The Cumulative Effects of an NSF-Funded Additive Manufacturing Course at Three Large State Universities and Their Surrounding Communities.

This paper is the culmination of four years of an NSF-funded project implementing and assessing an undergraduate additive manufacturing course at three large state universities: Texas Tech University, Kansas State University, and California State University - Northridge. The research questions addressed are: (1) What are the changes in skill and knowledge concerning additive manufacturing experienced by undergraduate students? (2) What is the effect of this course on attitudes towards engineering and self-efficacy in engineering for enrolled undergraduate students? The sample consists of four years of data from the undergraduate students enrolled in the course at all three universities (combined N = 196). Our method for data collection was matched-pair surveys that contained both (i) an assessment for content knowledge and (ii) an attitudinal assessment previously validated in published research for data collection about attitudes towards engineering. Matched-pair surveys means that we collected data from Student X at Time 1 (before being taught) and then again from at Time 2 (after being taught) and are able to directly compare any change in content knowledge or attitude within the same person. We also collected demographic information to be able to see whether changes in, for example, women differed from those in men. All undergraduates experienced statistically significant increases in content knowledge and additive manufacturing skills. In an intriguing finding, female students outperformed male students, which fits with the research that indicates that engineering courses which emphasize pragmatic and real-world applications, as well as those that use group work, will disproportionately help underserved engineering populations like women and people of color succeed. Fitting with the above finding, undergraduates noted that they perceived that they had increased in teamwork, communication, and computer programming skills. These gains were particularly high in female students and students of color. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]