The notion of being smart is a concept that underpins the culture of engineering classrooms. That said, it is a topic that is not discussed or addressed by educators directly. Through this special session, we aim to give light to the concept of smartness and the problematic and oppressive practices that result from it given the extent literature on the topic including our own research into the domain. With participants, we aim to generate practical approaches to addressing smartness that work in a variety of contexts to broaden participation in engineering via more inclusive classrooms.

In this Work-in-Progress research paper we report on the process of and findings from a secondary data analysis (SDA) investigation that builds on a primary study about the role of First-Year Engineering (FYE) experiences on students' engineering identities and community. The purpose of this SDA work was two-fold: we aimed to train undergraduate engineering students in qualitative methods and understand the process of SDA investigation as a training tool; and build on and expand the primary study's findings. The SDA team was composed of one of the original researchers and three new scholars – a faculty member and two students from an undergraduate-serving institution. The original study sites were two large research-focused institutions that differ in their FYE curricular content and structure. The data sources included pseudonymized transcripts of interviews with students during their second year, as well as institutional demographic data including participants' major and self-identified gender. Thematic and grounded theory approaches were used as the primary analytical tools. Our analyses identified four emergent themes summarized as: (1) feelings of inadequacy and creation of strong bonds with peers; (2) students' perceptions of societal definitions of engineering and their effects on students' career choice and engineering ability; (3) students' perceptions of their own engineering identity and how it aligns with that of society; and (4) formation of support networks and their impact on student's FYE experiences. Furthermore, despite differing FYE structures, we found that students from both institutions describe similarly their engineering identities, including lacking confidence in their engineering identity and concern about external perceptions of what makes an engineer. Finally, we found that SDA serves as a training tool to support the development of undergraduate engineering students using qualitative methods.

Effective graduate advising relationships are critical to the success of both graduate students and faculty advisors. Despite the significance of strong advising relationships, little work has focused on promoting graduate advising as a mutually beneficial activity that creates value for both faculty and graduate students. In this special session, the facilitators aim to bridge this disconnect by sparking faculty participants' curiosity in discussing and reflecting on their current advising approaches and adapting their current advising practices to be more mutually valuable. The session will cover topics such as scaffolded mentoring, the Situated Expectancy Value Theory of Motivation and its connection to graduate advising, and evidence-based practices for effective advising. The special session is intended for engineering and computing graduate faculty advisors interested in improving their advising practices and is expected to result in revised mentoring strategies and approaches co-constructed with peer and facilitator input. The session will be facilitated by Mayra Artiles, Rachel Kajfez, Holly Matusovich, and Amanda Singer.

What does it mean to be “smart” in an engineering classroom? How do engineering students make sense of themselves as smart enough to be engineers? The development of shared beliefs about what it means to be “smart” and where you rank compared to others is a result of smartness as a cultural practice. With the cultural practice framing, smartness is not a noun – something that someone possesses a certain amount of, but rather it is a verb – something that is actively happening to and with others in context. The interactions between individuals result in shared beliefs about what it means to be smart. Specifically, when we participate in smartness as a cultural practice, we learn what is recognized as smart and our place in the relative hierarchy of smartness. Beliefs about how to be a smart engineer become particularly impactful to students when navigating educational experiences in an area of study in which “being smart” is synonymous with the field. Engineers are constructed as “smart” in society, where the pervasive belief is that ability is something you either have or you don't. But as students transition into undergraduate engineering programs, how does their participation in the cultural practice of smartness contribute to their beliefs about what it means to be a smart engineer and their identities as smart and as engineers? Our study generated empirical evidence for how. We conducted three interviews with 25 engineering students over the course of their first and second years in an undergraduate engineering program. In the first and third interviews, we asked participants explicit questions about their beliefs and identities related to smartness and engineering. Analysis to compare the beliefs expressed in students' first and third interviews revealed that about half of the 25 participants demonstrated notable change in their beliefs of what it meant to be a smart engineer. We present empirical evidence characterizing the ways in which undergraduate engineering students' beliefs about what it means to be a smart engineer changed over the course of a year for 5 of the 25 participants. We explored these 5 participants' changing beliefs through a lens of cognitive dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance is the misalignment between two or more of a person's beliefs and/or behaviors. People experience discomfort with dissonance and therefore work to resolve the misalignment. One way in which someone's dissonance can be resolved is by a person changing their beliefs. Using this lens, we discuss how the changes to participants' beliefs may be an artifact of students' need to resolve the dissonance between the shared beliefs and ranking in a smartness hierarchy produced during their participation in smartness as a cultural practice in the context of pre-college education and engineering education. We also make recommendations to engineering educators on how to engage in the cultural practice of smartness in a way that allows for the growth and development of students' beliefs of what it means to be “smart” in engineering.

Computational modeling skills are critical for the success of both engineering students and practicing engineers and are increasingly included as part of the undergraduate curriculum. However, students' belief in the utility of these skills and their ability to succeed in learning them can vary significantly. This study hypothesizes that the self-efficacy and motivation of engineering students at the outset of their degree program varies significantly and that engineering students pursuing some disciplines (such as computer, software, and electrical engineering) will begin with a higher initial self-efficacy than others (such as materials science and engineering and biomedical engineering). In this pilot study, a survey was used to investigate the motivational and efficacy factors of approximately 70 undergraduate students in their first year of engineering studies at a large public university. Surveys were implemented after students were introduced to MATLAB in their first-year engineering design course. The data was analyzed for variations in baseline motivation based on the students' intended major. The results of this survey will help determine whether efficacy and interest related to computational modeling are indeed lower for certain engineering disciplines and will inform future studies in this area.

A well-developed interview protocol is an essential data collection tool in qualitative research. An established process to refine interview protocols can help build quality and consistency into data collection. However, despite the importance placed on interview protocols by academic texts, there is little guidance regarding how to systematically develop and refine interview protocols, particularly when exploring complex constructs, such as beliefs and identity. In this special session, attendees will learn and practice an approach for refining interview protocols for investigating complex constructs in engineering education. We share this interview refinement approach as it enabled us to determine if our interview questions prompted participants to provide data essential to answering our research questions for a pilot study investigating students’ beliefs and identities. This special session will also include conversations around best practices related to data collection to access complex constructs and how these practices can impact and shape future research. We welcome attendees of all experience levels (novice to expert) with regard to designing interview protocols. The session will be facilitated by Dr. Emily Dringenberg, Dr. Rachel Kajfez, and their graduate students. Dr. Dringenberg is a qualitative researcher well versed in beliefs. Dr. Kajfez is a mixed methods researcher well versed in identity. Both have multiple NSF grants exploring these complex constructs.

This Full Research Paper reports findings from a narrative-style study about undergraduate engineering students' beliefs about smartness and identity. Extant research has demonstrated that conceptions of smartness and ability impact students as they navigate engineering at the collegiate level. Through our work, we aimed to better understand the nuanced interaction between these constructs to better support students through their undergraduate experience. For this work, we utilized narrative-style interviews to collect students' stories about their experiences and struggles in school. Interviews were conducted with seven participants, all of whom indicated on a recruitment survey that they had experienced academic struggle in their first year of an undergraduate engineering program. We analyzed the interviews using three-limits of-and developed a resistance part analytical memos and thematic analysis to identify emergent themes. Through our analysis, we aimed to address the research question: How do undergraduate engineering students describe their educational trajectories with respect to beliefs about smartness and identity? Three major findings of this study are; 1.) messages about smartness in educational systems have implications for students' identity as smart and beliefs about smartness, 2.) social experiences have a significant impact, particularly for the female students, on identity and beliefs about smartness, and 3.) students recognize the limits of-and developed a resistance to-normative indicators of ability (i.e., GPA). Our research contributes a more holistic understanding of the formation of beliefs about smartness and identity in the educational trajectories of undergraduate engineering students along with insight into the complex interaction between beliefs about smartness and identity. An implication of this study is that given the pervasiveness of identity and beliefs about smartness, they are almost never explicitly addressed in formal undergraduate engineering education and therefore should be considered by engineering education professionals when developing undergraduate engineering courses and curricula.

In this Full Research Category paper, we will provide a detailed description of how we are using analytical memo-writing within a mixed methods grounded theory study. The goal of our work is to identify key elements from undergraduate research experiences (UREs) that can be translated into the classroom by exploring the connections between engineering students' researcher identities, perceptions of research, and epistemic thinking within the context of UREs. The qualitative phase of our study which is the focus on this paper takes a grounded theory approach as we explore our research questions using in-depth interviews. Interviews were conducted by researcher pairs, transcribed, and cleaned. Preliminary analysis, which included initial coding, was conducted by researcher pairs to increase the validity of the analysis and facilitate analytical discussions between researchers. After initial coding, the researcher pairs constructed analytical memos with three parts: (1) summary of the participant (factual representation), (2) summary of salient themes/codes/analysis, and (3) connections of themes/analysis to other participants. We are using these memos to facilitate a constant comparative approach across participants, communicate and understand complex relationships between concepts, and enhance the development of our grounded theory model. As part of our description of our analytical memos, we provide details and examples from our study for each part of the memo. We also discuss the ways in which we have found the analytical memos to be helpful in our analysis. In particular, we discuss our use of the theoretical coding (three-part coding where you identify context, mechanism, and outcome) and magnitude coding (quantify qualitative data by creating Likert-type Scales for specific concepts) of our memos, which allow us to explore relationships between concepts and produce empirical support for the connections within our grounded theory model.

This Research Work-in-Progress paper explores how motivation and identity can evolve when faculty from different disciplines (arts, engineering, medicine, etc.) collaborate to present on a central theme or topic (e.g. color) across multiple community settings. Sharing research findings beyond the academic community is essential for systemic change and wide spread enhancements to our everyday lives. Through this work, we explore how faculty researchers' motivations to share their work and their identities as researchers develop through collaborative experiences with other faculty that aim at sharing research findings with the public. In this study, faculty from divergent academic fields are working together to present convergent presentations as one coherent theme across three different informal learning sessions as well as a control setting. These presentations intend to increase public engagement with scientific research and broaden the scope of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) learning by approaching the themes through the faculty's different academic backgrounds. Through collaboration and engagement with the public, we will track how faculty's identities as researchers and motivations to share their work develop over this experience through the use of the Longitudinal Model of Motivation and Identity (LMMI). Over the course of this study, we hope to see gains in faculty motivation and researcher identities who engage with the public through this experience. For this paper, we focus on framing the overall study and provide initial findings from our recruitment survey.

This research to practice work-in-progress paper discusses the potential use of team formation survey responses to predict the development of leaders and social loafers in a first-year engineering team design project. At a large Midwestern university, a robotics cornerstone design project is offered. This project-based and collaborative learning project involves teams designing an autonomous robot. The teams are self-driven and must utilize time and project management skills. To create the teams of four, a team formation survey is administered to the students via the CATME team formation software. Students self-identify levels of prior experience with robotics and technical skills, and levels of preference about leadership, ideas, and details. The instructional staff does not impose specific roles upon team members, but teams are formed so that each team can complete all elements. Anecdotally, this model has allowed for the emergence of both leaders and social loafers within the groups. Students who exhibit leadership qualities keep their teammates on task and schedule, maintain communication and participation, and ensure teammates get help when needed. Students who exhibit characteristics of social loafing, a term used in social psychology, put forth fewer ideas and less effort, require more direction to complete tasks, and do not communicate as well with the team. The absence of leadership or the presence of social loafing can hinder a team's performance and detract from the student experience. Thus, the instructional staff is interested in identifying potential leaders and social loafers on teams early so that appropriate guidance can be given to improve the experience. Throughout the project, students also complete peer evaluations and submit weekly timesheets. This work-in-progress paper presents a methodological plan for analyzing these data to determine if a correlation can be found from specific responses on the team formation survey to student team performance.

This Research Work in Progress paper focuses on the use of narrative methods to explore the complex and overlapping constructs of beliefs about smartness and identity in first-year engineering students. This effort is motivated, in part, by the perspective that the first year of engineering at the university level can be a source of hardship for many students. Not only are they navigating a new environment away from home, but they are also often experiencing new educational challenges that can push them to re-evaluate their identities with respect to smartness and becoming an engineer. We are interested in understanding how students construct and tell stories about their life experiences as learners and how these stories provide insight to their beliefs about smartness and their related identities as students or as engineers. Because these constructs are complex and overlapping, we conducted narrative-style interviews with students who self-identified as having an interesting story to tell about an educational struggle during their first year in an undergraduate engineering program. We are motivated to answer the following research questions: In what ways do narrative style interviews provide insight into complex constructs related to beliefs about smartness and identity? How do first-year engineering students describe their educational experiences with respect to smartness and identity? To scope our work, we frame beliefs about smartness through the use of Dweck`s mindset theory, and for identity, we use Gee`s identity lens coupled with Godwin`s definition of engineering student identity. Due to the WIP nature of this research, we are still fully conceptualizing the potential impacts and implications of this work. At the time of presentation, we share our experience using narrative style interviews paired with preliminary findings related to the posed research questions.

Integrating engineering into K-12 classrooms is gaining considerable attention. With new standards, such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), that require the incorporation of engineering through design into the K-12 curriculum, it is essential that opportunities be provided to those teaching in K-12 to aid in appropriate integration. Translating Engineering Research to K-8 (TEK8) addresses this need through a summer research experience followed by a fall semester course that accomplishes K-12 outreach related to the research. While the course seems to increase interest related to integrating engineering into K-12 classrooms, we are interested in extending this analysis to understand impacts on self-efficacy. Specifically, we sought to answer the following research question, “How do participants' self-efficacy towards teaching engineering change over a semester?” To frame this investigation, we conceptualized self-efficacy as one's belief in their own ability to teach engineering design challenges in the K-12 context.

As the need for qualified science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates increases, there is an accompanying need for improved undergraduate STEM education. Undergraduate Research Experiences (UREs) have been shown to enhance an undergraduate student's academic experience; however, not all students can participate in or have access to UREs due to schedule constraints during the school year or other commitments in the summer. Our current research project seeks to determine how students develop a researcher identity and transform their epistemic beliefs through UREs. Elements identified to contribute to students' researcher identities and epistemic beliefs will then be translated into strategies that can be incorporated into traditional learning environments. This paper will overview the progress made in the first part of this multi-phase, multi-institution project and preliminary results from the initial surveys.

Improving recruitment and retention are goals of many engineering programs. One factor that is tied strongly to recruitment and retention is a student's desire to study engineering in a specific engineering discipline. Some students switch between engineering majors during their undergraduate careers, which could increase their time to degree. Also, depending on the reasons students have for switching, the changes could also impact their motivation and personal commitment to engineering. Not all major changes are due to changes in student preference. Some changes may also result from external influences such as enrollment management. The research presented in this Work in Progress paper will be an initial step towards answering the question: Why and how do students change engineering majors throughout their college career? Through this research, we hope to gain added insights into how engineering students switch between majors so in the future we can seek a better understanding of why they switch.

Classroom activities that are based in the real-world are known to be impactful. Similarly, activities that relate to social good have been found to be engaging and meaningful for students especially to those from underrepresented groups. Many times, these activities tend to be design based projects, and while meaningful, activities of that nature may not be suitable for every class. In this innovative practice paper, we will describe an approach to modeling real-world objects in SolidWorks. The goal of the modeling is to test students' technical and spatial abilities while connecting the modeling to the greater good. The SolidWorks modeling takes place in a 4000-level (senior) SolidWorks elective course where students become certified at the SolidWorks Associates Level. Team members from the Toy Adaptation Program (TAP) at The Ohio State University came into the class to discuss the purpose of their program and their work, which includes adapting toys for children with special needs. This need served as the background for a semester-long modeling project. Through the partnership, students now model toys that are adapted by the TAP. This activity brings awareness to the need for adapted toys and allows the students to use their modeling skills to create real-world objects while satisfying course requirements.

Work in Progress: Although there exists a variety of first-year engineering (FYE) course structures and content areas, there is little understanding supported by research of which structures or content may be more or less appropriate for novice engineering students compared to others. This Work in Progress addresses the clear need for comparing different FYE programs through a research study. We begin our comparison through the lens of community of practice because community and identity have been linked to current and important engineering issues such as retention. We employ a semi-longitudinal exploratory mixed methods design to investigate two popular FYE program structures. One of the data collection sites utilizes a common first-year and the other site utilizes discipline specific courses for each of separate engineering disciplines. Our research will result in tools that can be used to gather information about engineering community and identity development in different FYE landscapes. This research is relevant to anyone who works with FYE students and those interested in improving FYE through research.

As the field of Engineering Education continues to grow so does the number of research studies. In this ever developing field, it is important to understand the practical applications and implications of this growing body of work. This paper discusses the initial practical applications of one study designed to examine the motivation and identity development of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs). Our hope is that by sharing the initial practical applications of our work in the work-in-progress format, we can better define the appropriate applications of this particular study but also contribute to the conversation of research to practice in Engineering Education.