2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Background
Students in higher education report a multitude of mental health problems. The situation seems to have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 Pandemic. In undergraduate engineering education in particular, an overall stress culture prevails caused by high academic workload, sleep deprivation, higher self-expectations, and other factors that resulted in less time available for students to use directing their attention to their mental health and wellbeing (MHW). The prevalence of such situations has attracted recent calls for a serious effort to bring positive changes in engineering education culture.
Purpose
To support MHW and ultimately the success of undergraduate engineering students, the purpose of this study is to introduce a first-year happiness and wellbeing course by offering its learning goals and objectives. Specifically, the authors wish to exemplify and discuss the research process that informed the formation of the proposed course goals/objectives for such a course.
Design/Method
Semi-structured interviews of 8 undergraduate engineering students were conducted in the Fall of 2021 based on an earlier conceptualized framework of subjective wellbeing. Thematic analysis of the interviews was used to construct a 7 factors analytical framework of undergraduate engineering student subjective wellbeing and further identify 6 goals of a future happiness and wellbeing course. The 7 factors were also used to develop 7 open-ended survey questions that could be delivered to participants in a well-being study. Data on the 7 open-ended survey questions were then collected in the Spring of 2022 (N = 105). These results will be thematically analyzed to identify learning goals/objectives for the happiness and well-being course that could be delivered to engineering students. Following a “backward design” (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) model for curriculum development, the identified goals/objectives will align with the discovered themes, treating them as outcomes, that the proposed course curriculum (objectives, assessments, learning experiences) will target. Krathwohl’s taxonomy of the affective domain will be used in developing the learning objectives corresponding to these goals/objectives.
Results
The seven-factor analytical framework guided the setting up of the following 6 learning goals for the proposed happiness and wellbeing course.
1) Foster faculty-student relations beyond the typical.
2) Flourish dependent and interdependent learning skills in students.
3) Support students’ efforts to access available financial resources.
4) Guide students to efficiently manage their assigned academic tasks.
5) Enable students to be healthy and contribute to an overall positive college environment.
6) Support student needs by equipping them with information retrieval skills.
The learning objectives for each goal were developed from the thematic analysis of the data collected in response to the 7 open-ended questions.
Conclusion
Based on multiple empirical studies, we propose that implementing a fully developed MHW course has the potential to equip first-year engineering students with skills that will positively affect their MHW. This will ultimately lead towards their persistence to graduate.