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The Use of Focus Groups for Minority Engineering Program Assessment
Author(s) -
Aken Eileen M. Van,
Watford Bevlee,
MedinaBorja Alexandra
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of engineering education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.896
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 2168-9830
pISSN - 1069-4730
DOI - 10.1002/j.2168-9830.1999.tb00455.x
Subject(s) - engineering education , perception , focus group , underrepresented minority , face (sociological concept) , psychology , medical education , state (computer science) , engineering , mathematics education , engineering management , computer science , sociology , marketing , medicine , business , social science , algorithm , neuroscience
To increase the attraction and retention of minority engineering students, many higher‐education institutions have implemented programs to help address academic and social pressures these students face. A key question for administrators of such programs is their actual impact on the targeted students. Since these programs seek to improve retention rates by positively improving students' experience with their institutional environment, it becomes crucial to assess students' perceptions of their college experience. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how focus groups can be used for educational program assessment, in particular minority engineering programs. An evaluative study of minority engineering programs at a state university is used to illustrate this methodology. In this paper, we describe how the study was designed and conducted, the resources required, the types of results obtained from the study, and the follow‐up strategies.