2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Objectives: This paper 1) examines the potential of an FBD App to close equity gaps in skills for drawing free-body diagrams between BIPOC students and their white peers in Statics; and 2) assesses hypotheses for explaining the app’s impact.

Significance. While advancing the research on educational technology in the context of mechanical engineering, the study contributes to a growing body of research that challenges deficit-based assumptions about BIPOC engineering students and explores best practices to improve BIPOC student retention in engineering. Deficit-based assumptions include beliefs about the shortcomings of BIPOC students that impede learning (eg, limited intelligence, motivation, training) in higher education [1,2]. Engineering education studies are beginning to explore the prevalence and implications of these beliefs [3] and to propose ways to frame engineering education research in less prejudiced ways to determine what best helps BIPOC students persist in engineering [4,5].

Methods: The study is quasi-experimental. Six statics courses (taught by three Mechanical Engineering faculty at two universities) offered students the use of the FBD app to complement the typical curriculum. The sample was 317 students - two thirds chose to use the app and one third did not. Fourteen percent of students were BIPOC, yielding a small, but sufficient sample for exploratory analyses. Independent t-tests were conducted to assess differences across BIPOC and white students. Four hypotheses for explaining differences were assessed using hierarchical multiple regression modeling. Significance was set at p < .05 for all tests.

Findings: BIPOC students significantly increased their ability to draw FBDs [t(42) = -1.78, p<.05], closing a gap between BIPOC students and white students who did not use the app [t(113) = 1.84, p<.05]. Among those who used the app, BIPOC students indicated that it had a significantly greater impact on their learning than their white peers [t(192) = -2.72, p<.05].

The first three hypotheses were all rejected (with evidence provided in the full paper):
Hypothesis 1: BIPOC students liked the app environment more than their white peers
Hypothesis 2: BIPOC students are more likely to be underprepared for college-level work and therefore found the extra assistance provided by the app more useful
Hypothesis 3: BIPOC students have different learning styles and the FBD app better suits how they learn

Hypothesis 4 that BIPOC students have less self-efficacy, which negatively effects their FBD skills, was supported by the evidence. The FBD App increased BIPOC students’ self-efficacy, closing a gap between them and their white peers. In modeling growth in FBD drawing skills, confidence in statics had a significant effect (ß = .13), similar in size to attending lecture (ß = .18). The model was significant, F(15,370) = 20.37, p<.05.

There may be other hypotheses that could contribute to explaining why the FBD App is particularly useful for BIPOC students and closing equity gaps and these findings are not generalizable. Our next phase will involve implementing the app with a larger sample across multiple institutional contexts.

[1] Valencia R. R. (1997). Conceptualizing the notion of deficit thinking. The evolution of deficit thinking: Educational thought and practice, 19(1): 1-12.

[2] Smit, R. (2012). Towards a clearer understanding of student disadvantage in higher education: problematising deficit thinking. Higher Education Research & Development, 31(3), 369–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2011.634383

[3] Vielma K. I., Mejia J. A. (2023). Deficit Ideologies in Engineering Education: Unveiling Challenges and Implications. 2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), College Station, TX, USA, 1-5.

[4] Mejia J. A., Revelo R. A., Villanueva I., Mejia J. (2018). Critical Theoretical Frameworks in Engineering Education: An Anti-Deficit and Liberative Approach. Education Sciences, 8(4):158. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8040158

[5] Harper, S. R. (2010). An anti-deficit achievement framework for research on students of color in STEM. New Directions for Institutional Research, 63-74. https://doi.org/10.1002/ir.362