2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Many universities have engineering outreach programming that expose students to engineering. These models include day camps, overnight camps, and multi-week programs. As the projects occur over hours, days, or weeks, this means there is rich content delivered in a very abbreviated timeframe. Programming is engaging, fun, and educational. However, it is often only anecdotal evidence or evaluative surveys that reflect what students’ experiences. This works-in-progress project describes the development of tools for assessing engineering learning in weekly summer experiences across the precollege continuum for outreach programming at a research-intensive university. These tools will investigate development of engineering habits of mind, perceptions, self-efficacy, acquired disciplinary knowledge, and other making skills. This work has broader impact of training other universities how to assess informal engineering summer programs or providing guidelines for faculty who do precollege engineering outreach.