2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Student self-efficacy, or a student’s belief in their ability to perform particular tasks, positively contributes to a number of beneficial student characteristics. The development of student-perceived competence with engineering processes should, therefore, serve as a fundamental goal for engineering curricula. This study seeks to provide further insight into what types of activities contribute to the development of student self-efficacy towards particular common fabrication methods in aerospace and mechanical engineering. Undergraduate engineering students enrolled in 3 different 200-level design courses in the aerospace and mechanical engineering department at a medium-sized, Midwestern, private university were asked to participate in a survey characterizing their comfort level with and prior exposure to various fabrication methods. The fabrication methods analyzed in this study included additive manufacturing (e.g. 3D printing), basic fabrication methods (e.g. hand tools, drill presses), advanced fabrication methods (e.g. CNC mills/routers, water-jet cutters), and 3D modeling (e.g. SolidWorks). Throughout the semester, students were introduced to these topics in the 3 courses via lectures, short practical assignments, and multi-week design projects. The survey was administered at 3 or 4 different timepoints throughout the semester, dependent upon the course. Appropriate data collection timepoints for each course were determined as coming after the completion of course-specific milestones that exposed students to the different fabrication methods. Aggregate and course-specific data from the survey were used to assess how student comfort with relevant fabrication methods changed throughout the semester. Effects of prior outside exposure to these fabrication methods and gender were also explored. Results showed that student comfort level with each fabrication method generally increased throughout the semester in the 3 courses in response to different assignment types. The greatest increases in comfort were seen from projects that required students to engage with fabrication methods to which they had little previous exposure. In some cases, the comfort levels developed from shorter practical assignments were not statistically different than those from multi-week projects. This study suggests that lectures may be a good introduction to increase student comfort/confidence with some fabrication methods, but students/curricula can benefit even more from the incorporation of experiential and project-based learning activities that require the use of various fabrication methods, such as shorter practical assignments and multi-week integrative projects, respectively.