National calls for improving the prospects of STEM workforce development and broadening participation in STEM place the focus of change within the education system. Despite many efforts towards integrating STEM, and specifically engineering, into pre-college settings, mechanisms for change in schools towards these goals remain underdeveloped. While collaborative solutions involving multiple organizations across sectors towards addressing this complex problem appear promising, more work is needed to develop a critical understanding of the processes involved when such different organizations come together to collaborate towards a social goal. Based in an effort to bring more theoretical literature into the discourse around school-university-industry partnership, the purpose of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of how K-12 STEM interorganizational relationships develop in their initial stages by focusing on the collaborative processes and structures and to develop implications for future success of such collaborations. To accomplish this, I used a multiple case study design to investigate the collaborative processes that emerged in the first year of the partnership within VT PEERS (Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools). I centered my analysis on select adult stakeholders in the collaborative problem who were also programmatic participants including teachers, administrators, industry partners, and university affiliates. Using pre-year and post-year semi-structured interviews with these stakeholders, I characterized the collaborative processes in the first year of the program. Interpretation of results comparing across cases indicated considerations for education and organizational theory literature as well as implications for collaborative practice. Findings confirmed the emergent and negotiated nature of interorganizational collaboration and highlighted the importance of managing communication and reflection in partnership. Organizational culture may impact capacity building when organizations come together towards a complex social goal, particularly when industry is involved, and autonomy and operational issues within the school system and teaching can make collaborating with schools particularly challenging. When organizations come together towards a social goal centered around one of the collaborative partners, equality in exchange may not be a good measure of success. With the caveat that communication needs to be well managed to build credibility among partners, an unequal but equitable exchange of resources may be appropriate in collaborations towards a social goal. While it is tempting to continue to measure quality in interorganizational collaborations narrowly by the outcomes produced, a macro-level look at the collaborative processes involved enables collaborative stakeholders to be intentional about designing for future success. / Doctor of Philosophy / National calls for a higher number and greater diversity of STEM professionals place the burden of change on school systems. Despite some successful efforts, there still remains significant challenges to making change in schools. Partnerships between private companies, universities, and school systems appear promising, but current work is limited in its conclusions. There is a need to reflect more critically on the process of how organizations build relationships in addressing social goals if we are to gain a better understanding of how to make these partnerships successful. To address this, I conducted pre-year and post-year interviews with teachers, administrators, industry partners, and university affiliates during the first year of VT PEERS (Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Schools). Because the project took place in three different rural school counties, I looked for similarities and differences across the collaborations in each county to build a broader understanding and develop implications for other partnerships. Findings from this study led to several important takeaways about collaborating across organizations towards goals in K-12 STEM. First, collaboration is a process and initial plans will change and develop over time. Reflecting on this and keeping open communication through changes potentially equips collaborators to better weather the ups and downs of partnership. Second, the nature and flexibility of an organization’s work environment impacts how much tension they feel between getting their everyday work done and contributing to the collaboration. Third, unequal costs and benefits may be acceptable in a collaboration as long as collaborators are in agreement on the balance. Again, communication is important to build trust and understanding among partners for a healthy balance to be achieved. Overall, taking a birds-eye view of collaborative processes allows collaborators to be more intentional about designing for future success.

Engineering undergraduate students have opinions and perceptions of engineering disciplines and engineering undergraduate students do not always matriculate and graduate in precisely the same discipline. Understanding how these two characteristics of engineering undergraduate students interact to inform behaviors is important for engineering educators and administrators to increase and improve recruitment and retention among their students. This dissertation approached each characteristic of engineering students, first separately and then together. A nationwide survey of undergraduate engineering students found significant differences in how students perceive various engineering disciplines along several paired-term anchored scales. These differences were equally significant when scores were considered in terms of discipline-membership. Membership was found to lead to higher scores for Difficulty and Friendliness compared to scores of non-members for any given specific discipline. Using historical data, transfer paths of students into, out of, or within engineering were identified by frequency of occurrence as either the origin of a transfer or the destination of a transfer. Industrial Engineering was found to be considerably more frequently experienced as a destination of transfers, regardless of whether the origin degree program was another engineering discipline or from outside of engineering. Conversely, Aerospace Engineering was considerably more frequently experienced as an origin of transfers. Additionally, the transfer path relationship between Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering was investigated. Combining these two characteristics of engineering students—that of having opinions of engineering disciplines and that of having the potential to transfer between degree programs— an ethnographic research methodology was implemented. Factors unrelated to grade performance were identified as common program-change instigators, including personal interest considerations and predicted career opportunities. Ultimately, this dissertation contributes to an understanding of how perceptions of engineering disciplines and degree program transfer behavior affects undergraduate engineering student experiences.

Entering a new environment is challenging for everyone, including engineers. Despite national efforts to improve graduates' competencies, managers and other critical industry stakeholders consistently describe new hires as underprepared for practice. Nonetheless, as engineers move into their new organizations, they learn to participate in and contribute to their communities of practice. This period is the school-to-work transition, and the goal of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of the salient learning events that characterize individuals' trajectories from engineering student to engineering practitioner. Using a multi-case approach, this study leverages weekly journals and semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences of recent engineering graduates as they enter the workplace and learn to engage in professional practice. Journal entries probed newcomers' perceptions of challenges, accomplishments, and significant learning events during the first 12 weeks of their jobs. Interviews expanded on journal findings and elaborated on participants' experiences. Analysis entailed the development and application of two complementary workplace learning frameworks from Jacobs and Park (2009) and Chao et al. (1994) that describe both the setting and content of salient learning experiences. Cross-case analysis enabled exploration across participants to examine trends and patterns within participants' experiential trajectories. Findings point to several contributions and implications. First, the codebooks developed in this study were contextualized and operationalized for engineering workplaces, and have been refined to enhance descriptive precision and clarity. Second, journals provided thick, rich descriptions of events in ways that hold promise for future exploratory studies as well as formative assessment. Finally, results indicated that newcomer engineers engage in a wide range of learning environments throughout the school-to-work transition and describe learning along myriad socialization dimensions. In particular, workplace learning takes place in unstructured environments through routine tasks and along both technical and sociocultural dimensions. Given this learning, both industry and academic professionals should consider these dimensions as they design experiences and assess learning across organizations. Newcomer learning is challenging, but if we can gain a better understanding of how and what happens during it, we can more effectively develop efforts to enhance the transition—and therefore, practice—for future generations of engineers. / Ph. D. / Entering a new environment challenging for everyone, including engineers. Even though we know this to be true, engineers remain underprepared for the demands of modern practice. Still, engineering students do graduate and work in engineering jobs, and there is not necessarily evidence of engineers losing jobs on behalf of their reported lack of preparation. The school-to-work transition is thus a critical period for new engineers, and understanding the experiences that take place within it can help us improve the effectiveness of both engineers themselves and the organizations they enter. Given our relatively limited knowledge of this important juncture, then, the goal of this research is to explore the experiences and interactions of newcomers as they move from engineering student to engineering practitioner. To do so, I followed 12 recent mechanical engineering graduates from graduation into the first 12 weeks of their jobs. I combined weekly reflective journal entries with semi-structured interviews to capture participants’ salient learning events. I developed frameworks which characterize the environment and content of salient learning events and provide an overview of the kind of learning trajectory each participant underwent. I also compiled results across participants to explore differences, similarities, and other patterns in participant experiences. Overall, findings point to several contributions and implications. First, the codebooks developed in this study were refined to more specifically fit within engineering contexts and therefore provide more accurate descriptions of engineering learning. Second, reflective journaling holds promise for tapping into engineering learning that might be difficult to otherwise capture via traditional measurements or instrumentation. Finally, results indicate that newcomer engineers engage in a wide range of learning environments throughout the school-to-work transition and describe learning along myriad social and technical dimensions. Given this learning, both industry and academic professionals should consider these experiences as they design learning environments in the future. Newcomer learning is challenging, but if we can gain a better understanding of how and what happens during it, we can more effectively develop efforts to enhance the transition for future generations of engineers.

In the United States context, there is a particularly prevalent dialogue about the transformative power of an engineering degree for underserved students. Long positioned as a mechanism for moving up the social ladder, engineering education is often discussed as a mechanism for upward mobility, promising underserved students the opportunity to climb. However, a critical examination of who enrolls and persists in engineering degree programs suggests not everyone can equitably leverage the transformative power of an engineering degree, with persistent inequities for underserved students. Though literature highlights systemic barriers faced by underserved engineering students, much less is known about how underserved students navigate barriers to pursue an engineering bachelor's degree. Accordingly, the purpose of my study was to explore how students from underserved backgrounds navigate their educational trajectories, focusing on the interplay between structures and agency. Using a Bourdieusian lens, my study was guided by the overarching research question: In their narratives, how do students from underserved backgrounds describe navigating their educational trajectories towards a bachelor's engineering degree? I used a single case study methodology with embedded units of analysis to explore this research question. My primary data sources included narrative interviews with 32 underserved engineering students and geospatial community-level data extrapolated from students' home zip codes. My results indicate that underserved engineering students describe a variety of strategies to enact agency by planning, optimizing, and, at times, redirecting their educational trajectories. This study also highlights the influence of family, community, economic, and political environments on the educational journeys of underserved engineering students, as students described navigating and adapting to these various social environments. Students also describe their environments as dynamic, with trajectories changing based on critical incidents such as a parent illness or loss of work. Lastly, students' narratives highlight a diverse range of reasons for pursuing engineering, which often extended beyond private goods approaches to engineering education. My results present implications for engineering education, the most notable of which is that underserved students are not a monolithic group and represent a diverse range of lived experiences. My results also highlight agency as a collective endeavor, challenging popular notions that agency is operationalized at the level of a single individual. Lastly, students' lived experiences with material hardship highlight the dynamic and multidimensional nature of economic disadvantage. Such insights compel engineering educators to reexamine how we conceptualize and measure economic disadvantage in higher education. Ultimately, this research highlights opportunities to increase access and equity in engineering education for underserved students. / Doctor of Philosophy / In the United States, engineering is often viewed as a transformative career for underserved students. Long positioned as a mechanism for moving up the social ladder, engineering education is positioned to underserved students as an opportunity to climb. However, inequities in engineering education persist, with low income and first generation students underrepresented in engineering. The purpose of my study was to explore how students from underserved backgrounds navigate their educational trajectories, focusing on the interplay between societal forces (i.e., structures) and individual decision-making (i.e., agency). My study was guided by the overarching research question: In their narratives, how do students from underserved backgrounds describe navigating their educational trajectories towards a bachelor's engineering degree? My primary data sources included narrative interviews with 32 underserved engineering students and geospatial community-level data. My results indicate that underserved engineering students describe a variety of strategies to plan, optimize, and, at times, redirect their educational trajectories. This study highlights the influence of family, community, economic, and political environments on the educational journeys of underserved engineering students. Additionally, students describe their environments as dynamic, with trajectories changing based on critical incidents such as a parent illness or loss of work. Lastly, students' narratives highlight a diverse range of reasons for pursuing engineering, which often extended beyond private goods approaches to engineering education. My results highlight agency as a collective family endeavor, challenging popular notions that agency is operationalized at the level of a single individual. Lastly, students' lived experiences with material hardship highlight the dynamic and multidimensional nature of economic disadvantage. Such insights compel engineering educators to reexamine how we conceptualize and measure economic disadvantage in higher education. Ultimately, this research highlights opportunities to increase access and equity in engineering education for underserved students.

Yes / The introduction in the early 1990s of the world wide web was a significant factor in the creation of a global information society, allowing new possibilities to work, entertain and communicate, from home, at the workplace or on the move. In recent years, there have been significant advances in information technology (IT), while a new generation of applications that are able to harness the power of the world wide web has been introduced under the banner of Web 2.0. The increased capabilities of IT and the nature of Web 2.0 applications have attracted interest from the academic community as a means of enhancing the delivery of higher education. This paper considers the implications of introducing technology into the higher education sector from the perspectives of academic staff and students, with particular emphasis on the use of technology and Web 2.0 applications, and the relationship between technology and teaching and learning.

Universities across the United States have integrated international experiences into their engineering students' education. International engineering programs provide learning and professional opportunities for participating faculty and students while aiding international partners in their own efforts. These programs are unique from traditional engineering courses and projects and generate outcomes desired for engineers entering the workforce including professional skills, critical thinking skills, and a strong understanding of their target audiences. While individual programs have explored the impacts of their programs on their students and their resulting project outcomes, there are significant gaps when considering the following: 1) how are programs structured, 2) what are the intended learning outcomes, 3) why do faculty participate in these programs, 4) how are relationships formed and maintained with international partners, and 5) what barriers exist that limit international engineering programs? To address these gaps, I interviewed 25 program faculty and 40 students. Through qualitative analysis of these interviews, I found that programs shared a common consideration for the program's focus on student learning or achieving international partner goals. Programs approached both structure and learning outcomes with either more emphasis on one or the other; balancing these two goals was a challenge for most programs. Faculty were motivated to participate in international engineering programs by their own intrinsic values, however, many felt limited when in traditional tenure track positions. Students tended to reflect more deeply and from a systems perspective the more exposure and time in a program. Students who engaged in either multiple programs or longer participation within a program tended to reflect their experiences contributed more to their current and future career plans. Partners were typically developed initially through personal relationships of the faculty members or through third-party organizations that specialize in international work. Maintaining relationships was highly varied between programs, but a common deficit among programs was the ability to evaluate project outcomes with partners in a numerical way. The examination of these questions about international engineering programs provides a foundation of knowledge for future programs to build on and for existing programs to compare their approaches. This is a critical step to implementing these types of programs in a more widespread and intentional way. / Doctor of Philosophy / Universities across the United States have added international experiences into their engineering students' education. International engineering programs provide learning and professional opportunities for participating faculty and students while aiding international partners in their own efforts. These programs are unique from traditional engineering courses and projects and help students learn professional skills, critical thinking skills, and a strong understanding of their target audiences to prepare them for jobs. While individual programs have explored the impacts of their programs on their students and their resulting project outcomes, we don't know the following: 1) how are programs structured, 2) what are the intended learning outcomes, 3) why do faculty participate in these programs, 4) how are relationships formed and maintained with international partners, and 5) what barriers exist that limit international engineering programs? To answer these questions, I interviewed 25 program faculty and 40 students. I transcribed and used qualitative coding to analyze the data from faculty and students. Through these interviews, I found that programs shared a common consideration for the program's focus on student learning or achieving international partner goals. Each primary focus leverages different aspects of program design, learning, and participation outcomes to achieve those goals. Faculty were motivated to participate in international engineering programs by their own personal and moral values, however many felt limited when they held traditional tenure track positions. Students tended to reflect more deeply and from a systems perspective the more exposure that they had to a program in terms of length. While participation one time led to valuable learning and reflected learning, those that engaged in either multiple programs or longer programs tended to consider more components of their experiences as it affected their current and future plans. Partners were typically developed initially through personal relationships of the faculty members or through third party organizations who specialize in international work. Maintaining relationships was highly varied between programs, but a common deficit among programs was the ability to evaluate project outcomes with partners in a numerical way. These answers help future programs to strategically build programs and helps existing programs compare their program to others.

Engineering educators and industry professionals recognize the need for graduates to be effective communicators, yet the effective teaching of communication remains a persistent contemporary issue, with studies continuing to indicate that engineering graduates are insufficiently prepared for workplace communication. Despite compelling arguments that that writing should be treated as a situated activity, writing instruction is often separated from content instruction within engineering curricula. Even when they are integrated, it is often in a way does not optimally support improvement of students' writing skills. Writing studies scholarship identifies best practices that include treating writing as a process, with pedagogy that includes writing and revising drafts based on feedback and revision. However, writing assignments in engineering courses often not process-oriented. Challenges in addressing this problem include epistemology (i.e. instructors believe that learning to write and learning to engineer are separate skills), self-efficacy (i.e. instructors not feeling qualified to effectively provide feedback or writing instruction), and resources (i.e. inclusion of feedback and revision is unfeasible within key constraints of many engineering courses – limited instructor time and large student-faculty ratios). A potential solution is to use peer feedback, where students provide each other feedback on drafts, which can support a process approach while addressing these challenges. Research outside engineering has demonstrated that peer feedback can be as or more effective than instructor feedback; to bring that work into engineering, this study examines peer feedback in the context of a first-year engineering course through a quasi-experimental intervention in which feedback and revision were incorporated into an existing assignment using several variations of peer feedback. Interventions included two types of feedback training as well as feedback from single peers and multiple peers. Results support peer feedback in this context: it was statistically indistinguishable from instructor feedback when students were given sufficient instruction. Feedback from multiple peers, in fact was more effective than instructor feedback in improving writing quality, and in-class instruction was more effective than a handout only in helping students provide effective feedback. However, some general feedback recommendations – notably that readerly feedback should be encouraged directive feedback discouraged – were not supported. While writing studies literature encourages feedback that takes the position of the reader, readerly peer feedback reduced revision quality in this study. Directive feedback, on the other hand, caused improvements in writing quality, supporting previous hypotheses that the tightly-constrained genres in which engineers write justify more use of directive feedback. / Ph. D. / Engineering graduates must be effective communicators, yet studies continue to indicate that engineering graduates are insufficiently prepared for workplace communication. This indicates that the effective teaching of communication remains an important area of research. While research shows that writing should integrated into engineering content courses to best facilitate learning, it is common for writing to be seen as a separate topic of study. Even when they are integrated, best practices of writing pedagogy developed in writing studies research are not used: writing assignments in engineering courses often include no feedback on writing and no revision, which are important for students’ writing skill development. An additional challenge is lack of resources: limited instructor time and large class sizes in many engineering courses make providing opportunities for feedback and revision a challenge. This study examines one potential remedy to these challenges: using peer feedback, where students provide each other feedback on drafts. Results support using peer feedback: it was as effective as instructor feedback when students were provided with sufficient instruction. Additionally, feedback from multiple peers was more effective than instructor feedback. Overall, this research supports the use of peer feedback in large engineering courses.

<p dir="ltr">This dissertation presents a multi-method investigation of first-year engineering students’ extracurricular and co-curricular (extra-/co-curricular) participation, examining its impact on their professional development and well-being. Through three interrelated studies, this dissertation aims to broaden conceptualizations of extracurricular participation and to develop a holistic framework capturing the ways in which these activities and experiences influence students.</p><p dir="ltr">The first study analyzed survey data from 710 first-year engineering students to characterize what about participation in a given extra-/co-curricular experience is impactful to students and to identify patterns in how students choose to participate in one or more extra-/co-curricular activities. Exploratory factor analysis identified seven dimensions of participation that characterize students’ participation experiences in a given activity, spanning social and career-related aspects: career-related experiences, professional development and networking, community engagement and leadership, financial support, social integration, peer-influenced exploration, and mentorship and peer relationships. Cluster analysis identified five profiles of participation in specific extra-/co-curricular activities: social-focused, career-preparation, comprehensive, interest-driven, and paid work. Findings show that many students seek a balance of experiences, with few activities characterized solely by engineering-specific elements and many students participating in combinations of recreational and career-preparation activities.</p><p dir="ltr">The second study analyzed 860 short-text, open-ended survey responses, investigating how students perceived the benefits of extra-/co-curricular participation in relation to dimensions of wellness. This analysis identified four themes in how students perceived the benefits of their participation: fostering a sense of community and belonging, offering peer mentorship and support networks, facilitating authentic experiences and career exploration, and supporting stress management and overall well-being through interest-driven participation. These themes spanned multiple wellness dimensions, including social, emotional, occupational, and intellectual wellness, with patterns in the benefits students perceived by type of extra-/co-curricular activity.</p><p dir="ltr">The third study examined the use of natural language processing (NLP) approaches to facilitate the analysis of the short-text, open-response survey datasets. This study compared NLP-facilitated results to the manual analysis of the open-response survey data, demonstrating consistency between these approaches. Findings also demonstrate areas where integrating NLP-facilitated results with manual analysis helped improve the codebook and resulting analysis.</p><p dir="ltr">This dissertation characterizes key dimensions and perceived benefits of extra-/co-curricular participation that support students’ professional development and well-being. By investigating how first-year engineering students participate in and benefit from extra-/co-curricular activities in complement to the curriculum, this research contributes to broader efforts in engineering education to create more inclusive and engaging learning environments.</p>

The duration of exile in refugee communities has grown immensely over the last two decades. Recent humanitarian reports have called for actors to create more coordinated global support for the refugee crises. In these recent calls, the desire to break a cycle of dependency between the refugee community and international aid has been a clear priority. Hence, education has emerged as a strategic action to foster refugee self-reliance, particularly higher education (HE) and technical and vocational education and training (TVET). There are many opportunities to use HE and TVET to benefit the refugee community, including: developing solutions to improve living conditions, enabling new opportunities for learning pathways, allowing refugees to contribute to the economy in hosting countries, or preparing them to rebuild their lives once they return to their home countries. However, the economic, political, and cultural complexities of refugee communities often add layers of challenges to typical formal HE and TVET programs. In addition, the existing literature in refugee education still lacks a coherent analysis of these factors and conditions for adoption of HE and TVET programs, especially for refugees living in camps. <div>To address these gaps, this dissertation presents three studies that investigate an undergraduate introductory engineering course for refugees called Localized Engineering in Displacement (LED). Specifically, I draw on effective learning and policy frameworks to understand how to situate engineering education across HE and TVET and advance LED in refugee camps. The first study presents a case study examining the iterative processes of creation and implementation of the LED course in the Azraq refugee camp in Jordan. As a general outcome of my study, I describe the novel approach to teaching engineering design for learners in the Azraq refugee camp and its applications to other contexts. The second study examines the LED course implemented in the Kakuma refugee camp. The Kakuma refugee camp is situated in Kenya and considered the largest refugee camp in the world, thus providing a different context of refugee camps. I discuss the contextual challenges to transfer, develop, and implement to a new context and present the course outcomes and experiences based on the course participants’ reflections. The third study extends findings from the first and second studies by using a comparative case study to critically examine the development process and challenges of engineering education in refugee camps. Central to my analysis is the connection between the challenges identified in both camps and existing actors involved with refugee education. </div><div>My research uses two case studies to underscore the complexity of the LED course development in the Azraq and Kakuma camps. I seek to foster a debate about the challenges that influence the development of higher engineering education programs in refugee camps and how different actors can collaborate to advance high-quality engineering education initiatives in refugee contexts. Overall, this dissertation clarifies some of the biggest challenges to implement engineering education in refugee settings, how different actors can collaborate to mitigate these challenges, and how these findings expose the misalignment between the international rhetoric and reality on the ground in refugee camps.</div>

This thesis focuses on a year-long project of implementing active learning in undergraduate dynamics courses at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo from 2012-2013. The purpose is to increase conceptual understanding of critical dynamics concepts and to repair misconceptions of the students. Conceptual understanding in Dynamics is vital to understanding the big picture, building upon previous knowledge, and better understanding the behavior of engineering systems. Through various hands-on activities, students make predictions, test their conceptions, and solve real world problems. These active learning methods allow students to improve their learning of Dynamics concepts. Education research on active learning is present in Physics and Mathematics disciplines, yet is still growing in Engineering. Four Inquiry-Based Learning Activities (IBLAs) and two Model-Eliciting Activities (MEAs) are discussed in this thesis. Inquiry-Based Learning Activities feature student prediction and experimentation in which the physical world acts as the authority. On the other hand, Model-Eliciting-Activities prompt students to solve real world problems and deliver results to a client. From the results, some activities yield an increase in conceptual understanding, as measured by assessment items, while others do not yield a significant increase. These activities not only help to promote conceptual gains, but also to motivate students and offer realistic engineering contexts. In conclusion, the six total IBLA and MEAS will continue in practice and be improved in their implementation. This thesis work will contribute to engineering education research of active learning methods, and improve the undergraduate dynamics curriculum locally at Cal Poly.