Engineering Outreach Research Articles

Impact of an immersive engineering program on children's understanding of and interest in engineering: Addressing gender stereotypes

AbstractBackgroundThe gender gap in engineering presents a critical barrier to achieving a diverse and innovative engineering workforce. This gap is influenced by gender stereotypes, socialization processes, masculine culture, and insufficient early experiences with engineering. These contribute to diminished STEM self‐concept, interest, and participation among women.Purpose/HypothesisThis study assessed an engineering outreach program's impact on children's understanding of and interest in engineering and beliefs about who can be an engineer. It compared whether discussions of gender bias differentially influenced these outcomes for girls and boys.Design/MethodThe study was a short‐term sequential quasi‐experimental design with boys and girls in grades 4–5. Six classroom groups attended a half‐day engineering field trip and were randomly assigned to two conditions: Gender Presentation or No Gender Presentation. Pre‐ and post‐program surveys measured changes in understanding of and interest in engineering and beliefs about who can be an engineer.ResultsAll children, regardless of gender or condition, had higher understanding of and interest in engineering after the program, but also demonstrated a bias in selecting men over women as engineers. Participants reported that both girls and boys like and are good at engineering and these ratings increased from the pre‐program to the post‐program survey.ConclusionThis research affirms the effectiveness of immersive and inclusive programming in enhancing children's understanding of and interest in engineering. No substantial gender‐specific differences emerged regarding the impact of discussions on gender biases. The program underscores the value of early inclusive educational interventions in fostering equitable interest in engineering among young students.

An Engineering Outreach Activity: How to Develop a Tendon-Based Soft Robotic Finger?

An Engineering Outreach Activity: How to Develop a Tendon-Based Soft Robotic Finger?

UNDOING GENDER: HOW YOUNG WOMEN DECIDE TO BECOME ENGINEERS

Numerous studies continue to explore the reasons for women's persistent underrepresentation in engineering education. While a large body of research has documented how the field's affiliation with masculinity deters women, rarely has sufficient consideration been given to asking women why they pursue engineering majors. Using data from 35 in-depth interviews with racially diverse women, I analyzed women's accounts of choosing engineering majors. Drawing on the sociological perspective known as undoing gender, I find that women describe how their families encouraged an interest in engineering by helping them challenge the connection between masculinity and engineering. The findings also revealed how career advice from teachers is influential in shaping their choices. Contrary to research showing that engineering careers are often unattractive to women, women frame engineering as a profession befitting of their professional and future family plans. The findings suggest that engineering does appeal to women in certain contexts and provides implications and ideas for educators and engineering outreach programs seeking to recruit women to the profession.

Characterizing engineering outreach educators' talk moves: An exploratory framework

AbstractBackgroundDespite the prevalence and potential of K–12 engineering outreach programs, the moment‐to‐moment dynamics of outreach educators' facilitation of engineering learning experiences are understudied. There is a need to identify outreach educators' teaching moves and to explore the implications of these moves.Purpose/HypothesisWe offer a preliminary framework for characterizing engineering outreach educators' teaching moves in relation to principles of ambitious instruction. This study describes outreach educators' teaching moves and identifies learning opportunities afforded by these moves.Design/MethodThrough discourse analysis of video recordings of a university‐led engineering outreach program, we identified teaching moves of novice engineering outreach educators in interaction with elementary student design teams. We considered 18 outreach educators' teaching moves through a lens of ambitious instruction.ResultsIn small group interactions, outreach educators used ambitious, conservative, and inclusive teaching moves. These novice educators utilized talk moves that centered students' ideas and agency. Ambitious moves included two novel teaching moves: design check‐ins and revoicing tangible manifestations of students' ideas. Ambitious moves offered students opportunities to engage in engineering design. Conservative moves provided opportunities for students to make technical and affective progress, and to experience engineering norms.ConclusionsOur work is formative in describing engineering outreach educators' teaching moves and points to outreach educators' capability in using ambitious moves. Ambitious engineering instruction may be a useful framework for designing engineering outreach to support students' participation and progress in engineering design. Additionally, conservative teaching moves, typically considered constraining, may support productive student affect and engagement in engineering design.

Illustrating Business Relevance of Systems Engineering via Storytelling

AbstractMany software‐centric organizations do not embrace Systems Engineering, whether lacking awareness or perceiving it too onerous for value delivered. While some embrace Digital Engineering, Design, and Innovation to advance their market position, some continue to experience sub‐optimal results and downstream consequences.These realities show Systems Engineering becoming inconsequential in today's business settings, to the detriment of success and customer value. Effective storytelling, showcasing situational implementation of the right elements of Systems Engineering, can address this.Stories engage, inspire, and create connection. When layered with multiple dimensions and meaning, they become timeless.This paper describes four vignettes about enhancing success in software‐intensive enterprises by leveraging Systems Engineering in context, flexibly and fit for use, and compatibly with other disciplines. The vignettes illustrate how Systems Engineering strengthens performance and positions for flexibility, adaptability, and resilience in a fast‐changing, complex world.The paper concludes with implications for Systems Engineering outreach, leadership, and influence.

‘Superbugs’: raising public awareness of antimicrobial resistance through a pop-up science shop

‘Superbugs: A Pop-up Science Shop’ was a public engagement event in the school summer holidays of 2019, organised by members of Cardiff University’s School of Medicine. We transformed an empty retail unit in the centre of Wales’s largest shopping centre into an interactive and immersive microbiology experience. We facilitated two-way dialogue to impart positive impact on the awareness of antibiotic resistance, while concurrently evaluating the efficacy of an engagement strategy focused on the utilisation of public spaces to attract public demographics diverse to those who would normally engage with conventional science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) outreach. Over the course of 14 days, we welcomed 6,566 visitors, with 67 per cent attending as part of the natural footfall of the shopping centre. We created 1,626 young Antibiotic Resistance Champions, located in over two hundred schools, across many of the most deprived areas in Wales. We imparted a positive impact to our stakeholders, with a significant increase in the knowledge and understanding of the subject of antimicrobial resistance (AMR); 91.7 per cent indicated that they had a better understanding after the event. In this article, we discuss the evolution of ‘Superbugs’ from concept, planning and design, to the logistics of delivering an engagement event of this scale. We focus in particular on the learning outcomes of the project, and on how this will shape the future of our ‘Superbugs’ project, and engagement events beyond.

Career implications for college student mentors through their contribution to a climate film outreach program for adolescents

ABSTRACT Mentorship has been shown to have a positive influence on mentees but less research is available on the impacts for mentors, particularly those involved in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) outreach. As we work to enhance STEM engagement through outreach programs that include mentoring, understanding the impact on mentors that participate in these programs has implications for program design and offers new avenues for effective mentor engagement. This study explored the impacts of mentoring on undergraduate film and graduate science students who served as mentors in an outreach program for middle and high school youth. In this outreach program, a participant-centered mentorship model was implemented, with mentors supporting students in creating films about local climate change impacts in their communities. The focus was put on interdisciplinary work and the development of communication and relationship building in teams of students and their mentors. Data were collected from the mentors through surveys and interviews. As a result of their participation, mentors experienced professional and personal benefits, such as building teaching and communication skills, developing relationships and networking connections, and personal satisfaction. Several mentors reported high, positive impacts that resulted in changes to their career paths towards STEM education. Mentors who reported moderate or low levels of impact may have had past mentoring experiences that moderated the impact. Based on these findings, we suggest that mentor career and skill development is considered in the development of outreach programs and mentor training to enhance the impact on mentors and their engagement in STEM.

FUTURE SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS THROUGH WORK IN STEM OUTREACH

This paper represents the experience and self-reported skill development of undergraduate Science and Engineering outreach instructors, who were working primarily online during the global pandemic in 2020. This work is part of a larger multi-year project designed to articulate the learning and employability skills gained by a pan-Canadian group of undergraduates, by way of theirtraining and work experience as youth program Instructors delivering STEM outreach activities for youth. The development of these skills was measured using a post-program survey, in which undergraduate instructors were asked a number of questions about their skill development. Instructors noted development most significantly in (1) teamwork and collaboration; (2) adaptability and flexibility: (3) communication, (4) leadership, (5) innovation and creativity, and (6)initiative. A significant theme noted was the learning that took place from the sudden shift to teaching remotely and working through a pandemic. Although the focus of STEM Outreach research & evaluation is often on the impact of the program on its participants, this work demonstrates the value of the instructor experience, and how this work can leverage other post-secondary initiatives designed to prepare undergraduates for their careers.

UNDERSTANDING MENTOR NEEDS IN ONLINE ENGINEERING OUTREACH

Mentoring in engineering outreach is being adopted more and more by university programs that aim toincrease diversity in their school. It is fair to say that mentoring can be a useful tool to do this, but not always.Mentor training can help improve program outcomes (attendance, engagement, retention). In this study, we look at one case of a virtual engineering outreach program, find the challenges, and make recommendations for mentor training modules that could address challenges. In doing so, we believe that this sets a foundation for building training for many mentor-based virtual outreach programs in engineering.

Staying relevant - new ways to assess engineering aptitude

The skills required of engineers are changing. New technology and automation mean that fewer engineers are undertaking more – and more varied – work. What can we do to ensure that engineers with the right skills are encouraged into our industry today, and equipped for the industry of tomorrow? Engineering outreach initiatives are a widely accepted method of encouraging secondary school students to consider engineering for study or work. Initiatives organised at the national level tend to focus on maths and physics skillsets, as do careers advice within schools and university course entry requirements. Local-level outreach initiatives are beginning to focus on creativity, and the understanding of engineering behaviour. However, these skillsets are not currently easy to assess. By evaluating maths and physics skills only – a subset of engineering skills – we may discourage potentially suitable engineering applicants who have a wider range of well-developed skills, such as creativity or intuitive understanding of engineering behaviours. This article reviews existing methods of assessing creativity and the understanding of engineering behaviours, and proposes the development of a simple evaluation procedure that could be undertaken by outreach organisers on groups of secondary school students, before and after an engineering outreach initiative, to assess the effectiveness of the teaching within the initiative. The test also has potential additional applications, including to the general public, to whom engineers have often struggled to explain their jobs, and to younger students, long before they consider careers in any one subject. The assessment portion on understanding of engineering behaviours proposes an adaptation of the ‘Brohn test’ and the International Mathematical Kangaroo approach, with adaptations to avoid employing visual engineering jargon in the depiction of boundary conditions, and to favour strain-based problems. The creativity assessment portion proposes simple design brief questions, with the student response evaluated based on the identity Creativity = Usefulness × Novelty and a taxonomy of creative design, within a limited design period and with limited space to represent their design to the assessor.

Validating a scale to measure engineers' perceived self-efficacy for engineering education outreach.

Education outreach in schools has been identified as a critical route to influence children’s perceptions and capabilities for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics careers. Evidence suggests that providing non-teaching professionals like engineers with training programmes and structured experience can boost perceived self-efficacy to perform education outreach, which in turn means better quality and more frequent public engagement. A validated measure of the construct of perceived self-efficacy for engineering education outreach will be useful for effective science communication participation, research, and practise. This article presents the methods used to develop the Engineering Outreach Self-efficacy Scale (EOSS), along with initial reliability and validation results to support the scale’s use. The 10-item scale was found to have good internal consistency and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha α = .92) with a sample of 160 engineers. The scale had convergent validity with general self-efficacy. Engineers with more experience of education outreach had higher self-efficacy for engineering education outreach. There were no significant differences between male and female engineers. Initial test-retest results showed engineers receiving training in education outreach significantly improved their EOSS scores, indicating capability to detect change over time. It is hoped this scale will prove useful for further evaluation of engineering education outreach and public engagement with science activities.

The Secret Engineer

Engineering outreach must target the late bloomers, not just school students, writes our anonymous blogger

Designing a mobile makerspace: A strategy for increasing diversity by offering engineering outreach workshops to underrepresented youth

Makerspaces, physical spaces that provide access to fabrication tools, technologies, and resources, are potentially changing the way educators envision teaching and learning. The purpose of this poster is to illustrate how an engineering design process is being used to help guide Connections Engineering Outreach to design, build, implement, and evaluate a mobile makerspace. One of the objectives of the mobile makerspace is to provide outreach workshops to underrepresented and underserviced groups in an attempt to increasing the diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Since January 2018, the mobile makerspace has delivered workshops to approximately 2000 students in Grades 3-8. Preliminary results from an online survey indicate that the workshops provided high levels of student engagement and opportunities to learn about STEM. Interview results also suggest that the workshops are helping build the capacity of educators towards using makerspace technology. This project is yet to complete one full cycle of the engineering design process and will be conducting on-going program evaluation

Using an Applied Research-Practice Cycle: Iterative Improvement of Culturally Relevant Engineering Outreach

By recognizing disconnects between practitioner conceptions of engineering outreach with young people (specifically a lack of focus on cultural relevance), and researcher conceptions of a culturally relevant approach to engineering outreach, we set out to bridge theory and practice by iteratively designing and implementing interventions. We engaged in a cycle of research-informed practice and practice-informed research to develop more culturally relevant approaches to broadening participation in engineering. Research-based findings focused on the importance of understanding common misconceptions of engineering that intervention participants and facilitators may possess. Such understanding enables iterative improvement of activities and research instruments that yield meaningful results. Practice-based insights included findings regarding intervention structure such as needs for different facilitator-to-student ratios for different age groups, and providing volunteer facilitators with a list of “helpful hints” to consider and/or open-ended questions to ask.

STEM OUTREACH FOR INDIGENOUS YOUTH – LESSONS LEARNED IN OVER A DECADE OF PROGRAMMING

With over a decade of conducting outreach programs for Indigenous youth, the Waterloo Engineering Outreach (WEO) office has gained insight and understanding through a reflective and analytical lens. We outline mistakes and lessons that we’ve learned over the years so others can benefit from our work. This includes the importance of community relationships, delivery and leadership styles, and balancing Western and Indigenous worldviews. The goal of sharing our practices is threefold: provide resources to any group planning to start their own outreach program, offer insight to Western educators to better support Indigenous youth pursuing science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and highlight the necessity of cultural inclusivity and a communal approach in STEM education.

Engineering Outreach: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow [SP Education

This article discusses the current landscape of outreach efforts in the United States to engage K-12 students in engineering. It then provides an overview of two programs run by the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Institute for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education at Stony Brook University (SBU) to promote student participation and interest in engineering. These efforts are aligned with the recently released Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which emphasize incorporating engineering design principles in K-12 science education. We describe two models, one in the form of an on-campus summer camp and the other as a series of after-school activities with both on-and off-campus offerings. These experiences are rarely available in K-12 schools and have the added benefit of exposing students to engineering faculty and researchers. The programs are focused on electrical and computer engineering with emphasis on signal and information processing and analysis and have hosted more than 200 students for the past six years.

Collaborating for Early‐Age Career Awareness: A Comparison of Three Instructional Formats

AbstractBackgroundEarly‐age engineering education can enhance preparedness and generate interest in engineering careers prior to college. This article reports on collaboration between a university engineer and science teacher educators to introduce engineering career awareness in elementary classrooms. The resulting elementary school curriculum, Engineering is Everywhere, features video instruction by the engineer, a teacher activity guide, and a materials kit.Purpose/Research QuestionsOur research question was, “How might engineers and educators best collaborate in elementary engineering outreach efforts?” We co‐developed curricula, prepared classroom teachers, and compared fifth‐grade student learning outcomes to determine the most beneficial type of engineer instruction.Design/MethodA quasi‐experimental research design assessed the effectiveness of three instructional formats: engineer‐led, engineer‐visit, and engineer‐video. Pre‐ and post‐tests captured changes in fifth‐grade students' understanding about the work of engineers and attitudes about engineering.ResultsFindings indicated significant gains in all students' understanding, with some differences across the three instructional formats. The engineer‐led students did not show significant changes in overall engineering attitudes. Only the engineer‐video students demonstrated significant gains in engineering job interests.ConclusionsA qualitative comparison of the costs and benefits of each instructional format raised important considerations for planning engineer outreach. We recommend that engineers collaborate with science teacher educators in the design of video instruction and assist in preparing elementary classroom teachers to administer the lesson activities.

K-12 Engineering Outreach: Design Decisions, Rationales, and Applications

Even though engineering outreach to K-12 schools initially seemed to be a simple undertaking, it proved to require complex design solutions related to a variety of issues. The purpose of this design case is to tell the story of our National Science Foundation (NSF) supported engineering outreach project, that took place between the years of 2007-2013. The design problem of this project started with the issue of how to design the engineering instruction, what to provide within the K-12 instruction, how to conduct the outreach, and how to overcome physical limitations of school sites. This design case captures the design process, context, various designs of the computer-mediated learning platform, and the rationales for design iterations. We also describe how the design team, which included experts in instructional design, electrical engineering, and educational psychology, as well as carpenters, teachers, and graphic designers, worked together to accomplish an outreach project that reached over 3,600 K-12 students. In addition to the design processes, we also report the major findings from our evaluation studies of the intructional modules delivered to K-12 students, and how we used these results to iterate and refine our module designs.

Artificial Skin

This article presents a brief overview of advent and future of the concept of artificial skin. Sensorized electronic skins are an essential element in wearable computing and co-robotic systems that engage in physical interaction with humans. Wearable computing is a rapidly growing sub-domain in the electronics industry and has the potential to transform how we work, play, get information, and interact with others. Due to its close connection to personal electronics and fashion, artificial skin technologies represent a good opportunity for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) outreach at the middle- and high-school levels. Wearable technology is a promising path to STEM education, since it is relevant to the daily experiences of teens and pre-teens, regardless of their social, cultural, and economic background. Middle-school students are an especially appropriate target, since they have adequate intellectual preparation for hardware prototyping but are still at the earliest stages of developing their academic interests.

Preparing university students to lead K-12 engineering outreach programmes: a design experiment

ABSTRACTThis paper describes an engineering outreach programme designed to increase the interest of under-represented youth in engineering and to disseminate pre-engineering design challenge materials to K-12 educators and volunteers. Given university students’ critical role as facilitators of the outreach programme, researchers conducted a two-year design experiment to examine the programme's effectiveness at preparing university students to lead pre-engineering activities. Pre- and post-surveys incorporated items from the Student Engagement sub-scale of the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale. Surveys were analysed using paired-samples t-test. Interview and open-ended survey data were analysed using discourse analysis and the constant comparative method. As a result of participation in the programme, university students reported a gain in efficacy to lead pre-engineering activities. The paper discusses programme features that supported efficacy gains and concludes with a set of design principles for developing learning environments that effectively prepare university students to facilitate pre-engineering outreach programmes.