Historically, female representation in engineering and manufacturing trades has been underrepresented compared to their male counterparts. Given this trend, the scope of this paper is to analyze the motivational factors among females who are currently working in Engineering and Manufacturing related trades in the surrounding lower East Appalachian area. Literature research will support an analysis of the following focus: Females in Engineering and Manufacturing Trades. The study focuses on analyzing questionaries from thirty-two females based on the Social Cognitive Career Theory and its three components: “outcome expectations, career interest, and career self-efficacy”. The major findings of this study indicate that creating awareness early and building self-efficacy are important factors in leading females to a STEM career; discrimination was not a major factor in females choosing a STEM career in this region; and parent/teacher/community involvement is essential for recruiting females in STEM careers.

<p>  </p> <p>Informal learning environments are critical to supplemental student learning outside the formal classroom space. The problem the research addressed is the lack of informal STEM learning programs for underrepresented minority, female, urban, and rural students. The purpose of this research was to demonstrate the effect informal STEM learning has on the population’s self-efficacy and interest in STEM. The intervention for this research study was a seven-day informal learning summer camp involving five STEM projects from around the field and aligned with relevant fields offered by the Purdue University Polytechnic Institute. The participants worked in large and small group sessions with program volunteers to gain foundational learning outcomes. The outcome was measured using the STEM-CIS survey instrument in a pre-and post-testing format. The data was coded from the Likert scale and then used to calculate statistics and effect size for Likert-style data. The intervention was performed during the summer of 2021 and yielded results showing that students felt the effect of having role models and professionals involved in the STEM field. </p>

The growth of technology and the proliferation of information made modern complex systems more fragile and vulnerable. As a result, competitive advantage is no longer achieved exclusively through strategic planning but by developing an influential cadre of technical people who can efficiently manage and navigate modern complex systems. The dissertation aims to provide educators, practitioners, and organizations with a model that helps to measure individuals’ systems thinking skills, complex problem solving, personality traits, and the impacting demographic factors such as managerial and work experience, current occupation type, organizational ownership structure, and education level. The intent is to study how these skills, traits, and demographic factors can impact an individual’s abilities in working effectively with modern complex systems. These skills and traits also enable individuals to display distinctive patterns of thoughts in developing solutions that address complex technical problems. The dissertation further provides strategies for the management and enhancement of technical individuals based on assessing their performance. The model consists of three established instruments: Systems Thinking Skills, Perceived Complex Problem-Solving (PCPS), and Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. These instruments are applied at the individual level to identify strengths and weak areas of improving an organization. In particular, PCPS is a researcher-developed instrument that captures the complex problem-solving perception of individuals. The different samples of the population for the dissertation come from students and practitioners.

This dissertation develops virtual reality modules to capture individuals’ learning abilities and systems thinking skills in dynamic environments. In the first chapter, an immersive queuing theory teaching module is developed using virtual reality technology. The objective of the study is to present systems engineering concepts in a more sophisticated environment and measure students learning abilities. Furthermore, the study explores the performance gaps between male and female students in manufacturing systems concepts. To investigate the gender biases toward the performance of developed VR module, three efficacy measures (simulation sickness questionnaire, systems usability scale, and presence questionnaire) and two effectiveness measures (NASA TLX assessment and post-motivation questionnaire) were used. The second and third chapter aims to assess individuals’ systems thinking skills when they engage in complex multidimensional problems. A modern complex system comprises many interrelated subsystems and various dynamic attributes. Understanding and handling large complex problems requires holistic critical thinkers in modern workplaces. Systems Thinking (ST) is an interdisciplinary domain that offers different ways to better understand the behavior and structure of a complex system. The developed scenario-based instrument measures students’ cognitive tendency for complexity, change, and interaction when making decisions in a turbulent environment. The proposed complex systems scenarios are developed based on an established systems thinking instrument that can measure important aspects of systems thinking skills. The systems scenarios are built in a virtual environment that facilitate students to react to real-world situations and make decisions. The construct validity of the VR scenarios is assessed by comparing the high systematic scores between ST instrument and developed VR scenarios. Furthermore, the efficacy of the VR scenarios is investigated using the simulation sickness questionnaire, systems usability scale, presence questionnaire, and NASA TLX assessment.

If a group of engineering deans were asked whether students at their institutions were successful and why, what information might they immediately or subconsciously use to measure or gauge the engineering students’ success? If only academic performance outcomes like GPA, individual course grades, or graduation rate race to their minds, then their rationale aligns with the majority of researchers. My research seeks to shift the mindset that frames engineering student success mainly within the boundaries of academic performance measures. By measuring students’ perceived autonomy, competence, social integration and relatedness within their programs, and aspirations after graduation, one can more accurately judge whether engineering students are achieving holistic student success. By utilizing surveys and exit interviews for freshmen Summer Bridge Program (SBP) participants, interviewing continuing and past SBP participants, and surveying engineering seniors, this research gathered more in-depth information on students’ experiences. In turn, one can better understand how the structures of engineering summer and undergraduate programs either contribute to or detract from student success and motivation. Results from SBP freshmen indicated that community building, structured studying, real-world experiences, residential life, and mentorship were perceived as valuable components by the students. Also, a perceived difficulty gap, based on students’ prior engineering experience(s), was uncovered. For continuing SBP students, there was an emphasis on Black community, leadership, and discourse when moving from SBP to larger departments. Lastly, within the seniors, we found that students tend to choose engineering careers regardless of their undergraduate experiences. This information can be used in practice for enhancing programmatic planning and design as well as potentially developing novel program components that contribute to students becoming more self-determined, motivated engineers. It is my hope that one day in the near future, engineering education faculty, administrators, and leaders will cultivate and measure success based on a more comprehensive assessment of lived experiences and better recognize how their decisions regarding programmatic structures impact students’ success and motivation.

No description available.

Efforts to increase the participation of groups historically underrepresented in computing studies, and in the computing workforce, are well documented. It is a national effort with funding from a variety of sources being allocated to research in broadening participation in computing (BPC). Many of the BPC efforts are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) but as existing literature shows, the growth in representation of traditionally underrepresented minorities and women is not commensurate to the efforts and resources that have been directed toward this aim. Instead of attempting to tackle the barriers to increasing representation, this dissertation research tackles the underrepresentation problem by identifying what has worked (leveraging existing real-world data) to increase representation. This work studies the educational pathways of persons who have successfully transitioned into the computing workforce and identifies the common roadmaps that have contributed to retention, persistence, and success in attaining computing employment. Descriptive statistics, Logistic regression, Classification algorithms, Clustering, and Predictive analytics were employed, using the Stata statistical tool and Orange Data Mining tool on real-world data, to identify educational pathways that have resulted in successful employment outcomes for women and blacks in computing. The results of this analysis have highlighted key information that is capable of informing future “Broadening Participation in Computing” (BPC) efforts. This is because the information will enable researchers and decision makers to have a clearer picture of what educational choices have resulted in favorable outcomes for underrepresented minorities and women in computing; and consequently, researchers and decision makers would be able to more accurately target their BPC efforts to achieve optimal results. This knowledge can also be applied in career advising for young students who are trying to chart their path into computing, providing insight into alternative pathways.

För att lyckas med omställningen till ett mer hållbart samhälle behövs en kombination av kompetenser och förmågor hos framtidens civilingenjörer. Världsledare och forskare har pekat ut kreativitet som avgörande för att kunna hantera och lösa de komplexa problem mänskligheten står inför. Civilingenjörsutbildningar har som mål att utbilda studenterna till att bli kreativa problemlösare, men flera forskare inom kreativitet hävdar att kopplingen mellan kreativitet och ingenjörsutbildningar är bristfällig. En del av kritiken handlar om att studenter i för stor utsträckning inte tränas i att lösa vagt definierade problem som kräver kreativt tänkande. Oavsett vilket fokus som läggs på att främja kreativitet under utbildningen, kommer det finnas yttre hämmande faktorer som inte går att undkomma inom utbildningsmiljön. Det finns därför unika förutsättningar att främja kreativitet utanför utbildningsmiljön och fylla en kompletterande funktion genom ett kreativt utbyte mellan studenter och näringsliv. I en kreativitetstävling initierad av Skogsindustrierna fick studentgrupper i uppgift att komma på vad morgondagens innovation från skogsindustrin är. Med utgångspunkt i kreativitetsteori genomfördes en tematisk analys av insamlade enkätdata från nio kreativitetstävlingar. Resultaten visade att en kreativitetstävling kan bidra till att främja kreativitet hos civilingenjörsstudenter, men enbart under rätt förutsättningar. En grundförutsättning är att en kognitiv brygga skapas mellan studentens kunskaper och området för skogsindustrin. Ett annat exempel är att studenten själv ska identifiera problemet för att få en hög nivå av inre motivation. / To succeed in the transition towards a more sustainable society, a combination of skills and abilities is needed among the engineers of the future. World leaders and researchers have identified creativity as crucial skill to solve the complex issues facing humanity. Engineering education aims to educate students to become creative problem solvers, but several creativity researchers argue that the link between creativity and engineering education is flawed. Part of the criticism is that students are often not trained to solve vaguely defined problems that require creative thinking. No matter the focus on promoting creativity in education, there will be external inhibiting factors that cannot be completely removed within the educational environment. There are therefore unique opportunities for parties outside the educational environment to play a role in promoting creativity in other contexts, such as student-industry collaborations. In a creativity contest initiated by the Swedish Forest Industries Federation, groups of students were asked to identify tomorrow's innovation from the forest industry. Based on creativity theory, a thematic analysis was carried out on the survey data collected from nine creativity contests. The results showed that a creativity contest can help promoting creativity among engineering students, but only under certain conditions. One essential condition is that a cognitive bridge is created between the student's knowledge and the field of forestry. Another example is that the students must identify the problem themselves to achieve a high level of internal motivation.

One way to understand teaching is to view it as a people process rather than a presentation of knowledge. It follows that the role of an educator often extends beyond the primary subject matter and into the realm of classroom management. With this in mind, our research aimed to capture the various teaching practices, participation patterns, and communication climates that occur in virtual computer science classrooms. We sought to answer the following research questions related to virtual computer science classrooms at our institution: Who participates in virtual computer science classrooms, and is participation proportional to student demographics? Is there any correlation between the use of teaching best practices and student participation? Is there any correlation between communication climate and student participation? To answer these questions, we designed and conducted a mixed-method content analysis study on 14 instructor-provided synchronous video lectures. We created a rubric composed of teaching best practices and supportive and defensive communication behaviors. The resulting design employed ethnographic content analysis (ECA) and quantitative content analysis (QCA) methodologies to produce contextually relevant knowledge. Correlational analysis was conducted using Kendall's tau-b correlational algorithm. Our findings suggest female participation was not proportional to student demographics, and no significant correlations between teaching practices and participation patterns were found. However, several significant correlations between communication climate and participation patterns were identified. Specifically, increased communication behaviors displaying equality were positively correlated with classroom dialogue count, unique female participants, female participation, and female first responses.

Inom den högre utbildningen är det fortfarande vanligt att använda traditionella undervisningsmetoder även om det finns andra metoder som går att tillämpa. En faktor som påverkar införandet av nya metoder är digitaliseringen. Många lärosäten använder sig idag av en digital plattform för undervisningen, ibland också flera stycken olika plattformar och där dessa då kräver en teknisk kompetens för att kunna användas på ett bra sätt i undervisningen. Speciellt är kurser inom datalogi som har goda förutsättningar för att kunna nyttja nyare metoder. Dock kräver detta kunskap i metoden, hur de tekniska hjälpmedlen går att tillämpa för kursens ändamål och att man vågar pröva nya metoder i kurser. Målet med denna studie är hitta nya sätt som kan mäta en undervisningsmodells effektivitet. Lösningen kommer att bestå i att undersöka existerande forskning inom området, specifikt implementation av metoden, vad gav metod för effekt och hur denna effekt har mätts. Av den existerande forskningen pekar på att detta är en svår fråga att analysera, det är många faktorer som vi behöver ta i anspråk för att kunna komma till konsensus i hur den potentiella lösningen bör skapas. Den gemensamma faktorn är att det finns en positiv inverkan på studenternas resultat baserat på att det har införts en ny undervisningsmodell. Det vi kom fram till är att skapa en mätmetod som använder studenternas lösningar för befintliga uppgifterna i kursen, genom att vi fick göra ett antal antaganden för de problem som ansågs kunna påverka mätmetoden. Av detta kunde vi sedan dra slutsatser av metodens effektivitet. / In higher education, it is still common to use traditional teaching methods, although there are other methods that can be applied. One factor influencing the introduction of new methods is digitalization. Many higher education institutions today use a digital platform for teaching, sometimes also several different platforms and where these then require a technical competence to be used in a good way in teaching. Especially are courses in computer science that have good conditions for being able to use newer methods. However, this requires knowledge of the method, how the technical aids can be applied for the purpose of the course and that you dare to try new methods in courses. The goal of this study is to find new ways that can measure the effectiveness of a teaching model. The solution will consist of investigating existing research in the area, specifically implementation of the method, what gave method for effect and how this effect has been measured. From the existing research indicates that this is a difficult issue to analyze, there are many factors that we need to take into account in order to be able to come to a consensus on how the potential solution should be created. The common factor is that there is a positive impact on student outcomes based on the introduction of a new teaching model. What we came up with is to create a measurement method that uses the students’ solutions for existing tasks in the course, by making several assumptions for the problems that were considered to affect the measurement method. From this we were then able to draw conclusions from the effectiveness of the method