This workshop aims to help individuals expand their engagement with the computer science education research community as inclusive and equitable peer reviewers. Peer reviewers are liaisons between a journal or funding organization and members of their professional community, and thus are crucial for incorporating equity as part of the culture of computer science and engineering education. Prior research has shown that being a peer reviewer has benefits for the reviewer as well as the journal. Peer reviewing journal articles and proposals is a good way to stay current with what is happening in the field and acquire insights that can improve one's own writing and research. Peer reviewing is also a way to promote equity in our community through inclusive practices. Inclusive reviewing practices provide respectful, constructive feedback to authors on aspects of their manuscripts and proposals such as bias-free language, treatment of vulnerable populations, and positionality of authors and reviewers. This workshop (supported by NSF grants EEC-2037807, 2037788, and 2037797) prompts participants to consider their own positionality as reviewers and scholars. From this perspective, they then consider important aspects of an article or proposal such as whether underserved communities are impacted by the work, if participant identities are referred to appropriately, if authors of color working in this space are being cited appropriately, and if authors are being accountable to do the challenging work of addressing issues related to diversity and equity.

This workshop aims to help individuals write constructive and insightful reviews for scholarly work in engineering education research while considering aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion in the work. The topic, goal and activities of this workshop align with the conference theme of "Grand Challenges in Engineering Education" as it will help participants identify and overcome the challenges involved with equitable and inclusive peer review practices in engineering education research.

As a field, engineering education research (EER) draws from multiple disciplines and geographic regions. This presents challenges in the process of peer reviewing EER manuscripts, as peer reviewers typically do not receive formal training in critiquing research publications. We investigated how EER scholars develop an understanding of how to conduct peer reviews of manuscripts related to engineering education. We draw from theories of cognition and schema development to address the following question: What aspects of EER manuscripts are reviewers paying attention to, and how do these aspects differ for reviewers from different geographic regions?The context for this study was a mentored peer reviewer program, which pairs less experienced reviewers (mentees) with experienced reviewers (mentors) to review a set of manuscripts. Participants (n=27: nine mentors and 18 mentees) from six countries and varied levels of expertise were organized into triads (one mentor and two mentees). Each triad collaboratively evaluated each manuscript, crafted feedback to authors and formulated recommendations to journal editors. Data collected from participants included Structured Peer Reviews (SPR) that prompted participants to comment on the main strengths and weaknesses of a short EER manuscript and formulate a recommendation to the editor. All participants completed SPRs for one manuscript prior to the program (Pre-SPR) and a second manuscript at the end of the program (Post-SPR). SPRs were coded and categorized into six themes: context, methods, results, discussion, mechanics, and EER relevance. Themes were categorized into codes related to positive or negative assessments.The preliminary analysis presented in this paper focuses on the extent to which reviewers converged in the breadth of what they commented on in the pre- and post-SPR forms. Results were compared based on where participants earned their doctorate. Differences between participants from different geographic regions emerged in the Pre-SPR data but were minimal in the post-SPR. This research provides a foundation for considering peer review as a form of professional development as findings suggest that training affects reviewers’ understanding of EER scholarship.

This Research Work in Progress presents the lived experiences of African American students studying engineering at a predominantly White institution with low minority representation. Their experiences are viewed through the lens of navigational capital, positioning predominantly white institutions as an institution created without African Americans in mind. This qualitative study found that African American students use experiences, connections, involvement, and resources to attain resilience, academic invulnerability, and skills that contribute to their success.

This workshop invites discussion about peer review of journal manuscripts in the field of engineering education. The aim is to generate advice for reviewers on how to make effective reviews, which can help editors make appropriate decisions and support authors in improving their manuscripts. The workshop is facilitated by editors of three leading engineering education journals.

This full research paper presents a pilot study exploring how mid-year engineering students' perceptions of their future careers shift over one academic year. Perceptions of future careers determine many academic decisions students make, affecting student recruitment, persistence, and performance in engineering. Understanding how students' perceptions of their future careers change will give researchers, practitioners, and academic advisors insight into what influences students' choice of engineering major and what they choose to focus on in their courses. Students in sophomore engineering courses (n=71) took a survey measuring the clarity of and attitude towards their future career goals at two time-points, 2-3 semesters apart. Participants' perceptions shifted between four distinct ways of thinking about the future. Most participants shifted to either a well-defined and positive perception of their future possible career or an ill-defined less positive perception of their future possible career.

This research-category full paper investigates the relationship between first-year engineering students' career aspirations and attitudes towards engineering. Career aspirations describe students' beliefs about professional roles they might perform in the future. Attitudes towards engineering were measured using engineering identity, belongingness within engineering, and specific motivation constructs. Examining the intersection of aspirations and attitudes allows educators to understand how students' intended career choices are related to their perceptions of their educational experience. Using survey data from 2,916 students at four large public universities, we found that an interest in industry-based careers was associated with high engineering identity, belongingness, and motivation scores. We found that gender had a moderate effect on aspirations and attitudes. Additionally, we found that an interest in mechanical engineering was associated with increased certainty in an engineering/industry career, while interests in biomedical engineering, non-engineering STM majors, and non-STEM majors were associated with decreased certainty in an engineering/industry career. These results have implications for the current discourse around how engineering students make decisions about their future careers.

This paper compares three methods for examining the relationship of multiple factors related pertaining to student motivation on the degree outcome (persistence in an engineering major). A study was conducted in which all first year engineering students at one institution were invited to complete a survey designed to measure students' motivations and attitudes towards engineering. The survey was based on Future Time Perspective (FTP) theory, which considers how students' perceptions of the future impact their perceptions of present tasks, and their goal orientation. The survey was distributed early in students' first semester (n=979, 82% response), and the current major of these students was collected two and a half years later (Spring 2016). Three statistical methods were used to determine what factors have a significant effect on the likelihood that a student will persist in engineering: two sample t-tests, simple logistic regression analysis, and multiple logistic regression analysis with all factors and pairwise interactions in the model. When considering all factors simultaneously, there is evidence that students with positive perceptions of the future are more persistent toward their goals, indicating that FTP is a relevant theory for examining interactions between student motivation and persistence in engineering.

Engineering culture has traditionally limited rather than fostered diversity in engineering. This culture serves to limit representation of diverse individuals within engineering and create environments that are detrimental to creativity, problem solving, and productivity. One way to address this issue is to understand how students align themselves with the cultural values of engineering and navigate their pathways through earning their engineering degrees. We present an analysis of ten participants previously identified through attitudinal survey data as belonging to a “normative” attitudinal group of engineering majors. These individuals provide a way to understand students who are attitudinally similar to the accepted norms and practices of what it means to be an engineer. Results indicate the importance of social resource experiences in engineering and on the widely held belief that success in engineering is born out of hard work, consistent with other studies. These findings outline ways in which engineering culture can shape student attitudes and actions towards learning engineering. Understanding this group may provide ways to change engineering culture to be more inclusive for all students. Our research begins to describe particular cultural practices and values to improve the recruitment, training, and retention of a broader population of engineering students.

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.

This study utilized a quantitative survey and open-ended items to understand engineering students' epistemic beliefs and gather content and face validity evidence. The survey included 22 items from the Engineering-Related Beliefs Questionnaire. Fifty undergraduate bioengineering students completed the survey. In addition to responding to the items on an anchored scale, the students were asked to provide short written explanations of their responses in a textbox below each item. Students' open-ended responses were analyzed using qualitative content analysis to gather content validity evidence and gain a general understanding of students' engineering epistemic beliefs. This analysis revealed inconsistencies with how students interpret the items and ambiguous terms used in the items. Based on the results of this analysis suggestions are made to improve the items on the survey for future use.

Engineering and Computer Science (E&CS) Education is an emerging discipline and is a subset of the larger field of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. E&CS Education has a relatively brief history, and many individuals who are not directly involved in the discipline are often confused about its purpose. In this special session, we will use up to two background stories to frame the larger questions around E&CS Education goals and help draw the conversation from practice to philosophy while creating a safe space for open conversation addressing issues of change in our discipline.

Engineering and Computer Science (E&CS) Education is an emerging discipline with a brief history and the unfortunate particularity that many folks outside our discipline are confused as to our purpose. In this special session, we will use two case studies to frame the larger questions around E&CS Education goals and help draw the conversation from practice to philosophy while creating a safe space for open conversation.

Successful group work requires that students transfer relevant prior knowledge to solve problems. This paper establishes a method to assess dynamic knowledge transfer in a group setting through analysis of a group project in a biomechanics class. Transcripts of student-student and student-instructor interactions were coded for evidence of target tools (students identifying relevant problem features), source tools (students activating prior knowledge), answers (stopping points), external inputs (resources and prompts from individuals or the instructor), and workbench explanations (student explanations of connections between source tools and target tools). Knowledge transfer was identified when a source tool and a target tool were coded within a phrase. The frequencies of codes were quantified to provide an overall picture of knowledge transfer for each group member throughout the project. Analysis for one group (a sophomore and junior bioengineering student, and a freshman engineering student) revealed that the junior was the largest contributor in the group, followed by the sophomore and freshman. The group mentioned source tools most frequently, followed by external inputs and target tools. The analysis provided evidence of knowledge transfer within the group through their identification of target tools and use of prior knowledge to explain their observations.

Student motivation is often undervalued in comparison to academic performance measures for evaluating changes in higher education. There is a need to consider the affective domain in reform, in addition to academic performance. The effect of student motivation toward short- and long-term goals on student actions is not well understood. To assess this need, two research questions are addressed: 1) What elements of a motivation instrument designed for first-year engineering students are valid for upper-level engineering students? 2) How do motivations differ for upper level students in different engineering majors? Students in their major-specific engineering courses were surveyed with the Motivation and Attitudes in Engineering (MAE) instrument, which assesses long-term goal related expectancy, and perceptions of present and future tasks/goals. Short-term task self-efficacy was assessed using items adapted from the Attitudes and Approaches to Problem Solving survey. Results based on comparisons between major, class, and grade point average (GPA) showed: 1) Higher GPA indicates significantly higher expectancies and self-efficacy; 2) Bioengineers have significantly higher expectancies than mechanical engineers; and 3) Juniors have significantly higher GPAs, expectancies, and more positive perceptions of the present than sophomores. Results indicate that students' motivations toward short- and long-term goals may influence actions toward learning.

Creating instructional materials that facilitate students' metacognition (activities such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating) and critical thinking is challenging for instructors of first year engineering students. Students come into these programs at various levels of academic preparation, and students may experience cognitive overload when asked to simultaneously use mathematical skills and higher-order thinking skills. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of new approaches to introducing complex, relevant contexts and skills, methods must be developed that can provide evidence of metacognition and critical thinking skills. These methods can also facilitate research into problem-solving strategies. The overall goal of this project is to design problems for first year students that introduce complex real world topics that are effective for building problem-solving skills for students at all levels of academic preparation. The study presented here is the preliminary qualitative analysis of students' audio commentary in which they reflect on their written problem solutions in a first year engineering course. These reflections were performed within 24 hours of completing written work. Our analysis provides evidence of metacognition retrospectively, as well as during the post-hoc think-aloud commentary. This research methodology effectively identifies student problem-solving strategies, including cognitive, metacognitive and procedural information, and provides evidence that think-aloud protocols are useful in eliciting metacognition and critical thinking.

In first year engineering courses, students possess a wide range of academic preparation such as their exposure to various mathematics courses and pre-engineering programs. Additionally, students bring perceptions about their abilities, and have already begun practicing preferred methods of analysis and documentation. Understanding how students with different backgrounds develop problem solving skills in first year engineering programs is of critical importance in order to close achievement gaps between diverse populations. This study examines how students solve engineering problems and identifies variations based on student factors of gender, ethnicity, mathematics preparation and achievement, and prior engineering experience. Solutions for three problems from 27 students were analyzed (n = 68 solutions). Students worked out problems using custom-designed software that digitally records ink strokes and allows researchers to associate codes to the problem solution at any point, even in portions of the problem solution that would not have been available without the use of this technology, such as in erased work. Differences in how students solve problems were assessed based on the prevalence (or absence) of elements and errors in the problem solving process, which were evaluated using task analysis. Results indicated that pre-engineering experience did not have a significant impact on successfully solving problems; however, having completed a calculus course was significantly related to successful problem solving. Future research will expand the study population to a larger sample of first year engineering students across multiple semesters, identifying key strategies that are absent for students with low mathematics preparation, and to investigate relationships between prior academic preparation and indicators of metacognition.

The limited impact of many engineering education reforms may be due in part to treating engineering as a single monolithic discipline. We are using student motivation to characterize differences in engineering majors in order to inform educational practices and differences in student learning. Here we report on differences in student attitudes towards their engineering majors, elucidated through the use of survey data collected from first year students and longitudinal data on their majors 2 years later. We provide a detailed picture of the complexity of the engineering population, which will help direct more in-depth qualitative research to examine possible correlations between student motivation and learning in different engineering majors.

Our research group is examining how first year engineering students develop problem-solving skills. It is important to select and design problems such that they promote self-efficacy and build effective problem solving skills. However, it is a challenge for engineering educators to determine the appropriate difficulty or rigor of assignments or assessments that will accomplish this, especially in introductory courses in which students have a range of academic preparedness. We are reporting here on methodologies developed for studying characteristics of engineering problems, perceived difficulty of the problems from students' perspective, and different problem solving strategies that first year engineering students typically use.