Measuring global awareness interest development of engineering and information technology students

Abstract

Engineers and information technology professionals often work in international settings or teams, as well as across diverse cultures in today's global economy. Ever expanding globalized society has required updates in organizational procedures and practices, especially for engineering and information technology organizations, to keep up with increasingly competitive and technology-oriented markets. Professional accreditation organizations (e.g., ABET, Inc.) also recognized that it is necessary to develop programs to prepare globally competent graduates. In this paper, our primary emphasis is on understanding students' interest in global awareness. As the theoretical framework, we use Model of Domain Learning (MDL) - a learning theory that has a three-pronged approach to the conceptualization of learning in a domain, covering interest, knowledge and strategic processing. Students' interest in a domain changes from situational to individual as they develop from novice to proficient in the domain. Therefore, we propose interest as an additional construct to measure students' global awareness. We developed an instrument to effectively measure students' global awareness development and engagement throughout their education. In this paper, we present our preliminary findings for the proposed global awareness interest assessment framework and also analyze factors affecting engineering and technology students' global awareness interest.