2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The goal of this work-in-progress (WIP) paper is to explore the use of a visual method to synthesize the co-curricular navigation profiles of student groups over time. Specifically, we compare the navigation profiles of three groups each comprising five students who continually scored low, medium, and high-Grade Point Averages or GPAs over four years. Prior research in engineering education confirms that higher student co-curricular participation leads to more practice and achievement. However, student time is also bounded by their curricular duties and performance. This duality urges our research question: What are the co-curricular navigation characteristics of student groups who continually score low, medium, and high GPAs over their undergraduate studies? We use directional graphs for the visual representation of the movement of students from one co-curricular activity to another through the use of nodes (filled-in circles that encapsulate the co-curricular type) and edges (arrows that connect nodes and can signify the chronology of participation). Each student has a directed graph which may vary in the number of nodes and edges. This work shares a) a visual analysis of student co-curricular involvement across the three GPA groups, b) issues in co-curricular programming and representation derived from the visual analysis, as well as c) limitations of visual analysis and considerations for future work.