America's higher education system is widely regarded to be one of the largest and most flexible systems in the world. Despite this advantage, the U.S. is in danger of beingoutpaced by other countries in producing innovative scientists and engineers. Recentreports by the federal government underscore the challenge faced by the U.S.: scienceand engineering students need to be better prepared with the motivation, competence, andcritical thinking skills required to solve problems and generate technologicalbreakthroughs if the nation is to remain a global economic leader.
Enabling Engineering Student Success, a new report released by the Center for theAdvancement of Engineering Education (CAEE) and available for download on theirwebsite, addresses this challenge by identifying key opportunities for improving howengineering students are currently being prepared for professional practice. A majorcomponent of the report, the recently concluded Academic Pathways Study (APS),involved a broad collaboration of scholars who conducted innovative multi-year studiesinvolving over 5,400 students at more than 20 institutions. The APS research alsoincluded over 100 newly hired graduates to round out a detailed picture of the pathsengineering students take as they enter, experience, and graduate from undergraduatedegree programs.
This collection of both qualitative and quantitative data challenges many assumptionsabout instruction and learning. For instance, despite formal instruction, engineeringstudents risk falling short of the communication or professional skills demanded oftoday's engineers. Even as they approach graduation, students may not fully appreciatethe need to engage and collaborate with a wide range of individuals in a globallydistributed team. Moreover, some students are not learning how to integrateconsiderations of the broad context of engineering problems into their design processes.
"A significant number of seniors aren't firm on wanting to be engineers and don't alwayshave a complete picture of what engineering work is," says lead investigator of the APS,Sheri Sheppard, professor at Stanford University. "This is surprising, in part becausethere's been a national movement to include project-based learning activities, or activitiesthat more closely resemble real-world problems, in regular coursework. There's stillwork to be done in helping students see the connections between their school activitiesand engineering practice." She goes on to emphasize the need for more accessibleundergraduate programs, "Thinking like an engineer is an incredibly powerful way ofprocessing and organizing ideas that has applications far beyond engineering; how do weget students to see that studying engineering is a good educational investment?"
In addition to the APS, the report details other CAEE research and programs, includingfaculty decision-making, teaching preparation for future faculty, and expanding capacityfor educational research in engineering. Jennifer Turns, lead investigator of the Studies ofEngineering Educator Decisions and professor at the University of Washington, notesthat the research on faculty decision-making represents an important and novel approachto studying teaching: "A decision represents the point where educator thinking connectswith educator action, and the decision-making process represents a context in whicheducators can apply research findings about students." Cindy Atman, director of CAEEand professor at the University of Washington, adds that understanding the engineeringstudent experience is not enough: "We need educators who are capable of using theresearch. Therefore, in addition to our analyses, we included questions in the report thatcan be asked by engineering educators to evaluate the effectiveness of their ownprograms or approaches." The result is a robust discussion of the current direction ofengineering education, where improvements might best be made, and how more studentsmight be attracted to and retained in engineering programs.
Source: University of Washington