2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work in Progress: Engineering together - Applying remote collaborative technology to an in-person undergraduate engineering course

Presented at First-Year Programs Division (FYP) - WIPS 1: Programs & Curricula

This evidence-based Work in Progress research paper will explore how collaborative technology impacts student engagement with teams and programming activities in an introductory first-year engineering course. Introduction to engineering has been a historically difficult course for undergraduates as they are introduced to algorithmic thinking, design processes, and problem solving methodologies. To assist students, a variety of approaches can be employed in the classroom; team based capstone projects with end of course demonstrations, synchronous collaborative technology that supports teamwork and communication in and out of class, pair-programming, and visual-based programming languages. Each of these provide benefits to the students individually, but with COVID-19 forcing a shift to remote learning, collaborative technologies experienced an unprecedented development of innovations and tools. A return to in-person classes may incline educators to drop collaborative technologies for teaching, but remote control, screen share, and collaborative tools are still beneficial if using teamwork in the class. This paper investigates the following question: to what degree is student engagement impacted by the usage of synchronous collaborative tools in a team-based, in-person undergraduate introductory engineering course? An experimental setup was implemented in three different sections of an introductory engineering course at a large, midwestern, R1 institution. All three sections had different instructors and a class size of around 50 students. One of the three sections implemented a technology that allowed students to connect to a teammate’s computer and share control of keyboard/mouse, enabling real-time collaborative programming in a normally individual programming environment. A survey instrument grounded in Burch et al.’s conceptual framework was developed and distributed at strategic times to measure students’ engagement with their team and in-class programming tasks. Results to be presented include the following: a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) that supports the factor structure of the student engagement survey; an analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure to compare the three sections and investigate significant differences between them; an analysis of student grades, peer feedback, and team effectiveness to analyze if the tool had significant impacts on students’ learning and programming skills. The results of this research has potential to provide direction for usage of remote collaborative technology for in-person, academic settings. Future implications of research include investigating the impact of similar technologies on student engagement and learning outcomes; contributing a validated instrument to measure students’ engagement with their programming tasks and teams; and provide educators with potential methodologies to improve student engagement in team-based coursework.

Authors

Mr. John William Lynch http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5580-7387 University of Cincinnati [biography]

John Lynch is an engineering and computing education PhD student at the University of Cincinnati. His research interests are in improving computer science education for undergraduates by leveraging technology and unique pedagogical interventions. His overarching goal is to increase the retention rate for studying Computer Science at all education levels and make the field accessible for underrepresented populations.
Dr. Jutshi Agarwal University at Buffalo, The State University of New York [biography]

Jutshi Agarwal is a Doctoral candidate in Engineering Education at the University of Cincinnati. She has a Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering from University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from SRM University, India. Her research areas of interest are graduate student professional development for a career in academia, preparing future faculty, and using AI tools to solve non-traditional problems in engineering education. She has published in several international conferences.
Dr. P.K. Imbrie University of Cincinnati [biography]

P.K. Imbrie is the Head and Professor of the Department of Engineering & Computing Education and a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Cincinnati. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University and is an ASEE Fellow. He is an advocate for research-based approaches to engineering education, curricular reform, and student retention. Imbrie has been involved in both traditional, as well as educational research in experimental mechanics, piezospectroscopic techniques, epistemologies, assessment, and modeling of student learning, student success, student team effectiveness, and global competencies. He helped establish the scholarly foundation for engineering education as an academic discipline through lead authorship of the landmark 2006 JEE special reports “The National Engineering Education Research Colloquies” and “The Research Agenda for the New Discipline of Engineering Education.” He has a passion for designing state-of-the-art learning spaces. While at Purdue University, Imbrie co-led the creation of the First-Year Engineering Program’s Ideas to Innovation (i2i) Learning Laboratory, a design-oriented facility that engages students in team-based, socially relevant projects. While at Texas A&M University Imbrie co-led the design of a 525,000 square foot state-of-the-art engineering education focused facility; the largest educational building in the state.

Professor Imbrie’s expertise in educational pedagogy, student learning, and teaching has impacted thousands of students at the universities for which he has been associated. He is internationally recognized for his work in active/collaborative learning pedagogies and is a co-author of a text on teaming called Teamwork and Project Management. His engineering education leadership has produced fundamental changes in the way students are educated around the world. His current research interests include: epistemologies, assessment, and modeling of student learning, student success, and student team effectiveness.

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