2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Abstract
Authentic learning is fast becoming one of the most effective educational instructional methods for teaching engineering education. One of the issues that students must face with transitioning into the industry is the application of school knowledge to their real-life practice. Engineering students are expected to think critically, come up with original solutions, and collaborate with other team members on projects. Often, traditional teaching methods are not enough to build these capacities in young engineers, which has led to the introduction of new instructional methods such as the incorporation of virtual reality as an authentic learning technique. Several authentic learning techniques have been used in the past to introduce students to virtual reality. While VR substitutes reality, transporting you to a different environment, AR enhances reality by superimposing information onto what is already visible. Hence, incorporating AR in authentic learning activity has the potential to help understand how users view the real world and make informed decisions to improve workplace decisions.
This paper serves as a literature review for a larger study that investigates how engineering students set priorities in engineering design to assess their preparedness for industry. The larger study seeks to answer the following research questions:
• How do students perceive their undergraduate education prepares them to set priorities in engineering design?"
• How do authentic learning activities through AR change the way students think about design?

To answer the research questions, the advancement of teaching framework on professional preparation across professions known as the “three apprenticeships model” will be used as a guiding theoretical lens. To explore the research purpose, 10 civil engineering undergraduate students from a university in the Midwest will be assessed on their knowledge via an authentic learning activity to redesign a children’s playground using augmented reality based on five assessment metrices (cost, fun, sustainability, time, and safety). Feedback will be gathered through semi-structured interviews and analyzed through thematic analysis.
The objective of this study is to give students exposure into real-world practice to understand industry requirements even before they graduate from school. This paper will present a brief literature review on the topic, while more details about the methodology, results, and future directions will be presented in a future paper.