Impacts of Engineering Engagement Activities for First-Year Students

Serving the demands for future engineering professionals in our society requires increasing retention of students in year one. This study is focused on students enrolled in Innovation in Design, which is a semester-long introduction to engineering course for freshmen students at a large research university in the northwest. The course is an interactive, hands-on experimental introduction to several engineering discipline projects and employs a flipped classroom approach to explain fundamental engineering concepts before students apply and test those concepts in the classroom experiments. This structure exposes students in year one to engineering applications, with an additional piece of the course designed to further engage students in the engineering school and research activities. The Engineering Engagement assignment, which is the focus of this study, is posed to broaden student exposure to engineering outside of the classroom. Our approach consists of two types of engagement, where students choose between attending a research seminar or a club meeting. Assessment of the effect of engagement activities on motivation was performed with the Science Motivation Questionnaire II, adapted to engineering courses. Test results were analyzed using three engineering engagement activities: research seminar, club meeting, and senior presentations as independent variables and the five motivation constructs from the SMQ-II as dependent variables. None of the constructs showed statistical significance. Introduction The need to increase the numbers of engineering graduates has often been discussed 1 , as indicated by the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness' commitment to increasing graduation rates in engineering disciplines 2 . It has long been recognized that the introductory engineering courses within the first year of the engineering curriculum play a critical role in student attitudes towards engineering as a suitable profession 3 . Active learning classroom techniques, particularly those that focus on engaging freshman students in carefully chosen design projects 4 , are connected to increased student mastery of the course subject material 5 . First year engineering design course implementations are used in many universities with the goals of exposing freshman engineering students to different aspects of professional engineering work and of engaging students in controlled design projects 6 . It is also broadly acknowledged that the success of engineering students increases with modest participation in extracurricular activities 7 , because participation in extracurricular activities increases student engagement 8 . Some universities have overhauled the entire first-year engineering curriculum to integrate engineering design in every course taken by freshman engineering students with promising results 9, 10 , yet these articles also note the significant time requirement for faculty members in preparing the sweeping curriculum changes 11 . Researchers at other universities have investigated the effects of augmenting or modifying the traditional first-year engineering design course with extracurricular activities to engage students in the engineering profession. Merritt et. al. reported on an initiative in which mentorship and research seminars were combined into a semester-long research seminar class in which first-year students were assigned to groups of eight based on student individual preferences; the authors examined just one seminar group in-depth as a case study 12 . Chesler et.al, recognizing the multiple stakeholders involved in the freshman engineering design course, constructed a virtual internship for freshman students to encourage students to begin thinking of themselves as engineering professionals, yet this inquiry also provided only a single bioengineering focused option 4 . Introducing two pre-selected case studies into a traditional freshman engineering course, Kilgore et al. measured the ability of freshman students to include context and application in the problem-scoping phase of a design project 13 . These researchers suggest that context-oriented approaches in the curriculum increase retention of female students because female students generated an average of 2.37 more context-specific design requirements than the male students; however, students were not allowed to individually select case studies based on personal interest. Within a single department at another university, Fox et.al. found 90% of first semester students valued the experience from a project linking a freshman biosystems engineering design course to the senior biosystems engineering design course, with freshman students acting as subcontractors for the seniors 14 . These modifications to the traditional freshman introduction to engineering design course require less preparation time and effort for faculty and instructors to implement. Yet the comparative effect of the different types of engineering engagement activities on student motivation to continue in the engineering degree track, implemented side-by-side in the same course with different students selecting different activities, has not been studied in freshman students. There is a need for interventions which mitigate professor effort to affect freshman motivation to continue in engineering curriculum. In this study we utilized the Science Motivation Questionnaire II (SMQ-II) to quantify the connection between freshman engineer engagement in activities outside the classroom and motivation to continue in engineering 15 . We follow the approach of Lackey et.al.in tracking how a single non-technical assignment can predict academic success 16 , but our study is distinguished from earlier work in that the emphasis in this study is on student motivation. In this study we compare the effects on motivation of three different engagement activities that are modifications to an existing freshman engineering course. Methods At a large land-grant university in the Northwest, the course Engr 120: Innovation in Design, is a two-credit, one-semester course taught in both the fall and spring. The course is required for majors in bio-, civil, environmental, and mechanical engineering and is open to students from chemical, computer, and electrical engineering. Engr 120 surveys discipline-specific projects before cumulating in an interdisciplinary project at the end of the semester. The condensed single semester course time is countered by encouraging students to engage with individual engineering disciplines outside of the classroom. Students are allowed to self-select into the available engineering engagement activities. Students are required to participate in at least one 'Engineering Engagement' extracurricular activity during the semester and to write a one page report on their experience at the end of the semester. Students may choose to attend a presentation for the senior design projects for an engineering department, attend a faculty research seminar presentation, or participate in an engineering student club meeting. The number participating in the study totaled 60 students, with 28 attending student clubs, 21 attending a research seminar, and 11 choosing senior design project presentations as their engagement experience. The senior design presentations were either poster presentations in electrical and civil engineering or oral presentations in mechanical engineering; Engr 120 attendees were to ask at least one question of the senior design team presenters. Faculty presentations for the Civil and Environmental, or Mechanical Engineering departments were part of the graduate seminar series, and the freshman students were not required to ask a question of the presenter. The freshman werefreshmen were given the option to attend these graduate level research seminars, even though it was unlikely the freshman students would fully understand the research topic. The engineering club meetings were organized by the various student clubs within the College of Engineering and Architecture, involving presentations, work days, community building, and mentorship activities. Motivation Construct Question Question statements Intrinsic Motivation 1 The engineering I learn is relevant to my life. 3 Learning engineering is interesting. 12 Learning engineering makes my life more meaningful. 17 I am curious about discoveries in engineering. 19 I enjoy learning engineering. Self-efficacy 9 I am confident I will do well on engineering tests. 14 I am confident I will do well on engineering labs and projects. 15 I believe I can master engineering knowledge and skills. 18 I believe I can earn a grade of an “A” in engineering. 21 I am sure I can understand engineering. Self-determination 5 I put enough effort into learning engineering. 6 I use strategies to learn engineering well. 11 I spend a lot of time learning engineering. 16 I prepare well for engineering tests and labs. 22 I study hard to learn engineering. Career Motivation 7 Learning engineering will help me get a good job. 10 Knowing engineering will give me a career advantage. 13 Understanding engineering will benefit me in my career. 23 My career will involve engineering. 25 I will use engineering problem-solving skills in my career. Grade Motivation 2 I like to do better than other students on engineering tests. 4 Getting a good engineering grade is important to me. 8 It is important that I get an “A” in engineering. 20 I think about the grade I will get in engineering. 24 Scoring high on engineering tests and labs matters to me. Table 1: Question statements from the SMQ-II, question number and motivation construct each statement relates to. These question answers were averaged and used for the MANCOVA analysis. To assess the Engineering Engagement assignment impact on student motivation, The Science Motivation Questionnaire II (SMQ-II), in the Appendix, was employed and modified to represent engineering rather than science vocabu