2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This "Complete Evidence-Based Practice" paper explores using an engineering podcast to increase college student motivation, desire, and commitment to the field of engineering. Many engineering students enter their majors with minimal knowledge of the discipline. Additionally, many current high school students report being interested in STEM-related fields, but are unprepared for this endeavor [1]. To help address this issue, the authors launched "[Name of podcast omitted for anonymity]" in 2019 to enhance awareness of engineering as a major and a career option. In a study conducted by [name omitted] et al. (2020), the first five episodes were evaluated by engineering students enrolled in [university omitted]’s College of Engineering’s First Year Experience course (XXX 1000) [2]. After listening to the episodes, students completed surveys that probed their opinions about the podcast’s format and the perceived usefulness of the podcast as a current student and future engineer. Most students obtained useful ideas from the episodes and felt more likely to succeed as an engineering student and engineering professional. The first five episodes of the podcast focused primarily on the differences between majors, experiences of current students, and experiences of current faculty. Many students requested episodes featuring interviews with professional engineers to learn what day-to-day life is like for engineers in various fields. As a result of the study, several episodes were recorded involving interviews with practicing engineers in both the private sector and public sector. This also allowed for different types of engineers to be included on each episode to show how a workplace is and how the disciplines cooperate.

This study focuses on the potential impact of interviews with practicing engineers on student motivation and commitment to engineering. The students involved in the study were current first-year students in the college of engineering all college class. The course serves approximately 900 students a semester and focuses on lifelong learning as one of its anticipated student learning outcomes. The course has a lecture and laboratory component. This study was conducted in the lecture sections of the course to avoid duplication of students. Not every section of the course participated in the study. Students in XXX 1000 completed an assignment that required them to listen to one podcast episode with an engineer from the private sector (e.g., refrigeration systems manufacturer, amusement park engineer, or warehouse) and one episode with an engineer from the public sector (e.g., electric utility, or water agency). We chose to compare a private agency with a public agency as prior research points to first generation female students gravitating towards public sector employment [3]. Students then completed surveys that probed the impact of the episode on their motivation to study engineering, level of knowledge about what engineers do, desire to be an engineer, commitment to the field of engineering, commitment to being a student, and motivation to pursue a career in engineering. Each question used a five-point Likert scale that ranged from 1 (strong negative impact) to 5 (strong positive impact). The results showed that most students reported the episodes had a positive impact in all categories (motivation, knowledge, desire, etc.), suggesting podcasts may be a useful medium for helping new engineering students become better prepared for their major and future career. When comparing the ratings for private sector episodes to the ratings for the public sector episodes, both types of episodes received similarly high rates of positive responses. However, the public sector episodes received slightly more negative responses.

Students also provided open-ended feedback about why they selected a particular episode. The feedback indicated students’ main motivations for selecting an episode was a general interest in topic, the topic was related to their major or future job, they wanted to learn something new, and it was the most interesting of the episodes available.