A Scoping Literature Review of Engineering Thriving to Redefine Student Success

Julianna S Gesun,John Chen,Allison Godwin,John Mark Froiland,Edward Berger,Karin J Jensen,Justin C Major

doi:10.21061/see.9

Abstract

Background: The importance of thriving is well-established, but little is known about thriving for undergraduate engineering students. We introduce engineering thriving as the process by which engineering students develop optimal functioning in undergraduate engineering programs. Since thriving is currently underexplored in the engineering education literature, we investigated the larger body of literature on engineering student success. Purpose: We introduce the concept of engineering thriving to synthesize the largely discrete existing bodies of literature on engineering student success to bring together many different perspectives, methodological approaches, and findings that shape our understanding of engineering thriving. Our work on thriving unites disparate lines of research on engineering student success, challenges the assumption that addressing barriers automatically leads to success, and strives to change the way engineering education views student success. Scope/Method: We used the scoping literature review method to investigate papers on undergraduate engineering student success. Four databases were searched, yielding 726 initial papers that studied separate dimensions of engineering student success, such as academic, personal, cognitive, and behavioral. We integrated the relationships among these dimensions to develop an understanding of engineering thriving. Our final analysis included 68 papers after removing duplicates and applying selection criteria. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that an engineering student thriving includes multiple dimensions of success, involves cyclical processes of growth and adaptation, and consists of synergistic competencies that should ideally be studied together with as many other competencies as possible. These findings support the conclusion that engineering thriving can be understood as helping students manage constantly changing internal and external factors within the broader engineering education system.

Highlights

The importance of supporting engineering students beyond the academic outcomes that often define success and dominate current research is well-documented; more work is needed to understand what exactly constitutes a successful engineering student beyond academic outcomes
Since the purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of engineering thriving, it is crucial to investigate the relationships between competencies
Once all the competencies and external factors important to undergraduate engineering student success were charted in our organizational spreadsheet, the researchers created broader categories to understand the hundreds of competencies and external factors that emerged

Summary

Introduction

The importance of supporting engineering students beyond the academic outcomes that often define success and dominate current research is well-documented; more work is needed to understand what exactly constitutes a successful engineering student beyond academic outcomes. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommended a greater focus on interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies to increase national college completion in STEM disciplines (2017) These reports offer consensus that educating successful engineering students beyond the traditional focus on academic outcomes is of high priority, yet each report presents drastically different visions for what exactly constitutes successful engineering students beyond solely academic outcomes. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that an engineering student thriving includes multiple dimensions of success, involves cyclical processes of growth and adaptation, and consists of synergistic competencies that should ideally be studied together with as many other competencies as possible These findings support the conclusion that engineering thriving can be understood as helping students manage constantly changing internal and external factors within the broader engineering education system

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