2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 88: Work in Progress: Impact of Electronics Design Experience on Non-majors’ Self-efficacy and Identity

Presented at Electrical and Computer Engineering Division (ECE) Poster Session

Before the advent of the internet, electronics hobbyists embarked on lifelong learning journeys with instructional books such as Forrest Mims III’s Getting Started in Electronics. Prototyping circuits with physical components provided mastery experiences that built a sense of personal self-efficacy and identity as an engineer, launching many engineering careers. We advocate for providing these mastery experiences to non-electrical engineering majors to develop technical literacy. To this end, we developed an electronics course aimed at a broad, interdisciplinary audience which guided students through a series of projects teaching the fundamentals of soldering, circuits, and microcontrollers, then a guided, open-ended circuit design project. We measured self-efficacy and sense of identity before and after participating in the design project. We found a 13% increase in self-efficacy for engineering skills, but no significant change in identity as a "maker" or an engineer. These results are interpreted in light of the strengths and limits of this teaching-as-educational-research project. We propose modifications for an ongoing research study to further contextualize and develop these findings.

Authors

Tom J. Zajdel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7957-3180 Carnegie Mellon University [biography]

Tom Zajdel is an Assistant Teaching Professor in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Zajdel is interested in how students become motivated to study electronics and engineering. He has taught circuits, amateur radio, introductory mechanics, technical writing, and engineering design. Before joining CMU, Tom was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, where he worked on electrical sheep-herding of biological tissues. Prior to that, he completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering at the University of California Berkeley and his BS in ECE at The Ohio State University. He first discovered the joys of teaching as an undergraduate TA with tOSU's first-year engineering program, and he has been engaged with curriculum development and teaching projects ever since.
Allison E. Connell Pensky Carnegie Mellon University [biography]

Dr. Allison Connell Pensky is a Cognitive Psychologist and Neuroscientist by training. She is currently a Data Science Research Associate at the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University. She uses her training and years of experience as a faculty member to support graduate students, faculty, and programs on educational research projects and making data-driven improvements to courses.

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