Engineering Identity and Project-Based Learning: How Does Active Learning Develop Student Engineering Identity?

This purpose of this research paper is to understand how the use of evidence-based pedagogical methods, such as active learning, for teaching engineering design concepts, influence students’ engineering identity growth and increase retention in engineering programs. Students in a statics course (n=333) with active learning, used the entirety of the design process during a balsa bridge team project. Following testing of their bridges, students completed journal entries about their selfefficacy to design. Previous results suggest that students might better develop an engineering identity due to their participation in active learning. Newer results from an inductive qualitative content analysis on these journals (n=165) suggest active learning allows students to develop competence and individual interest, and further their engineering identity development, through increased and repeated exposure to opportunities of situational interest found in active learning. These results continue to support use of active learning as an effective teaching tool in engineering education, and as a potential method of increasing retention in engineering. Introduction Active learning methods have proven to be an effective way to increase engineering self-efficacy, academic performance, feelings of responsibility to complete future tasks, and recently retention in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). While the list of positive effects of active learning use continue to emerge in the literature, its use is still minimal due to the resources required of practicitioners. Research on the effects of active learning should continue to be researched and published until it is clear to researchers and practitioners that the benefits outweigh the cost. Of the various calls within STEM education, the most noted is the need to increase the amount of students entering and graduating from engineering programs to develop a workforce for the future. This includes finding innovative ways to “patch the leaky pipeline” and increase program retention. To do so, innovative solutions should seek to develop students feelings of belonging in engineering, as it has been found to be essential to increasing student retention in engineering programs. Students’ feelings of how well they fit or belong to a group is often called identity and more specifically when discussed in the context of engineering, is called engineering identity. While there exists a large body of research on active learning, there is limited engineering identity research in non-traditional teaching environments, such as active learning. It is wondered then how an active environment might affect engineering identity development. Project-based learning, one method of active learning, uses cooperative projects to link learning to real-life application and increase motivation. Previous work on self-efficacy development suggested that students might develop an engineering identity as a result of their participation. However, further work was considered necessary to understand how project-based learning might foster such identity formation. Active learning methods such as project-based learning may prove to be beneficial for academic performance (grades), but also for increasing students’ desires to be identified as an engineer. In continuation of our previous work, we seek to understand how active learning affects student engineering identity development through the following research question: How do students develop an engineering identity in active learning environments? Background Original conceptualizations of design self-efficacy (students feelings in their ability to complete design tasks now and in the future) included students’ confidence to complete design tasks, students’ motivation to complete design tasks, students’ perceived success completing design tasks, and students’ anxiety to complete design tasks. Quantitative work by Major & Kirn in a project-based learning setting found that students perceive confidence to complete design tasks and perceived success completing design tasks to be the same. Additionally, it was found that students had a significant increase in their development of this combined confidence-success factor over the course of a semester (p-value = .002). Based on extensive research by Godwin et al., measures of self-efficacy (presented as performance-competence), alongside subject interest and recognition by others, have shown to be an important factor to students’ development of engineering identity. It is suggested then that active learning may allow students to develop an engineering identity. Initial qualitative work from Major & Kirn found five emerging themes: 1) students discovered design tasks they were competent in or not competent in, which lead to motivation to complete or not complete specific design tasks, 2) students linked class content to real-world design opportunities, 3) students linked experience success and failure of the project to their future goals, 4) students felt they could have had succeeded more if they had the opportunity to complete the design process and redesign, and 5) students mention team members as resources for content and skill competence. This work seeks to present completed qualitative analysis to answer how students develop an engineering identity in active learning environments. Methods This qualitative population for this study was a large Engineering Statics course (n=333) that utilized problemand project-based learning. During the last three weeks of the course, students were required to complete a group bridge-building project in which they utilized the entirety of the engineering design process to design, analyze, build, and test a balsa bridge, given material and size limitations. Journal Development and Administration After bridge testing, students were offered five points of extra credit on a 1000-point scale to complete a 15 to 30-minute short-answer journal entry, found in Appendix A, regarding their experience of designing, building, and testing the bridge project. Use of student reflections, such as journals, have been shown to allow students to find better meaning in the work they have done, and to be beneficial towards students experience of completing design projects. Online Learning Management Software was used to collect responses. Available for review in Appendix A, the structured journal protocol consisted of questions from a previously developed Design Self-Efficacy Instrument modified for short-answer use in previous work. Modification was done by converting questions from the quantitative Design Self-Efficacy Instrument to questions that qualitatively asked how the hands-on activity presented in the course developed students’ self-efficacy. Specifically, short-answer questions asked students about their confidence (feelings in their own abilities to complete design tasks), motivation (willingness to complete design tasks), feelings of their ability to succeed at a task, and anxiety (unease or worry about ability to complete a task) towards the bridge project and other tasks in the future. Additionally, students were questioned about the reasons they choose to design and why they might ever fail at completing design tasks. To aid all responses, students were given a list of design tasks developed in prior work; shown in Figure 1. Design Self-Efficacy Engineering Design Tasks 1) Identifying a design need 2) Developing design solutions 3) Selecting the best possible design 4) Constructing a prototype 5) Evaluating and testing a design 6) Communicating a design 7) Redesigning Figure 1: Design tasks from previous design self-efficacy work given to aid student responses related to their competence, motivation, and anxiety to complete engineering design tasks. The study was institutional review board (IRB) approved and provided an opt-out clause to participating students. Analysis To answer the research question, inductive qualitative content analysis (IQCA) was used. This method, used previously in engineering education research, involves three phases for analysis (I. Preparation, II. Organization, and III. Reporting) and is used to manipulate large volumes of text-based data to more manageable themes that can be collected, separated, or managed in ways the researcher sees fit. The inductive aspect of IQCA allows for creation of categories during data analysis based on previous theoretical background. In the preparation phase, data is collected and a unit of analysis is chosen. The unit of analysis is considered to be the smallest single unit of data within the content analysis. In the organization phase, abstract theoretical categories that represent the data are chosen to be the start of analysis. Additionally, definitions of these categories are developed. Then, the researcher analyzes half of the qualitative data while adding, removing, organizing, and condensing categories as well as their associated definitions. When the initial half of the data has been completely analyzed and categories cannot be condensed further, the researcher analyzes remaining data (without changing categories) to ensure data fits the remaining categories. Finally, in the reporting phase, the researchers use of content analysis is presented as well as the resulting categories and definitions. Phase I: Preparation In this analysis’ preparation phase, journal entry responses (n=165; 49.5% response) were collected and the unit of analysis was chosen to be a single journal entry due to their size. Individual journal entries averaged approximately a page in length. Phase II: Organization In the beginning of the organization phase, broad, abstract theoretical categories were made to represent the qualitative data being analyzed. Confidence, motivation, success, and anxiety; aspects of design self-efficacy framework , were used as beginning theoretical categories as they were used to develop journal questions and rep