2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The purpose of this research paper is to understand how active learning, specifically project-based learning (PBL), affects students’ development of engineering identity.

Understanding how students identify as engineers is important for recruiting and retaining students in engineering programs. Prior work with students enrolled in an engineering statics course suggests students might develop an engineering identity as a result of participating in PBL environments. Additional work is needed to understand how specific PBL experiences affect students’ perceived creation of an engineering identity. To address this need, we examine the following question: How do student PBL experiences affect their perceived development of engineering identity? By understanding these results, researchers and practitioners can craft classroom experiences that directly influence engineering student identity development.

Sophomores and juniors enrolled in an engineering statics course (n = 131) at a western land-grant institution participated in a group project that required them to design, build, and test a bridge. Following project completion, students completed extra-credit reflective journal entries, with Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, regarding their confidence, motivation, perceived outcome, and anxiety to design a bridge now, and for other projects in the future. Example questions were crafted as follows with confidence being replaced for each construct:
- What parts of the experiment did you feel confident or not confident about designing?
- After completing the experiment, what parts of engineering design do you feel more or less confident to be able to design in the future? Why?

A Inductive Qualitative Content Analysis (IQCA) was used to analyze student journal responses. IQCA involves three phases; preparation, organization, and reporting. In the preparation phase, data was collected for analysis, and individual journals were selected as the focused unit of analysis. Within the organization phase, a sub-sample of journals were open-coded to create a list of initial themes. Themes were then clarified through discussion and were given recognizable descriptions to enhance theme clarity . The remaining journals were analyzed and categorized into the generated themes. Results were then reported while describing the analysis process used for the final analytic phase.

Results from IQCA suggest PBL develops students’ perceived engineering identity through creation of engineering interest. Results of this work support previous work that shows PBL piques student interest in engineering, and aids in student creation individual interest through experiences that relate to their future goals in engineering. An example can be seen with James:

[After completing the project,] I am interested in prototyping more and learning more about manufacturing. Although I had some experience previously, I would like to learn how to implement the theory that is presented in class. - James

As we can see, James discusses how participation in the project further developed his interests related to manufacturing. Using these results practitioners can develop students’ interest, and further, their engineering identity, by providing students repeated interaction with problem-based experiences that are challenging and allow for knowledge-building.