2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work-in-progress research paper describes the beginning stages of a study exploring connections between students' participation in “engineering-adjacent” activities outside of class and their motivation to pursue their future engineering goals. In this study, we define engineering-adjacent activities as those that are not typically seen as “engineering” by the curriculum (in opposition to accepted activities such as engineering club participation, engineering service, etc.), but that students identify as connected to their goals as engineering students or future engineers.

Current literature suggests that engineering student identity, belonging, and motivation are key attitudinal constructs that inform immediate and future student success in engineering. According to this research, success is determined by a student's ability to see themselves as the “kind of person” (Gee, 2000) who can competently complete engineering tasks and be recognized for them by others. In part, this ability requires students to see themselves in future roles that include engineering, identify present tasks, and see connections between their present and future selves in ways that motivate them to take specific steps to connect the present and future. Researchers and practitioners should support the attitudinal development of students to encourage these connections by improving their engineering curriculum design or developing out-of-class programming, as students who make connections between their present and future goals are more likely to achieve success in engineering.

Students tend to participate in on- and off-campus activities to help develop their sense of belonging and conceptions of themselves as engineers. Within these activities, students are exposed and integrated into cultures of engineering that inform and develop their perceptions. Many of these activities are directly connected to engineering, though past work has included the idea that students also participate in engineering-adjacent activities. We are exploring students' participation in engineering-adjacent activities and their perceptions of the role these activities play in their sense of belonging, identity development, and motivation related to engineering.

We are currently recruiting engineering students at a mid-Atlantic university to participate in semi-structured interviews. After a saturation of fifteen to twenty students, we will purposefully sample eight to twelve students that capture a broad range of academic years and disciplines. During their interviews, participants will be asked to reflect on their goals for the future, share their present actions including involvement in engineering, engineering-adjacent, and non-engineering activities, and then connect their goals with their activities. Once interviews have been completed, we anticipate using deductive, thematic coding that applies a priori codes from our prior work with motivation and identity theories like future time perspective, expectancy value, and multiple identity. Our paper will describe the proposed research design and our future goals for this study.