2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

RFE EAGER: Exploring Cultural Nuances in Student Use and Adoption of Generative AI Tools in Engineering Education: An Overview of Initial Findings and Directions for Future Work

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session II

Advances in AI technologies are gaining increasing attention from university administrators, teachers, and students as they become more ubiquitous in higher education. Key concerns associated with increased adoption include impacts on students’ overall learning outcomes and academic integrity. This NSF EAGER project seeks to explore the evolution of students’ perceptions and use of AI tools during their engineering programs. Specifically, this project employs a mixed methods design to capture students’ perspectives on AI tools, including their frequency of use, reasons for use, and approaches to use. Quantitative data for this study were collected through a university-wide survey distributed to all undergraduate and graduate students (n = 1679 total respondents) at a large land-grant university in the western US. Qualitative data is currently being collected via semi-structured interviews with engineering students (n = 21).

Findings to date have uncovered interesting and nuanced insights into how and why students choose or choose not to adopt Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, into their educational workflows. These insights lay the foundation for further work examining the existing culture of engineering education and how it shapes students’ current use and adoption of Generative AI tools, as the technology – and our knowledge of it – continues to evolve. Lastly, we highlight challenges related to conducting this work due to rapidly changing public perceptions of Generative AI at the methodological level.

Authors

Linda Davis Ahlstrom Utah State University [biography]

Linda Ahlstrom PhD student currently studying Engineering Education at Utah State University. Interested in the Univerity to Industry interface and the use of AI tools in engineering. MS Electrical Engineering Cal State Long Beach. Worked in industry: Biomedical, Software Development and Aerospace.
Dr. Cassandra McCall http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-0240-432X Utah State University [biography]

Dr. Cassandra McCall is an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Education Department at Utah State University (USU). Her research focuses on the intersections of disability, identity formation, and culture and uses anti-ableist approaches to enhance universal access for students with disabilities in STEM, particularly in engineering. At USU, she serves as the Co-Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Transition Services. In 2024, Dr. McCall received a National Science Foundation CAREER grant to identify systemic opportunities for increasing the participation of people with disabilities in engineering. Her award-winning publications have been recognized by leading engineering education research journals at both national and international levels. Dr. McCall has led several workshops promoting the inclusion of people with disabilities and other minoritized groups in STEM. She holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in civil engineering with a structural engineering emphasis.
Mr. Daniel Kane http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0220-9962 Utah State University [biography]

Daniel Kane is a third-year Ph.D. student in the department of engineering education at Utah State University. His research interests include spatial ability, accessibility for students with disabilities, artificial intelligence in education, and enhancing electric vehicle charging system infrastructure. Daniel has contributed significantly to the development of the Tactile Mental Cutting Test (TMCT) which is a significant advancement in assessing spatial ability for blind and low-vision populations. His research has helped inform teaching methods and develop strategies for improving STEM education accessibility. Currently, he is studying how AI tools are utilized by students across USU’s colleges to optimize their educational value. Daniel has also served as president of the ASEE student chapter at USU where he initiated outreach activities at local K-12 schools and promoted student engagement in research.
Michaela Harper http://orcid.org/0009-0007-5985-8676 Utah State University [biography]

Michaela Harper is a doctoral student at Utah State University, pursuing a Ph.D. in Engineering Education. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies, focusing on STEM and non-traditional education approaches, and a Master's degree in Engineering Education, where she explored faculty perspectives on Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI). Michaela's current research delves deeply into the effects of disruptive technologies on engineering education, driven by her passion for uncovering the foundational nature of phenomena and applying an exploratory and explanatory approach to her studies. Her work aims to illuminate how technological advancements reshape educational landscapes through student and faculty engagement.
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.
Dr. Oenardi Lawanto Utah State University [biography]

Dr. Oenardi Lawanto is a professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Utah State University, USA. He received his B.S.E.E. from Iowa State University, his M.S.E.E. from the University of Dayton, and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Lawanto has a combination of expertise in engineering and education and has more than 30 and 14 years of experience teaching engineering and cognitive-related topics courses for his doctoral students, respectively. He also has extensive experience in working collaboratively with several universities in Asia, the World Bank Institute, and USAID to design and conduct workshops promoting active-learning and life-long learning that is sustainable and scalable. Dr. Lawanto’s research interests include cognition, learning, and instruction, and online learning.

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

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