The PEER Collaborative: Supporting Engineering Education Research Faculty with Near-peer Mentoring Unconference Workshops

The PEER Collaborative National Network is a national peer mentoring network for early career tenure-track or mid-career tenured faculty who conduct and are primarily evaluated based on their research related to engineering education. This paper discusses the development, logistics, and outcomes of two PEER workshops built around a community of practice framework. Data from internal and external evaluations are presented to provide insights into aspects that worked well and aspects that need further development. Additionally, by reflecting on the workshops, participants crafted vignettes describing the impact the PEER workshops had on their personal and professional lives. The paper concludes with a discussion on the future of PEER (and potential spin-off groups from the PEER cohorts), and the changes that will be made in future workshops. Recommendations are provided for other organizers interested in developing successful “near peer” groups to address specific community needs

Work in Progress: Teaching Game Design and Robotics Together: A Natural Marriage of Computing and Engineering Design in a First-Year Engineering Course

The increased dependence on computer programming in engineering has made it essential for engineering students to learn about programming throughout their undergraduate education. In the same vein, computing students benefit when given an opportunity to learn more about engineering design and systematic thinking. This paper discusses how one college embedded computing and engineering into a combined first-year introductory course. The course fuses computing and engineering using game design and robotics as an offering for both cohorts of students to work together in a multidisciplinary environment. Over the course of the semester, students learn introductory computing and engineering design concepts by designing games and robots using informatics tools to solve design challenges. Interdisciplinary teams consisting of computing and engineering students work together to prototype a game design idea and then bring that idea to life using robots as part of their final project

Measuring Computing Self-Efficacy: Creating and Validating a Computing Self-Efficacy Tool

This study was based around the creation of a tool to measure students computing self-efficacy. The tool was an eight-question survey that was validated using content and criterion-related validity. Content validity was conducted to make sure that the questions related to each other and related to the subject of computing self-efficacy. Criterion- related validity allowed us to validate that our tool could test people with different levels of computing skills based on previous experience. The study allowed us to further validate our tool as well as analyze the computing self-efficacy of 270 students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Flipped Classrooms for Teaching CS1

An alternative to the traditional classroom structure that has seen increased use in higher education is the flipped classroom. Flipping the classroom switches when assignments (e.g. homework) and knowledge transfer (e.g. lecture) occur. Flipped classrooms are getting popular in secondary and postsecondary teaching institutions as evidenced by the marked increase in the study, use, and application of the flipped pedagogy as it applies to learning and retention. The majority of the courses that have undergone this change use applied learning strategies and include a significant “learning-by-doing” component. The research in this area is skewed towards such courses and in general there are many considerations that educators ought to account for if they were to move to this form of teaching. Introductory courses in computer programming can appear to have all the elements needed to move to a flipped environment; however, initial observations from our research identify possible pitfalls with the assumption. In this work in progress the authors discuss early results and observations of implementing a flipped classroom to teach an introductory programming course (CS1) to engineering, engineering technology, and software engineering undergraduates

A pilot validation study of the Epistemological Beliefs Assessment For Engineering (EBAE): first-year engineering student beliefs

This paper presents a study assessing first-year students’ engineering epistemological beliefs or beliefs about engineering knowledge and knowing. A small cohort of first-year engineering students pilot tested a new quantitative instrument called the Epistemological Beliefs Assessment for Engineering (EBAE). Student responses to the EBAE were used to validate the instrument and analyze the epistemological beliefs – certainty of knowledge, simplicity of knowledge, source of knowing, and justification for knowing – of first-year engineering students. Results of this study produced thirteen validated items, which gauged first-year engineering students’ epistemological beliefs as slightly sophisticated – mean score of 63.8 +/- 8.4 out of 100

Using standards-based grading to effectively assess project-based design courses

Standards-based grading (SBG) is an alternative to traditional score-based grading systems that allows an instructor to provide assessment linked to course objectives. SBG ties assessment throughout a course with these objectives, while also providing clear, meaningful feedback, fairness and transparency in the grading process, and useful program assessment. Project-based design courses align well with SBG because their nature demands repeat assessment of fundamental learning objectives. The following study investigated the use of SBG in two cornerstone design courses with similar learning objectives at different ABET accredited engineering programs. Overall, students reported that the standards based grading system has higher value (2.94 + 0.87) than cost (2.03 + 0.78) on a 4-point scale (p \u3c0.001). Students at the small, liberal arts college responded with generally higher ratings for both value and cost, with a larger average difference between combined value and cost (1.0 and 0.81, respectively), than students at a large, public university. Additionally, students reported higher self-efficacy in design-based objectives after the course, with an average self-efficacy increase of 15-20 points on a 100-point scale. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

Measuring engineering design self-efficacy

Backround: Self-concept can influence how an individual learns, but is often overlooked when assessing student learning in engineering. Purpose (Hypothesis): To validate an instrument designed to measure individuals' self-concepts toward engineering design tasks, three research questions were investigated: (a) how well the items in the instrument represent the engineering design process in eliciting the task-specific self-concepts of self-efficacy, motivation, outcome expectancy, and anxiety, (b) how well the instrument predicts differences in the self-efficacy held by individuals with a range of engineering experiences, and (c) how well the responses to the instrument align with the relationships conceptualized in self-efficacy theory. Design/Method: A 36-item online instrument was developed and administered to 202 respondents. Three types of validity evidence were obtained for (a) representativeness of multi-step engineering design processes in eliciting self-efficacy, (b) the instrument's ability to differentiate groups of individuals with different levels of engineering experience, and (c) relationships between self-efficacy, motivation, outcome expectancy, and anxiety as predicted by self-efficacy theory. Results: Results indicate that the instrument can reliably identify individuals' engineering design self-efficacy (α = 0.967), motivation (α = 0.955), outcome expectancy (α = 0.967), and anxiety (α = .940). One-way ANOVA identified statistical differences in self-efficacy between high, intermediate, and low experience groups at the ρ < 0.05 level. Self-efficacy was also shown to be correlated to motivation (0.779), outcome expectancy (0.919), and anxiety (-0.593) at the ρ < 0.01 level. CONCLUSIONS The study showed that the instrument was capable of identifying individuals' self-concepts specific to the engineering design tasks