The Characteristics of Engineering Learning in Communities of Practice: An Exploratory Multi-case Study.

The Emerging Engineering Education (3E) transformation has been implemented in China to meet the society's needs of high-quality talents in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. The transformation has stimulated some new forms of engineering learning which were organized in communities of practice such as engineering studio, engineering laboratory in some universities. However, little is known about the characteristics of engineering learning in communities of practice. In the paper, we would like to bridge this gap and make some deep explorations about these new forms of engineering learning under the guideline of situated engineering learning framework. Following the principles of the purposeful and theoretical sampling method, We selected four different types of engineering communities of practice at Zhejiang University. We made some iterative semi-structured interviews with students in these communities and used an inductive as well as constant comparative approach to analyze the qualitative materials we gathered from interviews. At last, we identified four salient themes about the characteristics of engineering learning in communities of practice from our analysis: (a) authentic-task driven, (b) collaborative inquiry, (c) reflective-design process, (d) engineering identity. Future we will build on this study and develop some valid instruments to measure these characteristics in order to clarify the relationship between community of practice and engineering students' learning effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]