21st-century technologies for global communication, e.g., smartphones, live streaming, and social media, have made access to observing and empathizing with the struggles and experiences of “others - not like me” in the United States ubiquitous. These historical realities have also motivated a resurgence of interest and studies aimed at understanding the meager growth in enrollment and graduation rates of racially diverse populations of students in the engineering field, which continues to plague educators and institutes of higher education. Organizations, such as ABET and the National Academies of Engineering, have established recommendations regarding mechanisms for the diversification of engineering and engineering technology communities (faculty, students, and staff), education and training of key stakeholders within these communities, and cohesive policies for the eradication of hidden curriculum and establishment of infrastructural change to facilitate inclusive environments, spaces, and pedagogy. As institutions work to follow these recommendations via the establishment of DEI committees, policies, and metrics for progress assessment, the need to understand how to infuse these DEI concepts into traditional engineering classrooms for student education remains an area of profound interest, especially considering the prior knowledge of 21st-century students, who have gained a lot of prior knowledge of DEI topics via external media versus traditional classroom environments. A careful and thoughtful exploration of our campus community (faculty, students, staff, alumni, and key stakeholders) is needed to understand better the state of knowledge and how this state connects to the individual's and community's implicit biases, personal social identity, inequity in access, microaggressions, and personal self-awareness of one's positionality within the larger whole. Crafting transformative DEI learning modules, realistic engineering-specific DEI pedagogy, and social justice engineering curriculum requires listening to student voices to understand their unique technical and historical context as an informed, and outspoken generation. This embedded parallel mixed-method work-in-progress study focuses on understanding the mechanisms for infusing DEI principles within higher education engineering curriculum via one research question, “How do undergraduate engineering students relate their personal engineering experiences to their social identity?” This work-in-progress study leverages two theoretical frameworks, Engineering Role Identity and Social Role Identity, to elucidate how to pragmatically infuse DEI principles and modules within an engineering curriculum. Preliminary findings suggest that 21st-century engineering students who have experienced the COVID pandemic and media exposure to violence against unarmed people of color are aware of terms typically covered in the majority of Introduction to Diversity Training courses. This prior knowledge uniquely positions them to understand more advanced DEI principles relating to microaggressions in teamwork environments and implicit biases that negatively infiltrate the engineering design process.

With the emergence of advanced computing and simulation capabilities, interest in online learning tools has steadily increased over the last several decades. The use of physiological responses to explore human learning and behavior has recently become an area of investigation. It is an effective method of assessing students' attention, memory, engagement, and cognition. Previous studies have focused on developing methods for capturing and interpreting people's physiological responses as they engage in learning games. However, few have validated their reactions with other quantitative and qualitative data forms. This work-in-progress research category study leverages two theoretical frameworks, i.e., the Technology Acceptance Model and Intersectionality. Intersectional women of color within the engineering population reside at the intersection of marginalized racial and gender groups. This study also builds on our previous studies of educational games, where it was found that women students expressed a higher distaste for an engineering digital game than their male counterparts. However, an understanding of what aspects of the game lead to these sentiments and lower performance in the game was inconclusive. Hence, a multimodal research approach is used in this study that combines physiological, quantitative, and qualitative data to understand engineering undergraduate students' perceptions of an engineering mechanics intuition-based online learning game. We hypothesize that a multimodal approach for this study will further our understanding of all students' perceptions of engineering educational games and provide insight into how students learn and interact with online intuition-based games designed to facilitate learning via discovery of possible physical scenarios, leveraging pre-existing knowledge in physics and use of mobile and computer gaming technology. This study utilizes eye tracking, interviews, and an assessment instrument to understand which aspects of the learning design and educational scaffolding foster attention and focus. The findings from this study will advance the engineering education communities' understanding of how to interpret and conduct multimodal studies and how 21st-century engineering undergraduate students engage in intuition-based engineering gaming technology.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a paradigm shift in how educators incorporate STEM educational activities into remote online informal experiential learning environments for high school students. While some primary and secondary institutions were “technically equipped” to seamlessly transition to an online lecture format using video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and WebEx, others were not. Instead, many instructors were not armed with the pedagogical educational infrastructure, training, and assessment tools to elucidate how concepts were presented, absorbed, and retained by students. Experiential learning programs for high school students have been uniquely impacted by this mercurial set of circumstances, where eager students and parents seek venues for engaging in meaningful learning experiences. This work-in-progress explores and compares the experiential programmatic changes in a STEM program for high school students pre- and post-COVID, with the aim of beginning the conversation and exploration of how to deliver “hands-on learning” in a contactless and remote learning environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a paradigm shift in how educators incorporate STEM educational activities into remote online informal experiential learning environments for high school students. While some primary and secondary institutions were “technically equipped” to seamlessly transition to an online lecture format using video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and WebEx, others were not. Instead, many instructors were not armed with the pedagogical educational infrastructure, training, and assessment tools to elucidate how concepts were presented, absorbed, and retained by students. Experiential learning programs for high school students have been uniquely impacted by this mercurial set of circumstances, where eager students and parents seek venues for engaging in meaningful learning experiences. This work-in-progress explores and compares the experiential programmatic changes in a STEM program for high school students pre- and post-COVID, with the aim of beginning the conversation and exploration of how to deliver “hands-on learning” in a contactless and remote learning environment.

Though engineering digital game inclusion in undergraduate classrooms has steadily increased over the last two decades for in-person courses, their use has exponentially increased in remote and contactless higher education learning environments. Studies exploring student technological acceptance of and content mastery from the use of engineering digital games have provided mixed results in terms of student enjoyment, engagement, and game effectiveness. The majority of these studies have relied on pre- and post-questionnaires to assess differences in students' gaming experiences and performance in the game and learning environment. However, quantitative methods such as the measurement of physiological responses during gameplay have been less explored for the exploration of student engagement and education. The goal of this work is to explore how a set of eye - tracking metrics can be related to gamer attention to in-game stimuli and game interface areas of interest.

This Research Full paper focuses on perceptions and experiences of freshman and sophomore engineering students when playing an online serious engineering game that was designed to improve engineering intuition and knowledge of statics. Use of serious educational engineering games has increased in engineering education to help students increase technical competencies in engineering disciplines. However, few have investigated how these engineering games are experienced by the students; how games influence students' perceptions of learning, or how these factors may lead to inequitable perspectives among diverse populations of students. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions, appeal, and opinions about the efficacy of educational online games among a diverse population of students in an engineering mechanics statics course. It was hypothesized that compared to majority groups (e.g., men, White), women of color who are engineering students would experience less connections to the online educational game in terms of ease of use and level of frustration while playing. It is believed that these discordant views may negatively influence the game's appeal and efficacy towards learning engineering in this population of students. Design/Method: The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is expanded in this study, where the perspectives of women of colour (Latinx, Asian and African American) engineering students are explored. The research approach employed in this study is a mixed-method sequential exploratory design, where students first played the online engineering educational game, then completed a questionnaire, followed by participation in a focus group. Responses were initially analyzed through open and magnitude coding approaches to understand whether students thought these educational games reflected their personal culture. Results: Preliminary results indicate that though the majority of the students were receptive to using the online engineering software for their engineering education, merely a few intimated that they would use this software for engineering exam or technical job interview preparation. A level-one categorical analysis identified a few themes that comprised unintended preservation of inequality in favor of students who enjoyed contest-based education and game technology. Competition-based valuation of presumed mastery of course content fostered anxiety and intimidation among students, which caused some to "game the game" instead of studying the material, to meet grade goals. Some students indicated that they spent more time (than necessary) to learn the goals of the game than engineering content itself, suggesting a need to better integrate course material while minimizing cognitive effort in learning to navigate the game. Conclusions: Preliminary results indicate that engineering software's design and the way is coupled with course grading and assessment of learning outcomes, affect student perceptions of the technology's acceptance, usefulness, and ease of use as a "learning tool." Students were found to have different expectations of serious games juxtaposed software/apps designed for entertainment. Conclusions also indicate that acceptance of inquiry-based educational games in a classroom among diverse populations of students should clearly articulate and connect the game goals/objectives with class curriculum content. Findings also indicate that a multifaceted schema of tools, such as feedback on game challenges, and explanations for predictions of the game should be included in game/app designs.

This Work-In-Progress falls within the research category of study and, focuses on the experiences and perceptions of first-and second year engineering students when using an online engineering game that was designed to enhance understanding of statics concepts. Technology and online games are increasingly being used in engineering education to help students gain competencies in technical domains in the engineering field. Less is known about the way that these online games are designed and incorporated into the classroom environment and how these factors can ignite inequitable perspectives and experiences among engineering students. Also, little if any work that combines the TAM model and intersectionality of race and gender in engineering education has been done, though several studies have been modified to account for gender or race. This study expands upon the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by exploring perspectives of intersectional groups (defined as women of color who are engineering students). A Mixed Method Sequential Exploratory Research Design approach was used that extends the TAM model. Students were asked to play the engineering educational game, complete an open-ended questionnaire and then to participate in a focus group. Early findings suggest that while many students were open to learning to use the game and recommended inclusion of online engineering educational games as learning tools in classrooms, only a few indicated that they would use this tool to prepare for exams or technical job interviews. Some of the main themes identified in this study included unintended perpetuation of inequality through bias in favor of students who enjoyed competition-based learning and assessment of knowledge, and bias for students having prior experience in playing online games. Competition-based assessment related to presumed learning of course content enhanced student anxiety and feelings of intimidation and led to some students seeking to “game the game” versus learning the material, in efforts to achieve grade goals. Other students associated use of the game and the classroom weighted grading with intense stress that led them to prematurely stop the use of the engineering tool. Initial findings indicate that both game design and how technology is incorporated into the grading and testing of learning outcomes, influence student perceptions of the technology's usefulness and ultimately the acceptance of the online game as a “learning tool.” Results also point to the need to explore how the crediting and assessment of students' performance and learning gains in these types of games could yield inequitable experiences in these types of courses.