<p>Professional engineers think and act in distinctive ways when addressing engineering problems. Students need to develop this reasoning or engineering thinking during their education. Unfolding the undergraduate students’ thinking is a necessary step in designing experiences and teaching materials that foster not only their understanding of engineering concepts but also their learning to think as professional engineers. While there are previous studies about the students' thinking in other disciplines, more research is needed in engineering. This three-study dissertation aims to further our comprehension of undergraduate students’ engineering thinking using an adapted version of the Engineering Habits of Mind (EHoM) model. Specifically, the dissertation’s studies work together to continue the research that addresses the question:<em> What are the characteristics of undergraduate students</em>’ <em>engineering thinking?</em></p> <p><br></p> <p>The first study used naturalistic inquiry to holistically explore the cognition associated with the EHoM of senior chemical engineering students when improving a chemical plant. The analysis of students’ interactions showed that their redesign process followed an iterative co-evolution of the problem and solution spaces. Furthermore, they treated the task as a socio-technical problem considering engineering and non-engineering factors. In addition, while exploring problem and solution entities, they used multiple representations to communicate ideas but had difficulties translating symbolic representations into more physical, concrete representations. Regardless the technical issues and time constraints, the students completed the conceptual redesign and communicated their proposal to the client.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The second study used qualitative content analysis to examine first-year engineering students’ ideation as a cognitive skill associated with the EHoM of problem finding and creative problem solving. Particularly, it focused on students’ ideation of questions and recommendations when doing data analytics to help improve a client’s enterprise. The analysis of students’ reports showed that they expanded the problem space of the task by bringing additional information that was not provided. They asked questions focused on performing statistical analysis of the dataset and requesting information about the company’s business model. At the end of their data analytics, students made high- and low-quality recommendations considering their alignment with a specific problem, robust evidence, and the client’s needs. </p> <p><br></p> <p>The third study used qualitative descriptive research to investigate undergraduate participants' cognitive competencies within engineering systems thinking at the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. These competencies are associated with the EHoM of problem finding, creative problem solving, systems thinking, and visualization. Mainly, the study focused on analyzing the evidence of cognitive competencies documented in the publicly available participants’ wikis where they registered their design process. Results showed that iGEM teams developed solutions with biological systems interacting with other systems and used concepts and tools from multiple disciplines. They also cooperated with stakeholders, which helped them analyze their system from multiple lenses. Moreover, depending on their upfront task, they fluidly represented their systems from structural, behavioral, and functional perspectives. </p> <p><br></p> <p>The final chapter of this dissertation presents an overarching discussion across the studies. The findings and implications will support curriculum designers, instructors, and other interested readers to prepare learning environments that promote undergraduate students’ engineering thinking. Furthermore, they may guide future efforts to continue exploring the students' thinking process when addressing engineering problems. </p>

The facilitator model for dual credit offers a way for student to earn directly transcripted credit to colleges and universities, overcoming many barriers faced by other dual credit models. Successful implementation of this model requires high degree of involvement from the cooperating institution. This IRB approved qualitative case study explored the needs of five teacher facilitators in both summer professional development and on-going support throughout the school year when implementing a facilitator model for dual credit with open-ended design coursework. Code-recode and axial coding techniques were applied to over 90 hours of transcribed data, artifacts, and observations from a seven month period to find emerging themes and offer recommendations for implementation.<p></p>

Industrial revolutions bring dynamic change to industry through major technological advances (Freeman & Louca, 2002). People and companies must take advantage of industrial revolutions in order to reap its benefits (Bruland & Smith, 2013). Currently, the 4th industrial revolution, industry is transforming advanced manufacturing and engineering capabilities through digital transformation. Company X’s production system was investigated in the research. Detailed evaluation the production process revealed bottlenecks and inefficiency (Melton, 2005). Using the Digital Twin and Discrete Event Factory Simulation, the researcher gathered factory and production input data to simulate the process and provide a system level, holistic view of Company X’s production system to show how factory simulation enables process improvement. The National Academy of Engineering supports Discrete Event Factory Simulation as advancing Personalized Learning through its ability to meet the unique problem solving needs of engineering and manufacturing process through advanced simulation technology (National Academy of Engineering, 2018). The directed project applied two process optimization experiments to the production system through the simulation tool, 3DExperience wiht the DELMIA application from Dassualt Systemes (Dassault, 2018). The experiment resulted in a 10% improvement in production time and a 10% reduction in labor costs due to the optimization

<p>For the projects titled Undergraduate Students’ Interpretation of Fischer and Haworth Carbohydrate Projections and Undergraduate Students' Interpretation of Glycosidic Bonds – there is a prevalent issue in biochemistry education in which students display fragmented knowledge of the biochemical concepts learned when asked to illustrate their understandings (via drawings, descriptions, analysis, etc.). In science education, educators have traditionally used illustrations to support students’ development of conceptual understanding. However, interpreting a representation is dependent on prior knowledge, ability to decode visual information, and the nature of the representation itself. With a prevalence of studies conducted on visualizations, there is little research with a focus on the students’ interpretation and understanding of carbohydrates and/or glycosidic bonds. The aim of these projects focuses on how students interpret representations of carbohydrates and glycosidic bonds. This study offers a description of undergraduate students’ understanding and interpretation using semi-structured interviews through Phenomenography, Grounded Theory and the Resources Frameworks. The data suggests that students have different combinations of (low or high) accuracy and productivity for interpreting and illustrating carbohydrates and glycosidic bonds, among other findings to be highlighted in their respective chapters. More effective teaching strategies can be designed to assist students in developing expertise in proper illustrations and guide their thought process in composing proper explanations in relation to and/or presence of illustrations.</p> <p><br></p> <p>For the project titled Impact of the Pandemic on Student Readiness: Laboratories, Preparedness, and Support – it was based upon research by Meaders et. al (2021) published in the International Journal of STEM Education. Messaging during the first day of class is highly important in establishing positive student learning environments.  Further, this research suggests that students are detecting the messages that are communicated.  Thus, attention should be given to prioritizing what information and messages are most important for faculty to voice. There is little doubt that the pandemic has had a significant impact on students across the K-16 spectrum.  In particular, for undergraduate chemistry instructors’, data on the number of laboratories students completed in high school and in what mode would be important information in considering what modifications could be implemented in the laboratory curriculum and in messaging about the laboratory activities – additionally on how prepared students feel to succeed at college work, how the pandemic has impacted their preparedness for learning, and what we can do to support student learning in chemistry can shape messaging on the first day and for subsequent activities in the course.  An initial course survey that sought to highlight these student experiences and perspectives will be discussed along with the impact on course messaging and structure.    </p> <p><br></p>

<p>External representations (ERs) used in science education are multimodal ensembles consisting of design elements to convey educational meanings to the audience. As an example of a dynamic ER, an animation presenting its content features (i.e., scientific concepts) via varying the feature’s depiction over time. A production team invited the dissertation author to inspect their creation of a biochemistry animation about the role of the actin cytoskeleton in cell motility and the animation’s implication on learning. To address this, the author developed a four-step methodology entitled the Multimodal Variation Analysis of Dynamic External Representations (MVADER) that deconstructs the animation’s content and design to inspect how each content feature is conveyed via the animation’s design elements.</p><p><br></p><p> </p><p>This dissertation research investigated the actin animation’s educational value and the MVADER’s utility in animation evaluation. The research design was guided by descriptive case study methodology and an integrated framework consisting of the variation theory, multimodal analysis, and visual analytics. As stated above, the animation was analyzed using MVADER. The development of the actin animation and the content features the production team members intended to convey via the animation were studied by analyzing the communication records between the members, observing the team meetings, and interviewing the members individually. Furthermore, students’ learning experiences from watching the animation were examined via semi-structured interviews coupled with post- storyboarding. Moreover, the instructions of MVADER and its applications in studying the actin animation were reviewed to determine the MVADER’s usefulness as an animation evaluation tool.</p><p><br></p><p> </p><p>Findings of this research indicate that the three educators in the production team intended the actin animation to convey forty-three content features to the undergraduate biology students. At least 50% of the student who participated in this thesis learned thirty-five of these forty-three (> 80%) features. Evidence suggests that the animation’s effectiveness to convey its features was associated with the features’ depiction time, the number of identified design elements applied to depict the features, and the features’ variation of depiction over time.</p><p><br></p><p>Additionally, one-third of the student participants made similar mistakes regarding two content features after watching the actin animation: the F-actin elongation and the F-actin crosslink structure in lamellipodia. The analysis reveals the animation’s potential design flaws that might have contributed to these common misconceptions. Furthermore, two disruptors to the creation process and the educational value of the actin animation were identified: the vagueness of the learning goals and the designer’s placement of the animation’s beauty over its reach to the learning goals. The vagueness of the learning goals hampered the narration scripting process. On the other hand, the designer’s prioritization of the animation’s aesthetic led to the inclusion of a “beauty shot” in the animation that caused students’ confusion.</p><p><br></p><p> </p><p>MVADER was used to examine the content, design, and their relationships in the actin animation at multiple aspects and granularities. The result of MVADER was compared with the students’ learning outcomes from watching the animation to identify the characteristics of content’s depiction that were constructive and disruptive to learning. These findings led to several practical recommendations to teach using the actin animation and create educational ERs.</p><p><br></p><p> </p><p>To conclude, this dissertation discloses the connections between the creation process, the content and design, and the educational implication of a biochemistry animation. It also introduces MVADER as a novel ER analysis tool to the education research and visualization communities. MVADER can be applied in various formats of static and dynamic ERs and beyond the disciplines of biology and chemistry.</p>