Framework for skill development through co-curricular and extracurricular involvement

Thesis (S.M. in Technology and Policy)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-113).As the global marketplace becomes increasingly interconnected and multidisciplinary, graduates of undergraduate engineering programs face new challenges in communication, creative thinking, and teamwork as they enter the international workforce. To address this shift, over the last two decades American universities have adjusted educational objectives of undergraduate engineering programs to include new themes in international awareness, communication, teamwork, and other professional skills. Motivated by student leadership development programs at the new Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), this thesis examines how student engagement in co-curricular and extracurricular activities promotes professional skill development in engineering education at the undergraduate level. Using a two-stage analysis of MIT student organizations and current literature in student involvement, this work presents a two-dimensional framework of the leadership and professional skills developed through participation in 22 categories of co-curricular and extracurricular involvement. The relevance of these skills to engineering education and practice is validated through interviews with managers and supervisors of entry-level engineers. In addition, these skills are compared with key educational outcomes specified by ABET, Inc. (previously known as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology), further validating the relevance of the two-dimensional framework of skill development to engineering practice. Lastly, this thesis provides an analysis of strategies to promote student involvement and leadership development in engineering undergraduates.by Dara R. Fisher.S.M.in Technology and Polic

Measures Taken at the Institutional Level to Prepare and Motivate Students to Perform Well on the Associate Constructor Exam

Construction education is relatively young as a discipline in academia. Due to the combination of the diverse curriculum offered by different construction programs and the unique nature of every construction project, it is very challenging to standardize the skill set demands of industry. A certification exam has the potential of acting as a bridge between the requirements of both industry and formal college education. As observed, the student AC exam pass rate varies for every construction program by a relatively large margin. The objective of this research was to identify the factors responsible for this variation in results and make recommendations to construction programs for improving student performance on the AC exam. After recommendations were made, the programs could further use the exam to more accurately reflect student learning. In the process of this study, the first stage was to identify the possible factors affecting the performance of a test-taker on standardized testing. Two factors were identified: motivation level and preparation method of the test-taker; therefore, in the second stage of the study, the impact of these two major factors was observed by determining and statistically analyzing various sub-factors within the context of preparation and motivation. Participants representing three diverse data points were considered for multiple surveys: 1) test takers at Clemson University in the fall of 2016, 2) overall student test takers for fall of 2016, and 3) Department Chairs of construction programs. Based on the results of statistical analysis and referring to study material provided by AIC, the similarity of course content of their program with AC exam syllabus and higher study hours invested for preparation positively influence the scores of test takers. Additionally, test takers who considered the exam personally important and at the same time acknowledged the importance of the exam for their program performed better than test takers who did not acknowledge the same. However, test takers who valued the exam as more important for future employment purposes did not perform well in the exam

Defining A Stakeholder-relative Model To Measure Academic Department Efficiency At Achieving Quality In Higher Education

In a time of strained resources and dynamic environments, the importance of effective and efficient systems is critical. This dissertation was developed to address the need to use feedback from multiple stakeholder groups to define quality and assess an entity’s efficiency at achieving such quality. A decision support model with applicability to diverse domains was introduced to outline the approach. Three phases, (1) quality model development, (2) input-output selection and (3) relative efficiency assessment, captured the essence of the process which also delineates the approach per tool applied. This decision support model was adapted in higher education to assess academic departmental efficiency at achieving stakeholder-relative quality. Phase 1 was accomplished through a three round, Delphi-like study which involved user group refinement. Those results were compared to the criteria of an engineering accreditation body (ABET) to support the model’s validity to capture quality in the College of Engineering & Computer Science, its departments and programs. In Phase 2 the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to the validated model to quantify the perspective of students, administrators, faculty and employers (SAFE). Using the composite preferences for the collective group (n=74), the model was limited to the top 7 attributes which accounted for about 55% of total preferences. Data corresponding to the resulting variables, referred to as key performance indicators, was collected using various information sources and infused in the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology (Phase 3). This process revealed both efficient and inefficient departments while offering transparency of opportunities to maximize quality outputs. Findings validate the potential of the ii Delphi-like, analytic hierarchical, data envelopment analysis approach for administrative decision-making in higher education. However, the availability of more meaningful metrics and data is required to adapt the model for decision making purposes. Several recommendations were included to improve the usability of the decision support model and future research opportunities were identified to extend the analyses inherent and apply the model to alternative areas

University of Maine System Self Study

Upon granting unified accreditation to the University of Maine System in July 2020, the regional accreditor, the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), asked the University of Maine System prepare a self-study in advance of a Fall 2022 visit by a NECHE-appointed evaluation team

Shifting Pedagogical Paradigms: The Active Learning in Engineering Program

Engineering education has a long and well-researched history; however, recent declines in the number of undergraduate students entering and matriculating through to graduation has commanded the engineering education community’s attention. To help counter the declining number of students entering and persisting in engineering, an engineering education reformation is underway where instructors use their engineering mindsets to transition from knowledge transmitters to designers of knowledge creation, learner-centered environments. However, many engineering instructors are not trained in such methodologies. As a result, engineering colleges and departments have made efforts to assist instructors in developing such pedagogical capabilities and efficacy. Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering (CoE) sought to modernize their facilities as a means of supporting pedagogical change, which included innovatively designed learning spaces in the new Zachry Engineering Education Complex. The updated learning spaces catalyzed the need to provide instructors with faculty development to assist their transition into the newly renovated Zachry spaces, encouraging them to incorporate more evidence-based teaching strategies as a way of moving towards the College’s strategic goals. Texas A&M’s CoE sought assistance to create a faculty development program to accelerate faculty’s use of the learning spaces Zachry affords. The Active Learning in Engineering Program (ALEP) was developed as a partnership between the CoE, the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), and Instructional Technology Services (ITS). The ALEP aimed to prepare and support engineering instructors as they transition pedagogical paradigms into one that foster more learner-centered instruction for the newly designed Zachry. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the ALEP. Its results indicate the didactic instructional profile remains common across undergraduate engineering regardless of the substantial amount of support for more impactful evidence-based teaching strategies. Though this is the case, slight indicators of improvement can be detected, while not statistically significant, challenging institutions and disciplines to relook at policies and practices potentially perpetuating this status quo. Specifically, the researcher would recommend institutions reflect on and revise their pre-service and in-service faculty development for future and current instructors, incentivize and reward instructor’s implementation of evidence-based teaching practices, and the use of a research-based holistic framework for the review of teaching

Dissertation Abstracts 1969-2019

This is the Seventh Edition of the Dissertation Abstracts of the Center for International Education (CIE). It contains abstracts of all the doctoral dissertations completed by students actively involved in CIE from 1969 through the academic year ending in June 2019. The abstracts in this document reflect research in the fields of Development Education, Nonformal and Adult Education, Literacy, Community Development, and Global Education in both international and domestic contexts. The abstracts reflect the values that inform the research and the practice of the Center: the theory and practice of liberation, consciousness-raising, literacy and popular education, empowerment, social change, gender issues in education, an emphasis on qualitative, participatory and action research methodologies, and education in crisis and conflict situations. The emphasis on the human component of development reflects the ongoing commitment of CIE to study and implement educational processes which increase the learners\u27 control over their lives. The abstracts are presented in chronological order based on dates of graduation and are numbered sequentially. Abstracts are indexed by the author\u27s name in the Author Index, by geographic location of the research, and by topic in the Subject Index. To locate relevant abstracts search one or more of the indexes and then use the sequence number/s to find the desired abstract/s in the text. The full text of many of the dissertations is available free from ScholarWorks, a public, online digital library for scholarly publications from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Most the dissertations contained in this document can be accessed from the CIE section of Scholarworks (https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cie_diss/). A new section is included at the end of this document that includes abstracts of students who were affiliated with CIE beginning in 2019. These abstracts are numbered A1, A2, ...etc

Exploring Civil Engineering Undergraduate and Practitioners’ Performance on Strength of Materials Concept Inventory

Preparing successful engineering undergraduate students for the workforce is imperative and requires students to apply their conceptual understanding of engineering fundamentals to engineering design work. Conceptual understanding is assessed through the use of concept inventories. Learning theories may help explain differences in concept inventory performance. Expert novice theory suggests that experts understand the concepts as big ideas and would be able to solve problems where they have conceptual understanding. Situated cognition theory suggests that knowledge is contextual, and performance would hinge on the participant's familiarity with the question and the visual representations in the question. Although there is a growing body of literature analyzing students' conceptual understanding through concept inventories, few studies focus on how or if conceptual understanding transitions into engineering practice. The purpose of this study is to explore differences in conceptual understanding of strength of material concepts across engineering undergraduate students and professional civil engineers. Researchers implemented the Strengths of Material Concept Inventory, collecting data from 153 engineering undergraduate students and 119 practicing civil engineers. The statistical analysis revealed that overall structural engineers performed better than non-structural engineers and engineering undergraduate students. In addition, findings from this exploration noted that performance from all participants is low in shear stress beam questions. Results suggest that differences in performance between the groups may be due to the way concepts are situated and interpreted across academic and workplace contexts. These findings point to the need to further develop the concept inventory through a qualitative interview approach investigating conceptual understanding in practice and validating the instrument. Focused, in-depth explorations can provide researchers with additional explanations and reasonings on practicing engineers conceptual understanding while solving problems. Obtaining this information can offer tools for aligning educational practices and prepare students for the engineering workforce