2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

IEEE ASEE Frontiers in Education (FIE) is the premier international peer-reviewed conference supporting research in engineering education. FIE is organized jointly by the IEEE Education Society, the IEEE Computing Society, and the ASEE Engineering Research and Methods (ERM) Division.

FIE 2023’s conference slogan was “Engineering Education in a Diverse, Global World." 922 abstracts submitted across work-in-progress and full papers (compared to 649 in 2022 and 700 in 2021). 536 papers were accepted in total. 39 submissions were received for panels, special sessions, and workshops, of which 30 were accepted and presented. Additionally, there were 25 submissions from local faculty to highlight their research in a special poster session. The 2023 FIE conference had 2 Keynotes & 1 Honorable Speaker. 5 posters were presented by the awardees of the New Faculty Fellow Award.

FIE 2023 had a total of 637 registered attendees for the full (3-day) conference, 48 registered attendees for a single-day pass, and 80 registered attendees for workshops.

2023 represents the first year the conference was in-person in the United States since COVID, and as such this year marked an attempt to return to many of the practices that had not occurred in several years, including the return of the New Faculty Fellow Award and the re-inclusion of the ASEE in the formal conference name,

Several changes were made for the first time this year including the creation of 1) videos to explain the differences between paper categories, 2) distinct detailed rubrics for the variety of different submission types, and 3) streamlined tracks and sub-tracks using the Engineering Education Research (EER) taxonomy. We updated the review process to engage peer reviewers at the abstract review stage rather than wait until the draft paper review stage. We also accepted abstracts with minor revisions and provided them with necessary guidance if needed. We created a poster maniac session, where select rejected or withdrawn papers were allowed to submit their papers as a poster to be presented during the conference in a single poster session. We created a track for student-led panels. 3 panels were selected and presented. After the final program was posted, we allowed participants to register for one-day passes to encourage local researchers to get a taste of the conference with the hope that this would provide an opportunity to grow the community.

The organizing committee is in the process of designing a survey to send out to the conference participants. This survey will gain insight into the successes and challenges of the past conference as well as suggestions for the future from the broader community.

This paper will detail the aggregate and statistically analyzed results from the survey and summarize suggestions going forward. The purpose of this paper is to provide a public and archival history of FIE, the ASEE ERM engineering education research conference to ensure transparency and public engagement with the ASEE ERM community going forward. I hope this starts a trend with ERM over future conferences so that we may have a historical transparent record of the FIE conference.

Note that we understand the rules on creating an author-blind paper, and we attempted to do so as is reasonably possible. That said, FIE is the only ASEE ERM organized conference, thus no other conference would be appropriate such a paper for this division, thus the name of the conference is necessary for understanding the reference.