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Using communities of practice to investigate work-integrated learning in engineering education
Industry worldwide calls for highly qualified STEM graduates that are ready to work. Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been implemented to address this need. WIL is a strategy to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and emphasize “employability.” However, students often perceive a confusing disconnect between their training and their workplace experience. This paper reports on a study of a graduate engineering course that uses a Communities of Practice (CoP) lens and a grounded theory approach to reconceptualize WIL. Data sources from 2017 to 2022 include 27 students’ responses from an open-ended survey and fourteen interviews with students, alumni, and employees from different construction sites that hosted students. Findings show that the articulations of the universities and companies should be centered on creating critical boundary objects and developing skills to allow students to become effective brokers. Furthermore, our analysis revealed that WIL is a bidirectional bridge where students can transfer their expertise through
boundary objects
from the company to the class and vice versa, becoming
brokers
who can participate in and mediate across the two communities. Companies should provide opportunities for
Legitimate Peripheral Participation
(LPP), where students can negotiate their increasing participation from peripheral to full members. The roles of universities, industries, students, and instructors in connecting the university and the workplace are described.
Journal Article
Graduate STEM education for the 21st century
The U.S. system of graduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has served the nation and its science and engineering enterprise extremely well. In many ways, it is the \"gold standard\" for graduate STEM education in the world as evidenced by, among other measures, the substantial number of international students coming to the United States to study. Over the course of their education, graduate students become involved in advancing the frontiers of discovery, as well as in making significant contributions to the growth of the U.S. economy, its national security, and the health and well-being of its people. However, continuous, dramatic innovations in research methods and technologies, changes in the nature and availability of work, shifts in demographics, and expansions in the scope of occupations needing STEM expertise raise questions about how well the current STEM graduate education system is meeting the full array of 21st-century needs. Indeed, recent surveys of employers and graduates and studies of graduate education suggest that many graduate programs do not adequately prepare students to translate their knowledge into impact in multiple careers.
Book
Engineering Students’ Use of Large Language Model Tools: An Empirical Study Based on a Survey of Students from 12 Universities
Large language model (LLM) tools, such as ChatGPT, are rapidly transforming engineering education by enhancing tasks like information retrieval, coding, and writing refinement, which are critical to the problem-solving and technical focus of engineering disciplines. This study investigates how engineering students use LLM tools and the challenges they face, offering insights into the adoption of AI technologies in academic settings. A survey of 539 engineering students from 12 leading Chinese universities, using the UTAUT framework, examines factors such as technological expectations, environmental support, and personal characteristics. The key findings include the following: (1) Over 40% of engineering students use LLM tools, with 18.8% regarding them as indispensable. (2) Trust in AI-generated content remains a central challenge, as students must critically evaluate its accuracy and reliability. (3) Environmental support significantly affects usage, with notable regional disparities, particularly between eastern and other regions in China. (4) A persistent digital divide, influenced by gender, academic level, and socioeconomic background, affects the depth and effectiveness of tool use. These results underscore the need for targeted support to address regional and demographic disparities and optimize LLM tool integration in engineering education.
Journal Article
Undergraduate engineering students’ epistemic cognition and changes in the course of being engineering design mentors
Background
To become qualified engineers, undergraduates must develop a contextualized epistemic cognition (EC) during the engineering design process (EDP), but little is known about their EC in the authentic EDP. This study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of the EC and reported epistemic changes of undergraduate engineering students who served as EDP mentors in a secondary-school STEM-based community service-learning (CSL) project in Hong Kong. Harnessing the epistemic analytical model of Aims, Ideals, and Reliable Processes (AIR), this study qualitatively analyzed interviews with 11 undergraduate engineering students about the EDP during their mentorship experiences.
Results
Based on the empirical data, we refined the AIR model to AIRK by adding a new component, “K” (Knowledge resources), to better interpret undergraduate engineering students’ EC during the EDP. Furthermore, by analyzing undergraduate engineering students’ reflections on their epistemic changes through mentorship, we identified six aspects: (i) from learning theoretical knowledge to transforming knowledge to address societal needs; (ii) from an assignment-focused to a user-centered mindset; (iii) from recognizing the optimal solution to embracing the necessity for continuous improvement; (iv) from completing code to thinking creatively; (v) from a technology-centric mindset to valuing communication and collaboration; and (vi) gaining more interconnected STEM knowledge.
Conclusions
Our resulting AIRK model could provide a conceptual tool for understanding undergraduate engineering students’ EC in the EDP. The findings on reported epistemic changes demonstrated that mentoring secondary students in STEM projects could foster undergraduate engineering students’ EC development, revealing that the approach of university–school–community partnership can be practically sustainable and beneficial for adoption.
Journal Article
The Role of Gratitude in a Positive Psychology Group Intervention Program Implemented for Undergraduate Engineering Students
Over the past decades, research on positive psychology for building strengths has proliferated. The present study aimed to explore the effect of gratitude in a 5-week positive psychology group program for undergraduate engineering students which included an intermediary 2-week gratitude intervention. In a mixed-design, 69 students from three engineering departments of the School of Pedagogical and Technological Education (ASPETE), assigned to the intervention (N = 34) and the control group (N = 35), with an average age of 21.52 years (SD = 4.63), were administered the Gratitude Questionnaire—six item form (GQ-6), the Modified Differential Emotions Scale (mDES), the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), and the Life Orientation Test—Revised (LOT-R). The condition experimental vs. control group was designated as the between-subjects factor, and time, that is, baseline vs. post intervention, was set as the within-subjects factor. Students who received the intervention reported significantly higher levels of gratitude. The increase in gratitude was due to the positive psychology group program. In addition, gratitude showed a significant effect on happiness and optimism, but failed to attain a significant impact on positive and negative emotions and resilience. Further research is needed to elucidate the effectiveness of positive psychology programs for undergraduate engineering students and the intervening cognitive processes.
Journal Article
Technology and engagement : making technology work for first generation college students
\"Technology and Engagement is based on a four-year study of how first generation college students use social media, aimed at improving their transition to and engagement with their university. Through web technology, including social media sites, students were better able to maintain close ties with family and friends from home, as well as engage more with social and academic programs at their university. This 'ecology of transition' was important in keeping the students focused on why they were in college, and helped them become more integrated into the university setting. By showing the gains in campus capital these first-generation college students obtained through social media, the authors offer concrete suggestions for how other universities and college-retention programs can utilize the findings to increase their own retention of first-generation college students\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Influence of creative, social, and practical imaginativeness on self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention of engineering students
Despite the importance of imagination to entrepreneurship, it is underexplored by researchers in the field. Imaginativeness is a cognitive ability that coalesces the capacity for imagination with the knowledge required to rationally conjure up a variety of task-related scenarios. It is especially helpful for those who lack prior experience and therefore can be beneficial for recent graduates and anyone who wants to launch their own business. In our study, we examine whether imaginativeness, in its three forms, can influence engineering students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. Our study recorded 216 responses to prove the hypotheses employing partial least squares path modeling using SmartPLS3, and we inferred that creative imaginativeness, social imaginativeness, and practical imaginativeness are positively related to entrepreneurial self-efficacy thereby strengthening entrepreneurial intention. The study provides distinctive insights into the study of imagination in the formation of entrepreneurial intention among engineering students in a developing economy, where studies are few.
Journal Article