2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This completed research paper will describe the relationship between first-year engineering students’ intentions to persist and their engineering “readiness” to embark on their educational endeavors within their engineering program upon constructing their identity as an engineer. Typically, first-year students are eligible to take engineering coursework immediately once they have already taken the prerequisite courses. However, some students may not have taken the prerequisite courses, which could disqualify them from immediately taking their engineering coursework.
At the university where the data were collected, students are admitted to engineering in a general track with or without having the prerequisite courses (e.g., being calculus ready). However, those who do not have the prerequisite courses must complete them before enrolling in engineering classes. Extensive research has been conducted on what factors influence the persistence of undergraduate students in navigating and integrating into STEM and STEM-associated career paths.
Engineering majors in particular have a very high dropout rate—on average, over half of the engineering students drop out before graduating. However, the complex stratification of factors that influence a student's ability to compete in the engineering field makes this phenomenon particularly difficult to understand. This can hinder the STEM professional field from achieving the diversity in perspectives, mindsets, and skills necessary to recognize and solve society's problems in the 21st century. To foster positive career expectations and one’s identity as an engineer, address inherent gender inequalities, and combat the high attrition rates in engineering, the STEM community has advocated for the promotion of equity, an inclusive environment, as well as diversity in engineering education.
Thus, in this study, we examine the influence of measures of students’ self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and biological sex on their persistence within engineering courses, and upon the construction of their engineering identity. We use Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; Lent et al., 1994) framework and Identity Development (Atadero et al., 2018) framework to investigate whether these relationships differ between (a) students who entered as first-year students with the prerequisites to immediately begin taking engineering course work (on-track students) or (b) students who were delayed in beginning their engineering coursework (off-track students). Specifically, we examine the persistent intentions and engineering identity development for the two groups of students. To address our research questions, we employ Hierarchical Linear Models (HLM) in which the intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) are estimated prior to analysis, utilizing the null model to describe the variability between engineering classes in students’ intentions to persist and their engineering identity. Model construction occurs through an identical model selection approach for each research question. All models are estimated using the restricted maximum likelihood (REML) method, with an independent framework in which variances and covariances are uniquely estimated. Model fit is examined utilizing model performance indices (i.e., Akaike Information Criteria and Bayes Information Criteria) and final models are selected according to the lowest reported values. The statistical significance of fixed effects is examined using t-tests with the Satterthwaite approximation utilized for the computation of degrees of freedom.
In our final HLM analysis, 280 engineering students (n =152 on-track, n= 128 off-track) are clustered within 25 engineering classes (n=12 on-track, n=13 off-track). The results indicate that: (RQ1) student biological sex (n female = 72) and outcome expectations are statistically significant predictors of persistence intentions amongst engineering undergraduates—specifically, students who identify as male have higher intentions to persist than those who identify as female, and (RQ2) these effects do not differ between on-track or off-track students. Additionally, (RQ3) the moderation effect of biological sex on self-efficacy is not statistically significant when predicting student engineering identity—indicating that neither male nor female students perceive the relationship between engineering identity and self-efficacy differently. Finally, (RQ4) the effect of self-efficacy on engineering identity formation does not differ between on-track and off-track students. That said, these results may provide support for admitting students into engineering tracks without the necessary prerequisite courses because once the prerequisite courses were in place, students’ engineering identity and intentions to persist were indistinguishable from their on-track peers. Of note, students who identify as male continue to indicate higher intentions to persist than those who identify as female, which may indicate extensive work still needs to be done to foster positive environments where female students can see themselves staying and flourishing in the engineering field. Other implications and future research directions will be discussed.