2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Laboratory experimentation is a key component of the development of professional engineers. However, experiments conducted in chemical engineering laboratory classes are commonly more prescriptive than the problems faced by practicing engineers, who have agency to make consequential decisions across the experiment and communication of results. Thus, understanding how experiments in laboratory courses vary in offering students opportunities to make such decisions, and how students navigate higher agency learning experiences is important for preparing graduates ready to direct these practices. In this study, we sought to answer the following research questions: How do students perceive their agency in course-based undergraduate research experiences? What factors are measured by the Consequential Agency in Laboratory Experiments survey?
To better understand student perceptions of their agency in relation to laboratory experiments, we first conducted a case study of a course-based research experience (CURE) in a senior-level chemical engineering laboratory course. We then surveyed six upper-division laboratory courses across two universities using an initial version of the Consequential Agency in Laboratory Experiments survey. We used exploratory factor analysis to investigate the validity of the data from the survey for measuring relevant constructs of authenticity, agency in specific domains, responsibility, and opportunity to make decisions.
We found that with instructional support, students in the CURE recognized that failure could itself provide opportunities for learning. They valued having the agency to make consequential decisions, even when they also found the experience challenging. We also found strong support for items measuring agency as responsibility, authenticity, agency in the communication domain, agency in the experimental design domain, and opportunity to make decisions. These findings give us insight into the value of higher agency laboratory experiments, and they provide a foundation for developing a more precise survey capable of measuring agency across various laboratory experiment practices. Such a survey will enable future studies that investigate the impacts of increasing agency in just one domain versus in several. In turn, this can aid faculty in developing higher agency learning experiences that are more feasible to implement, compared to CUREs.