2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This WIP research applies a new framework for student success due to the crucial need for holistic engineering student development. Institutions emphasize retention, grades, and research but often give less attention to social, mental, and physical student development in engineering programs. At institutions, however, discussions about student well-being, development, and involvement are beginning to be examined. Accordingly, methods to facilitate academic balance are in the early stages of development.
In systems engineering, problems are often approached through creating a conceptual model to help increase and improve comprehension and understanding of the work. As student success is a complex topic with many different components that interact throughout, modeling can help give insights into the pieces that are within the control of engineering departments to work on. A potential effective strategy is the development of systems architecture to begin designing an engineering student success framework.
This WIP research employs a Zachman architecture framework to design the proposed student success framework. The goal is to enable higher education engineering programs to further consider holistic student success. Zachman architecture consists of six components that will evaluate parts of student life in this framework. These components include data, function, network, people, time, and motivation. The architecture also evaluates six perspectives: scope, business model, system model, technology model, detailed representations, and functioning enterprise. The design of this framework begins from ABET’s seven metrics on student success, with the Stanford Life Design Lab’s findings also integrated to create the elements of the architecture.
The framework explores a combination of design thinking and the Odyssey Plan methodology. This can be used for holistic student development (e.g., grades, networking, identity) and exploring different career pathways. These tools can be utilized as a part of the framework and help students better understand the reasons for involvement in campus opportunities, know the return on investment of time spent in campus activities, and improve understanding on how to develop a holistic student life during their time in engineering programs.
The presented framework is in development, and additional applications require evaluation. It should be evaluated first at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a preliminary test of the framework, and then expanded to more engineering institutions for further validation. Additionally, it can be expanded to encompass domain-specific engineering at a more granular level to potentially help students fit their studies and development closer to their intended field. Lastly, there should be an evaluation over several years of their time at a university to see how closely they have followed it and how impactful it has been throughout their engineering program.