2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Work-In-Progress study investigates differences in freshman and junior engineering students’ valuation of and self-efficacy for computational work in engineering. We administered a survey to N=58 total students and performed a mixed-methods analysis to better understand what factors may influence students’ attitudes in this area. We found that freshmen’s intended major (CS or non-CS) was strongly correlated to differences in their response patterns across survey items. Interestingly, while MSE juniors had significantly higher self-efficacy scores for computational work than those of freshmen, their valuation scores were slightly lower than those of freshmen, despite their much greater experience in the area. We are currently conducting and analyzing follow-up interviews with survey participants to investigate the causes of these outcomes.