This theory paper explores how we can extend the curricular complexity framework to better capture vertical engineering transfer students' experiences – i.e., students transferring from a community college to a four-year university. Most prior research using the framework focuses on characterizing what makes university engineering programs “complex” for first-time-in-college (FTIC) students by quantifying the interconnectedness of their prerequisite structures. These measures have been correlated with other metrics like retention, time-to-degree, and program quality. Unlike FTIC students, transfer students can enter the curriculum at multiple points in time and often bring course credit that is applied to requirements, relegated to electives, or lost entirely. As currently conceptualized, exploring transfer student pathways appropriately with the current version of the curricular complexity framework is difficult without constraining assumptions - e.g., analyzing the effects of a curriculum revision and assuming no courses are transfer-friendly. To address this gap in the literature, we adapt the curriculum complexity framework to capture challenges vertical engineering transfer students may encounter in their pathway to a four-year degree.
Dr. David Reeping is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Engineering Education Research Program at the University of Michigan. He earned his Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech and was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. He received his B.S. in Engineering Education with a Mathematics minor from Ohio Northern University. His main research interests include transfer student information asymmetries, threshold concepts in electrical and computer engineering, agent-based modeling of educational systems, and advancing quantitative and fully integrated mixed methods.
Dustin currently serves as an Assistant Professor in Teacher Education at Weber State University and leads the higher education leadership program. He holds a PhD from Virginia Tech in Higher Education. His interdisciplinary research agenda includes gradu
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