Identity and Design Process in Adult, Non-traditional, Engineering Students: Phase I: Training for Extending Prior Studies

Adult students comprise a significant percentage of undergraduate learners, 10% within engineering programs. Whereas gender and ethnic diversity are commonly studied aspects, studies involving student age comprise a much smaller set of the available literature within the engineering education field. To increase the diversity and number of engineers in the workforce, it is critical that adult students be supported through degree completion. Our work aims to create new pathways for non-traditional engineering students by examining the role of prior work experiences, identity, and expertise. The work supported by NSF REE collects and analyzes qualitative and quantitative data from non-traditional engineering undergraduate students at three diverse institutes of higher education: a large public university (University of California, Berkeley), a small private university (University of New Haven), and a community college (Cañada College). We foresee the data providing critical insights to enable engineering educators to be more effective, and making substantial contributions to our understanding of engineering identities and students’ thinking processes. By filling gaps in current understanding of the identities, level of expertise, and experiences of these students, the study aims to improve persistence outcomes for engineering students and increase the number of qualified engineering graduates. In an effort to leverage existing data, we have set out to replicate the work carried out by Atman/Cardella (2007) and Matusovich et al (2011) with a new study population comprised of undergraduate students aged 25 and over. The paper/poster will detail our efforts to train our research team of engineering and social science students in carrying out these experiments with a high degree of fidelity to the original studies. This work is being carried out at universities that do not have students focused on engineering education research; we describe the process by which we trained students to collect the data and actively participate in the research. Features of our training include: human subjects research training with a focus on the Belmont Report and its applications, training in semi-structured interviewing, analysis of the publications from the prior related work, practice data collection sessions, role-playing, training on thematic coding, and finally deployment in real data collection. Motivation Why Research on Adult Nontraditional Engineering Students Engineers seek to find solutions to society’s problems. The keystone to successfully attaining solutions may be said to be diversity diversity of our lived experiences. We can claim that engineering, by its very nature, is dependent on teamwork and creativity of thought. Diversity increases the range and creativeness of possible solutions the team or individual can attain(1). P ge 26879.2 Whereas gender and ethnic diversity are commonly studied aspects, studies involving student age comprise a much smaller set of the available literature within the engineering education field. To increase the diversity and number of engineers in the workforce, it is critical that adult students be supported through degree completion. Students age 25 and older represent a vital portion of the pool of students enrolled in US colleges. In 2007, 37.6% of all students (any major) enrolled in 4-year institutions, and 40.3% of all students enrolled in 2-year institutions were age 25 and older(2), yet non-traditional students have received little attention in engineering education research. When examining adult students in engineering, the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development research shows that nontraditional students are 10% of the undergraduate engineering population in a large sample of eleven 4-year institutions in the United States from 1988 to 2002. This report finds that nontraditional adult students have a reduced graduation rate compared to traditional students, suggesting that they experience group-specific barriers.(3) Our research work aims to enable faculty, administration, students, and higher education policy professionals in diversifying the pathways through STEM careers by contributing to the body of knowledge about non-traditional students. For our work, an adult student is one who is 25 years or older, completing a bachelor of science in engineering degree. We define the traditional student as one who enrolls in a program directly after completing their high school years. Some traditional engineering students may take more than the 4 or 5 years typical for degree completion; limiting the age at 25 and over excludes from our work any traditional student who may have taken up to 6 years to complete their degree requirements. What we find in the literature The question of professional identity among engineering students has been a topic of significant study recently in the United States and abroad. This work is motivated by the efforts to improve persistence in engineering programs, and it is generally situated within the theoretical framework of multiple identities. Students experience learning as a complex system of interactions between institutional, social, and personal factors, and professional identity can be considered an “emergent property of the complex learning environment system”.(4) A person’s identity is not a static or one-dimensional property, but rather is situationally dependent, and is continually constructed. Gee’s work on identities recognizes that all people have multiple identities related to their behavior within society.(5) These roles can gain their meaning from nature, institutions, personal interactions, or belonging to a group. Individuals have variable levels of commitment to particular roles or identities, and value most strongly those roles which express their true selves. Identity is therefore an important P ge 26879.3 construct when considering the design of educational and occupational settings. We are examining engineering identity as a specific professional identity. Research work with freshmen engineering undergraduates identifies differences among freshmen engineering students who continue to study engineering compared to those who transfer to other majors.(6, 7) While both groups of students reported that they did not “feel like engineers” yet, lacking clear or accurate ideas of what engineers do, and both groups felt academically prepared to study engineering, there are some meaningful differences in the experiences and perceptions of these groups. Freshmen persisting in engineering programs were more likely to have a connection with engineering peers and faculty, to be intrinsically motivated to study engineering and proactively engage with engineering clubs, and had more knowledge and exposure to engineering prior to entering college (such as through engineering camps, high school engineering classes, or personal relationships with engineers). While these studies demonstrate the importance of exposure to and experience with engineering prior to entering college, it is important to enhance engineering identity among students after they reach college engineering programs. Matusovich et al(8) compare the professional identity development of engineering students and military academy students--as a model of successful positive professional identity development--to determine which factors are important in identity development. Interviews with 20 students across all four years of academic study revealed that overall there was a higher level of professional identity among military academy students compared to public and private university students, and that military cadets more readily provided examples of identity development, such as basic training, ROTC, and reflection. The authors concluded that providing opportunities for engineering students to work together on challenging tasks is important to develop engineering identity. Recently, Meyers et al(9) used stage theory as a framework for modeling engineering identity development among engineering students. The study consists of an electronic survey asking engineering students in a medium-sized private university if they consider themselves as engineers, and asking them to identify factors necessary to be considered as an engineer. The study shows that sophomores, juniors and seniors were more likely to identify themselves as engineers than freshmen. Male students were also more likely to identify themselves as engineers than female students. Furthermore, students with future career plans to continue in an engineering related field after graduation were more likely to self-identify as an engineer. The most commonly identified factors as being necessary to be considered an engineer were intangible factors such as being able to make competent design decisions, being able to work with others by sharing ideas, accepting responsibility for the consequences of actions, and speaking/communicating using accurate technical terminology.