveness of the activity was evaluated in three ways: 1) through direct inspection on the performance of the student-fabricated soft finger during the workshop; 2) through the pre- and post-tests to evaluate the learning outcomes; and 3) by conducting a STEM outreach survey to gather student feedback on the quality of the outreach activity and their attitudes toward STEM. During the workshop activities, the students were able to effectively follow the instructions, construct a tendon-based soft robotic finger, and manually actuate the finger using the tendon. According to the results of pre- and post-tests, the students increased their understanding regarding the principles of soft robotics, materials and polymer processing. Furthermore, the STEM outreach survey of IEEE powered "TryEngineering Portal" revealed that the developed outreach activity enhanced the achievement of pedagogical and quality outcome goals and measures, as well as program targets and objectives.

Despite an increasing focus on integrating engineering design in K-12 settings, relatively few studies have investigated how to support students to engage in systematic processes to optimize the designs of their solutions. Emerging learning technologies such as computational models and simulations enable rapid feedback to learners about their design performance, as well as the ability to research how students may or may not be using systematic approaches to the optimization of their designs. This study explored how middle school, high school, and pre-service students optimized the design of a home for energy efficiency, size, and cost using facets of fluency, flexibility, closeness, and quality. Results demonstrated that students with successful designs tended to explore the solution space with designs that met the criteria, with relatively lower numbers of ideas and fewer tightly controlled tests. Optimization facets did not vary across different student levels, suggesting the need for more emphasis on supporting quantitative analysis and optimization facets for learners in engineering settings.

This study explored young children's perceptions of engineers and engineering through their drawings and narratives. Twenty-six children ranging from four-to eight-years-old participated. Results indicated that although children in this group had limited knowledge of engineers and engineering, most of them, regardless of gender, not only drew engineers reflecting their own gender, but they also identified themselves as engineers already. More than half of them would like to become engineers when they grow up. This study supports the idea that young children are capable engineering learners and calls for age-appropriate, play-based engineering learning experiences in the early years.

Scientific and technological research is important to everyone because their results affect humanity worldwide. Although science and technology bring many benefits to humanity, individuals and societies can face the negative consequences of science and technology. To prevent and solve the negative consequences of research in these fields, it is important to educate scientists and engineers to have social responsibility. However, no research has addressed preservice science teachers' views of social responsibility in literature. Therefore, this study aimed to explore Chinese pre-service science teachers' views on the social responsibility of scientists and engineers. The research participants were 194 pre-service science teachers. A social responsibility instrument was administered for data collection. The results showed that participants had high mean scores in five areas of social responsibility and a good awareness of the role of scientists and engineers in addressing problems and risks related to human, environmental, and societal impacts. However, they had lower mean scores in three areas requiring action or involvement. In addition, the results did not show statistical differences by gender or grade level. In light of our findings, we conclude pedagogical and practical implications for teachers and researchers in teaching social responsibility.

The undergraduate geoscience program concludes with a field-based capstone course that equips the graduating geologist with basic field-mapping abilities. However, many of the field-based geoscience programs have been temporarily halted or converted to an online version because of the COVID-19 outbreak. The South Dakota Mines created an online course to fulfill the demand for graduating seniors in the vast discipline of geoscience. Considering that this is a new way of delivering this course, it is important to understand the effectiveness of this online course. Thus, the main goal of the present study is to determine students' online learning satisfaction and its relationship with online learning self-efficacy. A total of 33 students participated in the study. Two instruments were used for this study: one for assessing online learning self-efficacy and the other for evaluating online learning satisfaction. Descriptive statistics and Pearson product correlation analysis were conducted to analyze data. The results indicated that students had high levels of self-efficacy beliefs and their learning satisfaction score was high as well. It was also found that self-efficacy to complete an online course was significantly related to learning satisfaction. Discussion of the findings and suggestions for online teaching and learning are given.

The study aims to present how to apply a STEM activity in which physical computing principles and computational thinking processes are used as a differentiation practice to be used in the education of gifted students. In the activity, the students designed smart packaging that will provide healthy long-term storage of foods to solve the greenhouse gas emission problem caused by intensive plastic production. The activity was carried out with eight gifted students studying in 7th-9th grades. The students investigated the factors that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and synthesized biodegradable polymers during the inquiry process. In the engineering design process, they determined the most suitable solution for packaging design in the polymer synthesis they carried out using different plant extracts with antibacterial properties. They developed a smart packaging design using physical computing in this process. During the STEM activity, the students used computational thinking, engineering design, and inquiry process.

This study aimed to refine and validate a Mechatronic System Usability Evaluation (MSUE) questionnaire. A total of 626 users were selected using random sampling, from the area of West Thessaloniki, Greece. The validity of the questionnaire were tested with the content and construction validity method. The reliability of the MSUE questionnaire instrument were tested using test-retest and internal consistency method. Factor analysis resulted a 25 questions questionnaire divided into five axes of, namely efficiency, effectiveness, Satisfaction, ease of use, and ease of learn. The Cronbach Alpha coefficient for the entire scale was 0.819. The questionnaire was tested and the results was shown a suitable instrument to measure usability on mechatronic systems.

Superhero themes have been increasingly used in the teaching of a range of topics including business, humanities and science in recent years. Typically, characters from existing popular media are adopted for the teaching activities. On the other hand, customised characters that are developed from scratch allow the educator to have more control of the characters' features so that the learning objectives can be achieved more effectively. In this work, new fictitious characters have been created as cases for students to perform their engineering materials selection assignment. The motivation for using the superhero theme was to increase the students' excitement in the assignment. This paper shares the approach taken and the teaching experience after running the superhero theme with two cohorts of students.

The present study explores the needs for English meeting lessons for Thai undergraduate engineering students. The participants consisted of 5 groups: 443 engineering students, 150 novice engineers, 224 experienced engineers, 4 ESP teachers, and 5 engineering teachers. Data were collected using 3 sets of questionnaires and semi-interview. Data analysis was conducted using percentage, means, standard deviation, and thematic analysis. The findings revealed that both novice engineers and engineering students have a high degree of difficulty when conducting meetings in English. In addition, it was found that there are three stages of the meeting process: preparation, participation, and post-meeting. Regarding types of meetings, the most common regular type of meeting was the problem-solving meeting. Furthermore, the results imparted the language details for the meeting participation stage that were identified based on each language function. The study discusses the main issues concerning the difficulties that Thai engineering students encounter, how the target language is used, as well as practical implications for solving issues, and proposes suggestions for developing English for meeting lessons and teaching materials. Finally, analyzing meeting discourse is recommended for further research.

This study aimed to develop a STEM module for eighth-grade middle school learners through the engineering design process. The module was developed based on the ADDIE model, primarily concentrating on the stages of analysis, design and development. The study consisted of two main phases: module development and module evaluation. During the development phase, 26 science teachers and 30 eighth-grade middle school pupils were purposefully selected from a public sector middle school in China. Subject themes of the EDP-STEM module were determined by data analysis using coding of responses to interview questions and questionnaires seeking to elicit perceived needs. The EDP-STEM module's learning objectives, engineering design process, and STEM knowledge were subsequently developed. In the evaluation phase, five experts and 50 ninth-grade middle school pupils were recruited to verify the reliability and validity of the EDP-STEM module. The Content Validity Index (CVI) for the EDP-STEM module was 0.92, and the Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient was 0.76. Based on their feedback and suggestions, the researcher made modifications and improvements to the EDP-STEM module. The results of the study showed that EDP-STEM module has good reliability and validity and can be used as a learning module to carry out STEM learning in eighth-grade classrooms.

In many mechanical engineering undergraduate curriculums, there are topics that are vital to the students' future careers in the manufacturing and design workforce that are not taught in-depth. As one of those topics, Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing, or GD&T, is vital to companies who develop and manufacture products because it allows one to communicate with other team members in order to produce and inspect manufactured parts. GD&T is filled with intricate concepts that are hard to grasp without repetition and practice. An active learning intervention was developed and deployed in a mechanical engineering undergraduate class at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The active learning interventions were developed to assist students in learning basic manual inspection methods and communicating through a part drawing. The goal was for the students to obtain a foundational, hands-on understanding of GD&T and implement their learnings onto a part drawing and inspection plan. The results of this intervention were based on a Knowledge Assessment, self-reported Self-Efficacy Survey, and an Exit Survey. These assessments revealed that the GD&T intervention had a significant impact on the students' knowledgebase of the topic and their ability to perform identification and inspection tasks used in the workforce. This paper discusses the intervention structure and its potential applications for engineering education in the workforce.

The integration of information and communications technology (ICT) into the education system has led to changes in the way teaching and learning are conducted. These changes have necessitated the need for teachers to have ICT skills that would help them integrate ICT into teaching and learning (T&L). Hence, this qualitative study was conducted to investigate the state of readiness of Engineering Graphics and Design (EGD) teachers in the integration of ICT in T&L in uMgungundlovu secondary schools. Convenience sampling was employed to select nine EGD teachers to partake in this study. Semi-structured interviews and classroom observations were used to collect data. Data gathered from interviews was subjected to thematic analysis, and data gathered from observations was reported descriptively. The findings of this study revealed that EGD teachers in uMgungundlovu District are ready to integrate ICT into the T&L of EGD, as they indicated that ICT integration in EGD lessons is essential. The study further revealed a shortage of ICT resources and a lack of ICT skills among teachers, which hinder the successful integration of ICT. The study recommends that the Department of Basic Education (DBE) provide teachers with ICT training so that those who are technically disadvantaged can be equipped with relevant ICT skills. The study further recommends that DBE give the schools an AutoCAD license, as it has been proven to be a useful ICT tool.

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the consequent lockdown took the world by surprise, forcing the trimming of the school curriculum and institutions of higher learning to urgently adopt online platforms to continue teaching and learning. This article is a case study that explores the use of a social media platform, WhatsApp, to improve peer learning and peer support in a South African context. The study sought to explore the nature of peer-to-peer learning that took place, and how peer support contributed positively to a student's conceptual understanding of the mathematics concepts. It involved a cohort of 180 entry-level students of an undergraduate engineering mathematics course. Guided by social constructivism, we analysed the data qualitatively using grounded theory. The results suggest that WhatsApp served as a viable platform for communication and peer-to-peer learning of engineering mathematics concepts. The study also found that the WhatsApp postings peer support alleviated the negative effects of remote learning. Some implications of the study as well as recommendations are suggested.

Optimization is a vital mathematical concept widely applied in various engineering fields. However, teaching this subject to engineering students often involves abstract materials, making it challenging for them to grasp. To address this issue, a group of five mathematics lecturers collaborated on designing a practical lesson on optimization for first-year engineering students. The aim was to present the concept through a real-world problem, making it more accessible and applicable. The lesson focused on the design of water channels used for transferring water from sources to farms, showcasing how engineers can create optimal water channels with different geometrical cross-sections for agricultural purposes. This approach allowed students to see the direct application of mathematics in the real-world. The lesson was conducted as a three-hour workshop and attended by 38 volunteer first-year engineering students at a Malaysian university. Data were collected through observations and interviews and analyzed using the thematic analysis method. Feedback from both the lecturers and the participating students indicated that this teaching method significantly enhanced their conceptual understanding of mathematical optimization. Moreover, it fostered the development of problem-solving skills in real-world scenarios, bridging the gap between engineering and mathematics.

This study investigated the influence of CThink4CS2 Module on computational thinking (CT) skills of form four chemistry students. The CThink4CS[superscript]2 Module integrated CT with the Engineering Design Process (EDP) in chemistry class. This study utilized quantitative research methods and quasi-experimental design. Quantitative data were collected using the Computational Thinking Skill Test (CTST) which consisted of algorithmic reasoning, abstraction, decomposition, and pattern recognition constructs. A total of 73 students were in the treatment group (n=39) and control group (n=34). Experimental data were described by means of descriptive analysis and inferential analysis employing two-way MANOVA analysis. The results of the analysis indicated significant differences in CT skills between groups; students in the treatment group demonstrated better results compared to those in the control group. The paper provides insight into the integration of CT and EDP as effective pedagogical strategies for inculcating CT skills.

The impact of engineering design-based STEM education on 9th-grade high school students' attitudes toward STEM and their problem-solving skills was examined in this study. The subject of factors affecting the heat conduction rate in solids was taught using STEM education. In an experimental design with one group pre-test and post-test, students completed a STEM attitude scale and problem-solving inventory before and after the treatment. According to the paired samples t-test findings, students' attitudes toward mathematics, engineering, and 21st-century skills increased significantly, whereas their attitudes toward science and problem-solving did not change. The eta-squared effect size suggests a high level of change for other dependent variables but only a moderate change for problem-solving skills. In light of the findings, several recommendations about incorporating engineering design-based STEM education have been suggested.

First-generation college students (FGCS) in engineering bring a wealth of knowledge to their academic and social experiences in higher education, in contrast to deficit-based narratives that students are underprepared. By listening to FGCS' own experiences navigating higher education and using information literacy in their project-based work, librarians and educators can better understand students' funds of knowledge, social capital, and identities, as well as the institutional barriers that must be removed. This paper shares interview findings with (n = 11) FGCS and suggests implications for professional practice that are relevant to information literacy for design, project-based, or practitioner focused disciplines.

Pupils benefit from adaptive instruction and feedback from their teachers. A prerequisite for providing adaptive instruction is that teachers' diagnostic ability enables them to correctly perceive their pupils' skill level. A short course has been developed to improve primary school teachers' diagnostic ability for engineering. Based on Nickerson's anchoring and adjustment model, the participants became aware of the differences their own and pupils' use of information when constructing technical systems. The Fischer scale was used as a model to understand and identify pupils' development in using such information. The participants were given examples of pupils' reconstructions of technical systems. They were asked to evaluate these work products in four ways: relative and absolute, combined with intuitive and explicit. The results reveal that relative and absolute diagnoses can differ considerably for the same teacher and between teachers, depending on whether they are implicit or explicit. Post-test results show that the course improved the ability to explain the differences between pupils' use of information to construct a technical system. The course also had a strong, significant, positive impact on teachers' self-efficacy beliefs about technology education.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is becoming an important part of general education, based on a concept that includes three components: Environmental, Social and Economic. The sustainable development curriculum in Croatia is based on this concept, and activities in this area are mainly limited to environmental protection and ecological activities. At the same time, the technological and political context needed to take the right action and develop critical thinking and a systemic approach is lacking. In this context, a survey on pupils' attitudes towards the relationship between technology and engineering with the themes of ecology and sustainable development was conducted to investigate the impact of this curriculum on students' awareness. The research was conducted on a stratified sample of primary school pupils (N = 2205) from Croatia. The results show that pupils view technology as important for life and progress, but do not understand how it relates to sustainable development and environmental issues. This refers to issues of water conservation, construction of facilities, waste disposal, and understanding technology only as pollution. These results point to the need for "deeper" and transformative technology teaching that takes place in a real-world context. Only in this way can students understand the concept and meaning of sustainable development and the role and importance of technology in this context, and be educated to be responsible citizens.

Over the past several years, creativity has been recognized as an important skill for success in STEM education, engineering design and computational thinking. There is limited research on how to apply Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate (CDIO) engineering design in STEM courses and how it affects students' creativity. This study strategically integrated computational thinking (CT), STEM, and CDIO engineering design, based on Action-Process-Object-Schema (APOS) theory, into a course. This study has adopted a framework to design creative learning materials and examined how this framework impacts students' creativity. This study used a pretest-posttest nonequivalent-groups design. The study investigated a STEM course which had 40 participants (n = 40, male = 11, female = 29) for 12 weeks. 6 weeks were spent using traditional teaching and 6 weeks integrating a CDIO framework into computational thinking. All the students in the course were college students with teacher college backgrounds. To examine the impact of our course, we used a questionnaire to examine the students' creativity before and after the STEM course was applied. Our results show that our course had a significantly impact on our students' creativity, particularly in the case of the male students. This finding is consistent with the findings of other research studies. This study also offers some suggestions for teachers who wish to improve their learning materials.

Teachers with professional experience are important for improving students' learning experiences and understanding of practical industry skills in engineering. This study explores why upper-level professional engineers decided to enter teaching with their Master of Arts in Teaching or Master of Teaching programmes and how pre-service teachers with decades of professional experience in engineering described and made sense of their career decisions to become secondary teachers. Sixteen participants shared their stories and their decisions. Among the motivations they reported, the relationship between industry and classroom knowledge in terms of preparation for university studies and encouragement from professional engineers to pursue engineering education influenced their decision. This study provides recommendations for potential second-career teachers and workforce management plans for school leaders and government agencies.

Although academic writing has been seen as an objective form of writing, recent studies have shown that it is a form of social interaction and not totally impersonal. In line with this view, Hyland (2002) stated that academic writing is also strongly linked with the manifestation of authorial presence across the text. Included in the interactional metadiscourse framework devised by Hyland (2005), self-mentions enable writers to express their beliefs, show attitudes, become a part of the community, and interact with their readers. Consequently, academic texts become more credible, accountable, and interactive by the manifestation of authorial presence through self-mentions. This paper analyses the use, distribution and discourse functions of self-mentions, the we-oriented authorial presence in particular. The corpus of the study consisted of 200 Results and Discussion sections from research articles (RAs) published in the field of engineering and technology, totaling approximately 270,000 words. Both manual and automatic analyses were employed to achieve more accurate results and the verbs most frequently collocated with an explicit authorial we presence were also analysed manually. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses clearly showed that the most frequent function used in Results and Discussion sections in the field was explaining a procedure with 723 instances (54.69%), and that the least frequent functions which writers employed were "describing themselves" and "making a claim/prediction," each with two instances (0.15%). The qualitative analysis showed that writers employed authorial presence to achieve different discourse functions (such as explaining a procedure, stating goals, describing themselves and making a claim or prediction), but preferred to avoid using more argumentative and interactional functions (describing themselves and making a claim or prediction), which can be strongly associated with the purpose of evading interaction with the readers.

Toys used as a play tool have an important role in the development of children. For this reason, it is necessary to offer children the opportunity to design their own toys. Scientific toys can be used in science lessons to encourage creativity and to teach science concepts and scientific inquiry. With the integrated STEM Education and specifically Engineering Design Process, children can have the ability to design their toys according to their own creativity, while at the same time they can gain many skills through scientific studies. The integration of these designs into education will contribute to the development of engineering skills perceptions and scientific creativity. This study aims to examine the effect of scientific toy design activities based on engineering design process on the scientific creativity of middle school students' and their views on scientific toy design activities. The research conducted for this purpose was carried out over a 9-week period. The study group consists of 40 middle school 7th grade students. The research was carried out with a single group pre-test post-test experimental design method. "Scientific Creativity Test" was used to collect the data. Data were analysed using quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques. As a result of the research, it was determined that the scientific creativity of middle school students improved positively with scientific toy design activities based on the engineering design process.