Work in Progress: Undergraduate Engineering Students' Perceptions of Engineering Education as an Academic Discipline

Abstract

Engineering education has been a focus of interest in the national and international engineering community as seen by the increasing number of universities (i.e. Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue University, Tufts University, Utah State University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) that house programs that confer engineering education degrees. Despite the interest in this new field of study, little information about the field has been disseminated to the undergraduate engineering community. For this reason, the authors have developed a survey to capture current perceptions that engineering students have about engineering education as an academic discipline. This work in progress presents information about the 13 items on the "student perceptions of engineering education" survey along with pilot data collected from undergraduate engineering students at one of the institutions that houses a department of engineering education. Results from this study may be used to better inform engineering students of the engineering education discipline