Ascertaining the Impact of P–12 Engineering Education Initiatives: Student Impact through Teacher Impact

The widespread need to address both science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and STEM workforce development is persistent. Underscored by the Next Generation Science Standards, demand is high for P–12 engineering-centered curricula. TeachEngineering is a free, standards-aligned NSF-funded digital library of more than 1,500 hands-on, design-rich K–12 engineering lessons and activities. Beyond anonymous site-user counts, the impact of the TeachEngineering collection and outreach initiatives on the education of children and their teachers was previously unknown. Thus, the project team wrestled with the question of how to meaningfully ascertain classroom impacts of the digital engineering education library and—more broadly—how to ascertain the impacts of teacher-focused P–12 engineering education initiatives. In this paper, the authors approach the classroom impact question through probing self-reported differentials in: (1) teachers’ confidence in teaching engineering concepts, and (2) changes in their teaching practices as a result of exposure to (and experiences with) K–12 engineering education resources and outreach opportunities. In 2016, four quantitative and qualitative surveys were implemented to probe the impact of the TeachEngineering digital library and outreach on four populations of K–12 teachers’ confidence and practices, including the frequency with which they integrate engineering into their precollege classrooms. Survey results document the teacher experience and perception of using hands-on K–12 engineering curricular materials in the classroom and help create a data-driven understanding of where to best invest future resources. The results suggest that the TeachEngineering curricular resources and outreach initiatives help teachers build confidence in their use of engineering curriculum and pedagogy in K–12 classrooms, impact their teaching practices, and increase their likelihood of teaching engineering in the classroom in the future

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

A Place-Based Sustainability Approach to Learning about Photovoltaic Solar Energy

An ethical and effective engineering practice is inherently place-responsive and designs for a sustainable future. Engineering students must therefore be educated within a sustainable and sociotechnical paradigm. In the spring of 2022, the integrated engineering department of the University of San Diego offered a new photovoltaic solar energy course for junior and senior students. Informed by place-based pedagogies and culturally sustaining pedagogies, we designed the course to be relevant to the students’ lived experiences by coupling the learning about the technical elements of solar energy with a focus on solar energy projects and sustainability on campus. Prior to running the course, we identified four potential new solar investment/upgrade projects for the university. We divided the class into four teams, with each team assigned to assess the feasibility of a solar project through (1) social, (2) technical, (3) economic, and (4) environmental analyses. Finally, the students integrated their findings and made recommendations to key university stakeholders about how to proceed with solar energy investments on campus. In this paper, we share the course project design, our findings from implementing it, and ideas for adapting it to other place-based sustainability learning experiences

The Complexities and Benefits of Community-Partnered Projects for Engineering Capstone Design Students

Community-partnered engineering projects provide a mechanism for cultivating the development of sociotechnical engineers prepared to design within diverse and complex cultural, environmental, social, and other contexts. During the 2021–2022 academic year, we guided three teams of senior undergraduate engineering students through year-long community-partnered projects for their required capstone design course, which instead typically features corporate/industry-sponsored projects. We analyzed end-of-semester reflections (both fall and spring semester) from each student using inductive thematic analysis to explore how they perceived their experiences. The themes that emerged from the student reflections, including connectivity, transdisciplinary, multiple stakeholders, sustainability, justice, and ethics, are all components of the sociotechnical engineering capabilities that we are working to develop in our students. We consider these findings encouraging, and suggestive that integrating community-partnered projects into engineering capstone design offerings is worthwhile and effective. However, our implementation was not without challenges, such as trying to force the projects to fit into a course structure and timeline developed to support corporate/industry-sponsored project teams, which was burdensome to the community-partnered project teams. In this paper, we highlight both the complexities and benefits of this approach and insights gained from student and instructor reflections

Celebrating and Leveraging Classroom Geographic and Cultural Diversity to Enhance Student Learning

In the fall of 2022, we offered a pedagogically redesigned sociotechnical environmental engineering elective for junior and senior undergraduates that applied place-based and culturally sustaining pedagogies. The course featured a project designed to facilitate the celebration and leveraging of classroom geographic and cultural diversity to enhance student learning about water sustainability. We analyzed the students’ written project reflections using an inductive thematic analysis to explore whether and how the project and pedagogical model augmented student learning. The primary themes that emerged included: (1) deepened knowledge of home and culture; (2) global conceptualizations; (3) re-evaluation of perceptions and beliefs (in terms of water sustainability and personal relationships with water); and (4) future-facing viewpoints. We consider each of these ‘enhancements’ to the student learning because they extend beyond the course objectives and explore the sociotechnical aspect of engineering. The purpose of this paper is to share the course and project model, our findings from its implementation, and suggestions on how this pedagogical framework could be adapted and scaled to expand the learning of a range of topics at different learner levels

The “Who” in Engineering: Sociotechnical Engineering as Memorable and Relevant

Does emphasizing the role of people in engineering influence the memorability of engineering content? This study is part of a larger project through which our team developed a new undergraduate energy course to better reflect students’ cultures and lived experiences through asset-based pedagogies to help students develop a sociotechnical mindset in engineering problem solving. In this study, students in the class were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews (n=5) to explore our effectiveness in helping them develop a sociotechnical mindset around energy issues and conceptualize engineering as a sociotechnical endeavor. This study focuses on an activity during the interview where the participants were asked to sort a variety of images associated with class learning experiences along a spectrum of least to most memorable. Emergent themes from students’ responses revolved around learning experiences that included global perspectives and emphasized a “who” (i.e., whose problems, who is impacted by engineering, and what type of engineers the students will choose to become) as the most memorable. Our results indicate that students found the sociotechnical aspects of the course more memorable than the traditional canonical engineering content. These findings suggest that framing engineering content as sociotechnical can be one strategy to increase student engagement, increase memorability of lessons, and help students to think more deeply about their own goals as future engineers

Risk Factors for Hospital Readmission Following Noncardiac Surgery: International Cohort Study

Objective:. To determine timing and risk factors associated with readmission within 30 days of discharge following noncardiac surgery. Background:. Hospital readmission after noncardiac surgery is costly. Data on the drivers of readmission have largely been derived from single-center studies focused on a single surgical procedure with uncertainty regarding generalizability. Methods:. We undertook an international (28 centers, 14 countries) prospective cohort study of a representative sample of adults ≥45 years of age who underwent noncardiac surgery. Risk factors for readmission were assessed using Cox regression (ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT00512109). Results:. Of 36,657 eligible participants, 2744 (7.5%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 7.2–7.8) were readmitted within 30 days of discharge. Rates of readmission were highest in the first 7 days after discharge and declined over the follow-up period. Multivariable analyses demonstrated that 9 baseline characteristics (eg, cancer treatment in past 6 months; adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.44; 95% CI, 1.30–1.59), 5 baseline laboratory and physical measures (eg, estimated glomerular filtration rate or on dialysis; HR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.24–1.75), 7 surgery types (eg, general surgery; HR, 1.86; 95% CI, 1.61–2.16), 5 index hospitalization events (eg, stroke; HR, 2.21; 95% CI, 1.24–3.94), and 3 other factors (eg, discharge to nursing home; HR, 1.61; 95% CI, 1.33–1.95) were associated with readmission. Conclusions:. Readmission following noncardiac surgery is common (1 in 13 patients). We identified perioperative risk factors associated with 30-day readmission that can help frontline clinicians identify which patients are at the highest risk of readmission and target them for preventive measures