In order to diversify and increase the engineering workforce, there is a documented need to better support nontraditional students (NTS) pursuing engineering degrees. Yet, most models of student support are currently based on the traditional model of engineering education that takes place in a place-based, residential, research driven institutions. In this paper, we analyze semi-structured interviews to understand the needs of NTS in engineering and outline ways in which they can be better supported towards their degree. We use theoretical work on Moore's Theory of Transactional Distance which focuses on dialogue, structure, and learner autonomy. We found that NTS in our sample were dedicated to completing their degrees for practical, and specific reasons and were looking for a work-life-education balance. Participants almost never used any resources other than their instructors and cared most about flexibility of scheduling their classes around their other commitments. This contrasts with current work within the literature that argues for increasing engagement and offering a range of services to engineering students. Our research discusses findings from interviews of five nontraditional students in engineering. The semi-structured interviews were transcribed then open-coding and thematic analysis were performed by the research team. Results showcase major themes from the interviews such as Financial Security, Home Commitments, Motivation, Personal Well-Being, Academic Support, Social Support, and Other Concerns. We discuss these findings in the context of determining ways to support nontraditional students on campuses where these students are most prevalent and often overlooked within the research community.

In this paper we present findings from analyses of articles published in Advances in Engineering Education (AEE) during the first 14 years (2007-2020) of its publication under the tenure of its founding editor. Our goal in this paper is two-fold: (1) to understand the impact of papers published in the journal as measured by citations, and (2) to understand the coverage of topics over time. To understand the impact and coverage of topics we qualitatively analyzed abstracts of all the articles published in the journal (N=242) and also used data mining techniques (text network mapping). In terms of impact, the topics that have been cited the most include curriculum development, use of technology for teaching and learning, teaching and learning strategies, and program development. We found that in keeping with the mission of the journal, papers largely reported evidence-driven program or curriculum development outcomes and papers published as part of special issues had the most impact as measured by citations.

Full Paper: Digital transformations are reshaping engineering practices with implications for conducting engineering education research. Given the paucity of discussion of digital methods within engineering education research, we believe it is important to examine and present to the community an overview of how digital technology is changing research practices. In this paper we focus on digital ethnography as it has implications for studies of technical education and work, which necessarily involve using, and observing how others employ digital data sources, tools, systems, methods, etc. In this paper we report preliminary results from an in-depth literature search and review. To select the papers for the review, we first examined prior meta-review papers that identified new ethnographic methods appropriate for digital contexts (e.g., network ethnography, trace ethnography, rapid ethnography, connective ethnography, focused ethnography, etc.). We then used these as keywords to search for papers that were representative of these methods and selected the 100 most cited papers from this corpus, with further screening resulting in a final collection of 91 papers. We then conducted free/open coding of the articles followed by thematic coding to identify six categories and dived deeper into one of the categories, focused on different approaches to ethnography, to further explore the various types of ethnographic methods mentioned in the collected literature. We close by discussing how emerging techniques in ethnographic field research can be applied to engineering education research with engineering work practices as an exemplar.

This Research Work In Progress Paper presents an initiative to understand engineering commuter student support and success using a validated instrument to measure academic integration. There are many calls to increase the number of engineering students who graduate with a degree; however, there is little work in uncovering the support mechanisms that work for engineering commuter students. Therefore, this WIP paper looks to start to build a case for studying engineering commuter students in more detail by first looking at differences between how residential and commuter students integrate academically. Academic integration is defined by how students are able to access, effectively interact with, and are supported by engineering faculty and staff. Academic integration is an important construct, which contributes to a student's persistence and ultimate graduation. However, it is unknown if there are differences between the way residential and commuter engineering students access the support structures provided for them. Therefore, this paper answers one research question: How do residential and commuter engineering students differ in regards to academic integration in a first-year engineering context? During the spring semester of 2018, 175 first-year engineering students participated in a questionnaire with multiple items, one of which was the construct of academic integration. I measure academic integration using the engineering student integration instrument which consists of five Likert-type questions on a six-point scale ranging from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree.' Results show differences between residential and commuter engineering students with regards to academic integration. Measures of reliability and validity show the construct is acceptable.

This study explores the opinions and experiences of five Mac-using students in a first-year engineering program where Windows-based personal computers (PCs) are requisite. These students have circumvented the restrictive departmental policies which solely support Windows-based PC systems and which (as of this writing) clearly identify the lack of technical support for Mac users. Tablet PCs were the only machines that fully met departmental requirements for several years, and were the "machine of choice" in the university's engineering community. This requirement has been unwavering until 2012 when a change was made: the first-year engineering program modified the computer specifications to allow Macintosh computers, with certain stated limitations and precautions. Although still highly discouraged and with no provision for Apple technical support, the change has allowed a greater range of options for incoming cohorts. Whether the use of a Mac in this engineering program is politically correct (PC) or not remains to be discovered; this study intends to shed light on this subject. Building on the work of Firmin, which investigated the lived experiences of Mac users on a PC-dominated campus, this work is unique in its focus on engineering students. The present study poses two questions: 1) How does the level of support for Mac users on a PC-dominated campus impact their experience in the first-year engineering program? And 2) How does technical compatibility affect first year students' day-to-day actions within the engineering program? Data was collected via semi-structured student interviews, and coded and analyzed using thematic analysis. Four salient themes emerged from the data: superiority, advocacy, autonomy, and survival. This exploratory study gives a voice to these students who strive to advocate their chosen systems and survive a rigorous engineering curriculum within a Windows PC-dominated department.