2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Curriculum Design for All Learners

How should pre-college engineering courses evolve in response to teacher and students needs and experiences? Design-Based Research (DBR) is a theoretical framework guiding development and improvement of curricular designs through intentional data-collection, testing, and analysis against desired outcomes, including social-emotional outcomes.
In 2018, the [PROGRAM NAME REDACTED] began efforts to develop and implement a new engineering course to engage diverse high school students in “doing” engineering, authentically, at an age-appropriate level. At the same time, [PROGRAM NAME] launched professional development efforts and a supportive learning community to help interested teachers, including those without an engineering background, to implement the course with rigor. For the past three years [PROGRAM NAME] has been conducting DBR to examine teacher and student experiences with the goal of curricular improvement.
This paper aims to characterize evidence of the impact of the [PROGRAM NAME] curriculum on diverse students, drawn from evaluation data collected from students (n= 846) over a period of three years from 2021 to 2023. Results will illuminate students’ opinions about the curriculum and what they most / least appreciate, with patterns of responses illustrating a variety of student “personas” characterized by what they most/least value in the curriculum. The paper highlights aspects of the curriculum that are most valuable to a variety of students, and how to improve the curriculum to better serve diverse students, through the lens of DBR.

Authors

Dr. Cathy P. Lachapelle http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8487-6071 STEM Education Insights [biography]

Cathy is particularly interested in how collaborative interaction and scaffolded experiences with disciplinary practices help children learn science, math, and engineering. Her work on STEM education research projects includes design, evaluation, and effi
Dr. Medha Dalal http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5705-1800 Arizona State University [biography]

Dr. Medha Dalal is an assistant research professor and associate director of scholarly initiatives in the Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. Her career as an engineering education researcher focuses on addressing complex engineering education challenges by building capacity for stakeholders at the grassroots, while also informing policy. Her research seeks to transform and democratize engineering education by exploring ways of thinking, identifying effective professional development approaches, and uncovering pedagogical techniques to enhance students’ engineering curiosity, engagement, and learning.
Katie McKeown
Jialing Wu The Ohio State University [biography]

Jialing Wu is a first-year PhD student in Engineering Education at the Ohio State University. She earned her M.Ed. in International Education Policy and Management at Vanderbilt University, Peabody College, and also holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from China. Her research interests encompass computational social science, international engineering education, pre-college engineering in Engineering Education Research (EER).

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

For those interested in:

engineering
Pre-College