First-Year Research in Engineering Education

Formal Learning Team: EM Learning Objectives and Content Integration

This project is the Formal Learning piece of a larger project funded by The Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN). The high-level goal of KEEN and this larger project is for engineers to develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) so they can create personal, economic, and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work. The Formal Learning team is working on integrating EM content into courses throughout the entire coursework of undergraduate engineering students. To accomplish this, we have been developing a set of measurable course learning objectives that encompass some of the most important EM skills for an engineer to master. Some of these skills include how to identify an opportunity to create value, learn from failure, and protect intellectual property. These learning objectives are subdivided into three efficacy levels to better capture the student learning process. Additionally, rubrics for each level are being developed by the Research and Assessment team so researchers or instructors can directly assess courses using the content and objectives our team creates. Additional goals of the Formal Learning team are to work with faculty and TAs to facilitate the integration of EM content into engineering courses. E-learning modules are being adapted from those made by the University of New Haven for use by OSU engineering instructors. We are also working on developing lessons, assignments, and labs that meet our learning objectives for first-year engineering and capstone courses. 

Engineering Unleashed Cards: https://engineeringunleashed.com/card/940

Publications: https://peer.asee.org/34312, https://peer.asee.org/32089

Team Members: Krista Kecskemety, PI; Laine Rumreich, GRA; Nicholas Sattele, URA; Zachary Dix, URA; Faith Logan, URA

Keywords: entrepreneurial mindset, first-year engineering, capstone, learning objectives, e-learning

At Ohio State, technical communication skills are taught in the Fundamentals of Engineering courses through technical writing assignments such as lab reports. Students can track their mastery of technical communication using their scores on these assignments and the written feedback left on their work by Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs). Despite the positive impact written feedback has on student learning, the quality and experiences that inform UTA written feedback still need to be discovered. This study aims to be the first step in improving UTA written feedback methods.

For this project, a group of UTAs, Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs), and faculty were given a student writing sample to score and leave written feedback on. Their comments were broken into individual ideas and then coded using two different coding methods, one focusing on the content of the ideas and the other focusing on purpose. The two coding methods were synthesized from the literature that discussed categorizing feedback on student work. These results produced trends and observations comparing the UTAs and Experts (GTAs and Faculty) and described alongside observations of UTAs alone.

Publications: http://hdl.handle.net/1811/92973

Team Members: Krista Kecskemety, PI; Connor Jenkins, GRA;

Keywords: technical writing, written feedback, teaching assistants

Examining Software Design Projects in a First-Year Engineering Course Through Different Complexity Measures

The motivation for this project is a change in the end-of-semester project in First-Year Engineering classrooms from an infrared (IR) device reader or train project to a computer game. The goal of studying this course change is to provide insight about how game development projects impact student learning compared to other project options. A Python script was developed to analyze the two different types of student software submissions, game development and traditional project options. The submissions were analyzed based on practiced programming fundamentals and four measures of complexity.

FYRE undergraduate student Laine Rumreich presented this research at the 2019 Frontiers in Education Conference.

Analysis of the Entrepreneurial Mindset in Established Coursework: Analysis Process and Lessons Learned

The motivation behind this project is that the first year curriculum in engineering is being completely revamped to become more entrepreneurially minded. The goal of this project is to evaluate existing first year labs in the EML lens and identify categories each was lacking, and provide a framework for educators to quickly and efficiently evaluate their curriculum. For this study, a document analysis was done on each lab’s documents in FYE courses, and an ‘evaluation matrix’ based on EML was used to score each lab in specific EML categories.

This research indicates that a semester long design project is not needed to teach EML. In addition, some labs lacked in certain categories, but others made up for it and excelled.

This project was completed by students Nick Sattele, Zach Dix, and Faith Logan.