2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In engineering as a profession and in engineering education, failure is commonplace--attempted designs fail, experiments fail about 90% of the time, and students do not achieve the scores they desire on homework, quizzes, and exams. Thus, the ability to navigate and respond to failure as an opportunity for growth and learning is a key component of the scientific enterprise. Our team has been researching engineering students’ responses to failure and success, and in the present WIP we report on the design of a Fall 2025 post-exam coping strategies intervention. More specifically, we recorded ten 3-5 minute testimonials from course completers on how they had dealt with their performance on exams, which included getting support from friends and family, using physical activity to cope, and multiple office hours and study strategies suggestions. Students reviewed and reflected on these testimonials.

Research on response to failure has been extensive in workplace settings, in which there is a very wide range of negative and positive responses to failure, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, working harder, working smarter, shock, fear, renewed dedication, increased susceptibility to stereotypes, blame, shame, despair, changes in interest, reassessing career, reassessing self-perceived ability, and learning from failure [1, 2]. Thus, these responses may include combinations of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses. Results from our last 2 years of research in a 200-level ECE course are consistent with these findings of a broad range of reactions involving emotions and planned changes to study strategies [3, 4].

In this WIP, we have created a video-based intervention to support students after they experience exam success and failure in engineering courses. This intervention builds on our prior interview and survey development and validation work over the last 2 years [3, 4]. After receiving scores on their first semester exam and agreeing to release (or not release) their data for research purposes, students in a 200-level ECE course completed pre-intervention questionnaires on post-exam emotions and planned changes to study strategies [3, 4], coping strategies [5], and a demographics form. We created homework assignments involving watching two brief testimonial videos per week, along with reflections of about 75-150 words on the videos. All data are captured in a Canvas site.

In the remaining data collection, participants will watch and write reflections on a total of 10 videos spread over 5 weeks between the release of exam scores on Exam 1 and Exam 2. After the intervention is complete, participants will again respond to the 3 questionnaires. Planned data analysis will use number of reflections written (i.e., extent of participation) to predict changes from pre-intervention to post-intervention in the 3 scales. Specifically, we will use three ANCOVAs, one per questionnaire, with pretest scores and extent of participation as predictors of posttest scores.

In the full version of the paper, we will present descriptive results, evidence of reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) and validity (correlational and exploratory factor analysis), and results of the ANCOVAs.

References
[1] Ellis, S., & Davidi, I. (2005). After-event reviews: drawing lessons from successful and failed experience. Journal of applied psychology, 90(5), 857-871.
[2] Ellis, S., Mendel, R., & Nir, M. (2006). Learning from successful and failed experience: the moderating role of kind of after-event review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(3), 669-680.
[3] Authors (2023). ASEE paper.
[4] Authors (2024). ASEE paper.
[5] Santor, D. A., Colvin, E., & Sinclair, D. (2018): Coping with failure, Educational Review, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2018.1524855