2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A Mixed-Methods Investigation into the Influence of Outdoor Experiences on Engineering Career Choices

This paper presents the development, validation, and administration of a mixed-methods survey designed to examine how formative outdoor experiences influence undergraduate students’ decisions to pursue engineering or engineering technology. Drawing on environmental development methodology and STEM education research, the instrument combines Likert-scale items that measure nature-related attitudes with open-ended prompts that elicit personal accounts of formative experiences. The survey was developed through an iterative process that combined a literature review, faculty expertise, and cognitive pretesting to ensure alignment between the constructs and students' interpretations. The instrument targets four subconstructs of environmental influence: emotional and spatial connection to nature, specific formative experiences, integration of nature and engineering, and other influences on career choice, while also collecting demographic information. Additional safeguards, such as attention checks, were implemented to maintain response quality. The instrument was distributed to 189 undergraduate students in a Mechanical Engineering Technology program, yielding 150 complete responses after exclusions. Validation included expert panel review to confirm content relevance and reliability testing that produced strong internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.78-0.89, McDonald’s ω = 0.80-0.90). Designed as an adaptable instrument, the tool enables researchers and educators to examine how environmental and experiential contexts relate to student engagement, engineering interest, and career pathways. The methodology also supports potential application in manufacturing and technology education contexts by connecting students’ formative experiences to applied learning environments. By contributing a validated and replicable instrument, this work equips the engineering education community with a means to systematically link formative experiences to technical learning to increase engagement.

Authors

Mohammed Metwaly http://orcid.org/0009-0007-5332-2985 Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE) [biography]

At Purdue University, my journey as a Graduate Research Assistant and Doctoral Student in Computer Engineering merges innovative research with practical applications. The focus of my work revolves around developing mixed reality applications for engineering education purposes.
Dr. Farid El Breidi http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4959-3292 Purdue University - Purdue Polytechnic Institute – West Lafayette [biography]

Dr. Farid El Breidi is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering Technology at Purdue University. Dr. El Breidi is the director of the Digital Technologies Lab and is actively engaged in research encompassing digital fluid power, digital reality, and engineering pedagogy. He serves as the Principal Investigator for numerous internally and externally funded research projects. These projects have received support from agencies and associations such as the National Science Foundation and the National Fluid Power Association.
Dr. Wade H Goodridge http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5811-7629 Utah State University [biography]

Wade Goodridge is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Utah State University. His research often has a focus on what drives us to learn, how we learn and how well we do it, and what can improve that learning. This work is often directed with a spatial thinking emphasis. Dr. Goodridge has investigated different learning modalities (fully online, hybrid, blended courses), cognitive and metacognitive learning processes (self-regulation, engineering problems solving, neural efficiency in engineering problem solving) learning motivators (engineering self-efficacy), and effective and personalized engineering education interventions (tactile engineering curriculum, physical teaching models, XR environments and AI informed systems of delivering and monitoring engineering learning). Dr. Goodridge has created a valid and reliable instrument to assess spatial ability in blind and low vision (BLV) learners thus opening new areas of research centered on tactile spatial ability. He has created tactile and visual learning tools and has offered professional development experiences on how to improve the education of tomorrows engineers.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026