Author(s):
This poster presents early-stage preliminary results from a NSF-IUSE Engaged Student Learning Track 1 project funded in Fall 2023.
Need: The population of nontraditional engineering students (NTES) is increasing across campuses as we have more students returning to college from the workforce, and students who work to support their education. Research into NTES generally focused on their demographics, the challenges they faced and educational outcomes, and specific methods of teaching NTES; mainly focusing on deficiencies or ways to improve outcomes. None of existing studies on NTES are asset-based that focus on their strengths such as their lived experiences, or leveraging their strengths to increase engaged student learning for all students. So, there is a need to understand the lived experiences of NTES, the strengths that NTES’ lived experiences bring to engineering education, and how engineering educators can leverage NTES’ strengths in increasing engaged student learning.
Guiding Questions: RQ1: What are the lived experiences of NTES that can be leveraged in undergraduate engineering classrooms to increase engaged learning for all students?
RQ2: How do we leverage these lived experiences in undergraduate engineering classrooms through cooperative learning to increase engaged learning of all students?
Outcomes: This poster presentation covers preliminary results that address a part of RQ1. NTES were interviewed and the interviews were professionally transcribed, and we are in the process of coding these interviews. We expect the coding to be complete soon and we will share the preliminary results from the coding in our poster presentation. A preliminary analysis of a subset of the collected interviews showed some emerging themes from the NTES interviews, relating to comfort level with sharing the NTES status with peers, collaborating with peers while bringing in some of the practical industry experience, and ability to use to acquired skills like time management and communication by NTES.
Broader Impacts: Dissemination is part of the broader impacts, and this poster helps us disseminate our preliminary results to a wider audience. The overall broader impacts of the project are 1) broadening the participation of NTES in STEM education and STEM fields; (2) providing an alternative pedagogy to increase traditional students’ awareness and understanding of the need for diversity and appreciation of diversity in engineering teams, which in turn contributes to a diverse and inclusive STEM workforce; (3) adult learners, veterans, and women make up a considerable percentage of NTES, this research increases the inclusion of these underrepresented groups in STEM classrooms.
Coauthors
Ean H. Ng, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
