Leveraging Lived Experiences of Nontraditional Engineering Students to Promote Engaged Student Learning in Technical Classrooms

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by leveraging the lived experiences of nontraditional engineering students to increase engaged student learning for all engineering students. Nontraditional students (NTS) are defined as students who satisfy at least one of the seven criteria provided by the National Center for Education Statistics or are older than 24 years of age in an undergraduate program. NTES typically include adult learners, veterans, and women. The population of nontraditional engineering students is expected to increase and will become a significant part of the engineering student population. This project will advance the understanding of the lived experiences of nontraditional engineering students as an asset and focus on the importance of leveraging their strengths for engineering education. This project will identify the characteristics of nontraditional engineering students’ lived experiences that can be leveraged, create cooperative learning activities that leverage their lived experiences to increase engaged student learning, and create open resources for other STEM educators. As an IUSE program Engaged Student Learning Track Level 1 project, this project serves the IUSE program’s intent of increasing student engagement and learning in STEM by broadening the participation of nontraditional engineering students in STEM education and STEM fields, and by providing an alternative pedagogy to increase traditional students’ awareness and understanding of the need for diversity and appreciation of diversity in engineering teams. The project will use a mixed-methods approach that includes semi-structured interviews, surveys, instructor observations, and minute-papers to answer two major research questions: (1) What are the lived experiences of nontraditional engineering students that can be leveraged in undergraduate engineering classrooms to increase engaged learning for all students? and (2) How do we leverage these lived experiences in undergraduate engineering classrooms through cooperative learning to increase engaged learning of all students? A group of engineering educators will implement the cooperative learning activities developed through this project to evaluate the effectiveness and ease of implementation. Upon completion, this project will contribute to the undergraduate engineering education body of knowledge through: (1) exploring nontraditional engineering student education from an asset-based perspective; (2) identifying the themes and attributes of nontraditional engineering students’ lived experiences that can propagate future research in nontraditional engineering students; (3) expanding the assessment instrument in measuring engaged student learning at the in-class activity level; (4) creating an alternative instructional method by developing methodologies to create cooperative learning activities that leverage nontraditional engineering students’ lived experiences and developing a set of cooperative in-class activities based on this methodology that is used to validate the methodology. The major deliverables from this project will be (1) identifying characteristics and attributes of the lived experiences of nontraditional engineering students (2) an open handbook of cooperative learning activities developed through this project, and methodologies to develop additional cooperative learning activities that leverage the lived experiences of nontraditional engineering students to increase engaged student learning. The deliverables will be disseminated through conferences, demonstrative workshops, virtual workshops, and publication of the handbook as an open resource. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.