2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Providing undergraduate engineering students with professional and career development opportunities early in their programs is crucial to post-graduation success. Students gather more confidence in their career choices, consider a wider variety of new specializations, gain an increased ability to connect in-class knowledge with practical experiences and enhance the valuable skill of networking. A good way of preparing for these future events is by conducting informational interviews with professionals. These interviews aimed to provide students with a firm understanding of various engineering career options, improve their professional and personal development, expand their professional network, and allow students to connect their theoretical knowledge and practical experience. The students were trained to conduct the informational interviews by watching a LinkedIn Learning course. They were asked to find and contact five professionals related to the biomedical engineering field. Students were then asked to submit a 1- page reflection to describe their experience and to fill out a survey. The feedback gathered from the post-assessment surveys was intended to pinpoint areas for improvement in this learning activity and enhance the experience for future students.
The self-reported data was collected by a survey that included demographic questions to differentiate participant backgrounds and a series of Likert Scale questions ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) to assess the effectiveness of the developed module. Additionally, Open-ended questions were included to gather qualitative insights. Our preliminary analysis showed that students reported a relatively high average level of agreement in gaining a better understanding of their chosen field (Mean, M=4.00), interview helpfulness (M=3.79), general satisfaction (M=3.93), and likeliness to incorporate any values learned (M=3.93). However, students reported having more difficulty scheduling the interviews (M=3.60). A thematic analysis of the open-response questions allows preliminary conclusions to be drawn about the effectiveness of the interviews. The survey respondents reported the importance of networking and building professional relationships. However, one challenge students faced was getting professionals to reply to their requests, primarily via LinkedIn and email. Most importantly, the assignment opened students’ eyes to various career options within biomechanical engineering.
This study contributes to engineering education by highlighting the benefits of reflective learning through informational interviews. Informational interviews give students a deeper understanding of the various career options available within biomedical engineering and help develop critical networking skills. This assignment allowed many to explore new possibilities, gain confidence in their career choices, and better understand the skills they need to build. More data will be collected in future course offerings, increasing the sample size and giving this study more statistical significance and confidence. A more in-depth analysis is required for the Likert Scaled data to see how the responses vary with other qualities such as race, ethnicity, gender, and first-generation students, and a more thorough and structured thematic analysis utilizing a qualitative analysis software called NVivo is planned for the future.