This work-in-progress research study explores students' self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies within collaborative virtual reality (VR) environments in engineering education. Through thematic analysis of responses from twenty-seven (27) second-year civil engineering students engaged in VR-based land surveying activities, key themes emerged related to goal setting, environmental structuring, help-seeking, task strategies, and self-evaluation. Students with high SRL scores demonstrated greater use of task strategies and self-evaluation techniques, while those with low SRL scores relied more on environmental structuring. The findings underscore the importance of tailoring VR learning experiences to students' individual SRL abilities and integrating features that promote social interaction to enhance collaborative learning and engagement. Future research will explore larger sample sizes and examine the relationship between SRL strategies and learning outcomes in VR environments.

This work-in-progress research paper aims to present a protocol for a systematic review focused on recent engineering education research on collaborative learning in virtual reality (VR) platforms. Despite the growing application of collaborative VR in engineering education, research on systematic instructional methods within these environments remains limited. This work-in-progress paper details a protocol for a systematic review that aims to fill this gap by evaluating the use of collaborative VR in engineering education. We outline the methods, including search strategies and criteria for inclusion, based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework. The review will focus on identifying the skills and competencies targeted by collaborative VR applications, the theoretical underpinnings employed, and the learning outcomes achieved. This systematic approach will provide a comprehensive synthesis of existing literature, offer insights into effective practices, and guide future research and instructional strategies in engineering education using VR technologies. Through this protocol, we aim to contribute to the development of evidence-based guidelines that can enhance the efficacy of collaborative VR learning environments for engineering students.

This full research paper presents the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) results for the Professional Skill Opportunities survey (PSO) we designed to measure undergraduate engineering students’ opportunities to develop and practice important nontechnical professional skills. We use Dall’alba’s "ways of being" as the theoretical framework for the survey development and generated construct definitions based on past literature, expert review, and cognitive think-aloud interviews. We administered the survey in an engineering class at the beginning of the Spring 2022 semester. After comparing the three EFA models based on goodness-of-fit indices and model interpretability aligned to the theoretical model, the researchers selected a five-factor model. The EFA result and literature on leadership and teamwork showed these two skills are highly interrelated and could be combined into one construct to stress the "sharedness" of leadership responsibilities in teams. The result allowed our team to refine our item pool, revise construct definitions, and generate new items. In future work, we will administer the revised PSO survey to the same population at the end of the same semester as further validation. We also plan to explore the relationship between professional skill development opportunities and students’ social support. We hope the PSO survey can provide educators and institutions a means to offer scaffoldings and more opportunities for professional skill development and better prepare students for the engineering workforce.

Our project explores a holistic approach to understand the identity transformation of traditional engineering faculty to engage with engineering education research. This work is part of a larger project that seeks to understand best practices of mentor-mentee relationships between engineering education researchers and engineering faculty entering the EER field. The overall project is a mixed methods study with Cognitive Apprentice Model (CAM) as the guiding framework [1]. In an effort to increase the community of engineering education researchers conducting engineering education research and to support research in the professional formation of engineers (PFE), the NSF has awarded Research Initiation in Engineering Formation (RIEF) grants to engineering faculty with little or no experience conducting social science research. The RIEF grants support a two-year collaborative research project where the engineering faculty member is mentored by one or more engineering education researchers. Since 2016, the PFE: RIEF program has supported over 35 projects across over 40 institutions. Engineering faculty are the primary educators of future engineers but are often not trained in engineering education research or approaches to implement research based instructional strategies (RBIS) despite the potential benefit to student development and outcomes. Therefore it is important to understand how engineering faculty are trained in engineering education research by engineering education researchers to promote synergistic activities between these two communities. Engineering faculty may not identify as engineering education researchers and failure in implementation or achieving less than the desired student outcomes can also hinder faculty motivation to adopt instructional innovation [2]. Overcoming these barriers and successfully training engineering faculty as engineering education researchers will expand and diversify engineering education research community. As more engineering faculty join the engineering education community they will bring new perspectives and ideas, and will promote collaboration between engineering education researchers and engineering practitioners. This community will facilitate interactions across teams to share experiences, resources, and expand networks. The goal is to build a community with multi-modal communication (i.e., in person meetings, online communication, etc.) to nucleate engineering faculty mentees and engineering education research mentors to create a community supporting the NSF PFE: RIEF program.

The goal of this workshop is to provide guidance to participants on engineering education funding opportunities at the National Science Foundation (NSF). This will be accomplished through a combination of activities including (i) interactive and dynamic mini-presentations by NSF program directors; (ii) a mock proposal review session by participants working in small groups and (iii) an interactive question and answer session in which participants have the opportunity to cross-examine a panel of current NSF grantees. In describing the various funding opportunities relevant to engineering education, the workshop will place emphasis on fostering innovation through diversity (consistent with the FIE 2018 conference theme) and give guidance on how to write persuasive and competitive proposals. Participants will experience rich peer interactions and also have the opportunity to connect directly with NSF program directors.

The goals of this workshop are to increase the community’s knowledge of current funding opportunities at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and to support projects with potential significant impacts on engineering education. This workshop gives new and experienced principal investigators the opportunity to interact with program directors from the Division of Engineering Education & Centers (EEC) in the Directorate of Engineering and the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) in the Directorate of Education and Human Resources (EHR). Participants will learn about new and current funding opportunities in a highly interactive format (i.e., team-based activities and discussion).

Expectations for faculty members are high: STEM faculty are expected to establish a sustainable research trajectory, a teaching practice, and a service/leadership role all while pursuing tenure and promotion success. Although many colleges and universities have established STEM faculty development programs, a deficiency in holistic professional support remains, specifically in the integration and alignment of these disparate professional activities with individual and institutional goals. This session will involve participants to continue the work undertaken to bring together multiple stakeholders in academia, government, and industry to establish a research agenda for STEM faculty development. The audience includes those interested in furthering this research agenda.

Systematic reviews are a new, fundamentally different approach to synthesizing engineering education research. The primary goal of the session is to increase the awareness and knowledge of engineering educators about systematic review methods. Systematic review methods, widely used in fields such as medicine, psychology and education, have only recently been applied in engineering education to analyze the state of the art. The paper presents steps to illustrate processes involved in a systematic review, sources of standards for systematic reviews, and strategies for information retrieval.

The overarching goal of our collective body of work is to develop a conceptual model of engineering students' development and utilization of social capital based on mixed-methods research. This paper makes a significant contribution to this long-term goal by utilizing qualitative methods to achieve a deeper understanding of first generation college students' engineering-related academic and career choices. This paper presents results from interviews with eleven first generation college students attending five institutions in the United States. The interviews focused on important individuals (alters) in the students' social networks who provided resources and information pertinent to participants' decisions to enter and persist in engineering. Additionally, our findings describe the types of resources provided by the alters. Our current findings from this qualitative analysis identify additional important alters that were previously unexplored by our quantitative results. The results of this work are applicable to engineering educators and administration for the recruitment and retention of first generation college students.

This paper describes the theoretical basis, development, and initial results of a quantitative survey instrument that measures the engineering-related social capital resources of undergraduate engineering students. Despite significant efforts over the last few decades to increase participation of under-represented groups in engineering within the United States, progress has been disturbingly slow. Further research in this domain is needed to realize the significant advancements that are necessary for diversifying undergraduate engineering enrollment. The long-term purpose of this research is to develop a conceptual model based on Social Capital Theory to provide a deeper understanding and explanation of undergraduates' academic and career choices related to engineering, of which developing the survey instrument is the first step. Our “Name and Resource Generator” instrument has been administered to 890 students at three institutions within the United States. Supporting literature and initial results indicate that under-represented students in engineering may utilize different mechanisms for developing and activating engineering-related social capital compared to other engineering undergraduates, and that an approach utilizing social capital theory shows promise as a model with which to improve the diversity of the engineering field.

Higher education and student affairs literature have detailed the impact of Black Greek Organizations (BGOs) on African American students' educational experiences. However, our work is the first examination of BGO membership in terms of impact on engineering students' educational experiences, and specifically skills deemed valuable by the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century. In our earlier study, results pointed to the many advantages of African American student participation in BGOs on their engineering educational experiences. Further, the data suggested that BGO membership has the potential to provide unique contributions to African American engineering students' persistence, academic achievement, and career paths. This paper builds on our previous work by examining how students' BGO experiences influence the development of specific skills described by the Engineer of 2020. Results of this qualitative study point to the potential advantages of African American engineering students participating in BGOs, particularly equipping them to succeed in the engineering workforce by instilling qualities of The Engineer of 2020. The significance of the work is also highlighted by the focus on BGOs, which have been a staple of the African-American culture and educational community for over 100 years.