STEM Fields: Factors that Influence the Interest Levels of Male and Female Students (Evaluation) This paper will discuss the factors that influence the levels of interest in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) among high school and middle school students. Data for this research was collected during multiple summer engineering camps held at a local university as a part of the Department of Education's Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEARUP) program. The camps are intended to help increase interest in STEM careers and STEM postsecondary education among high and middle school students. The weeklong summer camps were held in the years 2017, 2018, and 2019. Another camp was scheduled in 2020, but was cancelled due to the pandemic. During the camps, the students participated in activities involving engineering research. The camps focused on the topics of water and environmental engineering. The 2017 camp focused on water quality, collecting and analyzing water samples from various locations in the local watershed. The 2018 and 2019 camps included various activities including using remotely operated vehicles (ROV's) to measure various water properties to using drones to measure air quality. Students also collected stream data and built simple sensors to measure air quality. During all the camps, the students, with the help of their teachers, developed engineering research hypotheses, tested those hypotheses, and thought like engineers. At the end of each camp, teams of students presented what they learned, as well as their findings, using research posters and presentations. Before and after each camp, the students completed surveys regarding their interest in STEM, the factors influencing that interest, and their friends and parents' perceptions about STEM. Additionally, parents of the students were surveyed regarding their socioeconomic status, education, and perception of STEM. The parents did not attend any of the camps, but were kept informed on the activities of the camp using a blog that was updated daily. Data from the 2017 and 2018 camps were analyzed in a previous paper to find the factors that influence the interest of male and female students to go into STEM fields. In this work, those sets of data will be analyzed again in conjunction with new data collected in the 2019 camp. Data is collected and analyzed each year as part of a longitudinal study. The analysis involves both quantitative and qualitative data which was collected simultaneously in a concurrent mixed methods research design. Both streams of data will be analyzed concurrently to offer a deeper understanding of what influences student interest in STEM. Preliminary analysis showed that the factors that influence student interest in STEM were under the following main themes: Relationships/People, Future Prospects, Prior Interests/Hobbies, and Educational Experiences. A complete analysis of those themes, as well as the quantitative data, will be presented in the final paper.

Driving the US economy and technological advancement depends heavily on the STEM labor force with a higher education degree. To increase the recruitment of K-12 students into the STEM discipline in college, there is a need to study what factors influence their interest in STEM careers in recent times. In this paper, the researchers explored what influences K-12 students' interest in STEM careers using semi-structured interviews conducted during an engineering summer camp. The camp was held at a local state university in the mountain west region and was funded by the Department of Education's GEARUP program. The camp enabled students to better understand STEM and what engineers do. The students worked in teams and engaged in various engineering activities as part of the camp. This camp focused on building two types of rockets, launching, adjusting the design, and relaunching. The activities were designed to simulate real product design, starting with an idea, then preliminary design and testing, then a final design. Data collected for this research came from the summer engineering camp in the summer of 2022. The qualitative data collected via semi-structured interviews were thematically analyzed using MAXQDA 2022 qualitative analysis software. The researchers aimed for intercoder reliability of 0.8. Themes from the analyzed data show that motivation, experiential learning, social influence, engineering camps, and science fairs are major factors influencing K-12 students' interest in STEM careers. Therefore, high-school teachers are encouraged to use project-based and problem-based learning in STEM classrooms. In addition, high school administrators are encouraged to organize STEM outreach and program where high school students can meet STEM-like-minded friends while bonding with family.

The Effect of Summer Engineering Camps on Parents' Perceptions about STEM (Work In Progress) The perceptions of parents regarding Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) before and after their child attended a summer STEM camp will be analyzed in this paper. Starting in July 2016 through July 2019, groups of students attended weeklong STEM camps. These camps were designed to spark students' interest in STEM while preparing them academically for higher education. Funding for the camps was provided by a seven year grant from the Department of Education as a part of the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEARUP) program. Because the first year of this camp was a pilot year, only results from the last three years of the camp will be used. Another camp was scheduled in 2020, but was cancelled due to the pandemic. Each of the STEM camps lasted five days, during which time, students participated in a multitude of STEM related activities that varied from year to year. During the hands-on and thought-provoking STEM activities, students collaborated with science teachers, as well as faculty and graduate students at the land grant university. Throughout each camp, parents were kept informed through a blog that was updated daily with the activities their children were involved in. The blog posts included pictures/videos of the activities, brief descriptions of the activities they were doing, as well as quotes from the journals students completed at the end of each day. Prior to and following the STEM camps, surveys pertaining to STEM were given to all the students and their parents. The parents' surveys contained questions about their perception of STEM, their feelings about their child choosing a STEM field, and some basic questions about income, educational background and occupation. The focus of this paper will be to examine parents' perceptions of STEM, as well as their thoughts about STEM careers and STEM camps. Analysis of the data is ongoing and will consist of examining both the qualitative and quantitative data in a mixed methods analysis. By analyzing the data presented in the surveys, the researchers will have a better understanding of parents' influential role in their child's future career plans and interests.

Teams’ collaboration complexities appear at multiple scales of design tasks, from cognitive processes to organizational processes. This paper presents a study examining team dynamics at the cognitive processes level. The study analyzed 19 teams of 3 professional engineers. Following an analysis of their cognitive processes, teams were classified based on how subteams engaged in design processes as specialists (subteams engaged in specific design processes) or generalists (subteams engaged in all design processes). Findings suggest teams composed of specialized subteams explore less design space than generalist teams. Subteams’ organization impacts a team’s ideation performance, and therefore should be taken into account when managing design teams. These empirical findings are a starting point to reflect on design team management in professional settings.

The benefits of collaborative medical innovation generated by engineers and clinicians are clearly palpable in institutional transdisciplinary programs. The majority of these programs, however, focus on exposing and training engineers within medical settings or were originally built and designed for this purpose. A clear lack of opportunity exists for clinicians to be equally trained in engineering. Specifically, enhanced access, support, and guidance are needed to immerse clinicians in engineering disciplines to develop technical skills through curated programs. New programming should focus on bidirectional immersion, ultimately reimagining the traditional collaboration of transdisciplinary programs. As a result of these initiatives, vocabulary, acumen, and approaches will be shared and adopted. Furthermore, institutions should prioritize mandates to drive a collaborative culture to foster innovation for successful, lasting implementation. This brief report discusses existing programs, identifies current gaps, and proposes potential solutions to promote engineering immersion for clinicians. A bidirectional clinical and engineering immersion paradigm is outlined as a model, and key themes within the process of research and development are defined. The impact that bidirectional programs will have on health care is highlighted as gaps are bridged between science, engineering, and medicine. Finally, recommendations for engineering and medical schools are offered to build innovation capacity and acumen.

Professionals need to collaborate with multiple stakeholders in product development to stay competitive and to innovate. Through their values and mission, companies develop a specific working environment that can lead to the development of design methods and tools. In this article, we study design team dynamics of professional engineers working in two different organizations. We aim at identifying differences in team behaviors between teams drawn from two different organizations. The goal is twofold. At a theoretical level, we aim at gaining a better understanding of the effect of work culture on design team behaviors. At a methodological level, we explore whether grouping teams from different organizations into a single larger sample to obtain better reliability is relevant. To do this, we compared two cohorts of teams based on which company engineers worked at. Both companies are international organizations employing more than 50,000 collaborators worldwide. Teams of three engineers worked on designing a next-generation personal assistant and entertainment system for the year 2025. We analyzed each team's design interactions and behaviors using quantitative tools (Multiple Factor Analysis and Correspondence Analysis). Results from this exploratory analysis highlight different behaviors between cohorts as well as a common overall approach to team design thinking.

Egypt's ability to fulfill present and forecast water demands must be improved urgently. The Nile River feeds Egypt's industrial and agricultural sectors with 55.5 cubic kilometers of fresh water every year and drinking water for the inhabitants. It provides 95 percent of the country's accessible water, 85 percent of it used for agricultural purposes. Most Egyptian water program graduates lack the necessary skills to meet Egypt's present and future water needs despite this urgent necessity. To adequately serve the stakeholders of the water industry in Egypt, water programs must evolve. Universities should look not only at what is being taught but also at how it is being taught. To address this, and as part of the United States Agency for International Development funded “Center of Excellence in Water,” the most demanded skills required by industry were solicited so that curriculum revisions and delivery methods can be implemented to prepare students with these necessary skills. This paper presents the results of a survey to solicit non-academic professionals’ expectations for water graduates in Egypt. Data were collected from 48 water professionals and resource management specialists. To prepare a water graduate valued by industry, the water curriculum should be modified to deliver the skills necessary to meet the demands of the Egyptian water sector. The survey results may have applications for water science and engineering worldwide.

Systems thinking is a way of seeing and talking about the system so that we can understand and work with the system. It is both a cognitive ability and skill that is desired amongst engineers because of the complex problems that they are expected to solve in the workplace. Developing systems thinking capabilities of the engineering workforce is an industry endeavor as well as a desirable learning outcome for engineering education. This opens opportunities for research to better understand systems thinking of experts (professional engineers) in industry and novices (engineering students) in postsecondary education. The purpose of this study was to understand and compare the differences between expert and novice systems thinking in engineering design. Knowledge of experts and novices in their systems thinking can help inform engineering education on ways to bridge this gap in post-secondary settings. Using tools developed from Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) Ontology, existing protocol data for 61 teams of 2 (18 professionals, 19 seniors, and 24 first-year students) underwent systems hierarchical coding and statistical analysis. Results show that systems thinking of professionals and senior engineering students are similar while first-year students were significantly different from their counterparts. This paper discusses several implications for systems thinking in engineering education and future research.

The paper discusses the curriculum delivery modes to promote teaching and learning of engineering in universities. The current modes of instruction are the traditional chalk & talk and PowerPoint presentations. The latter completely depends on the rapid growth and adoption of modern ICT in enhanced teaching classrooms and environments. The study is based on the literature and extended teaching experiences of the authors in different universities in Africa, Europe and North America. Anecdote information obtained from fellow academics and consultation with students were also used in the paper. The discourse covered the advantages and disadvantages of each method. Because of the complex nature of engineering education, either of the delivery modes may not be adequate to cover all courses or topics required in a program for professional accreditation. As a result, it is recommended that instructors should use a hybrid technique consisting of chalk & talk and PowerPoint, having determined which area of the course will benefit significantly from either technique

Abstract Designers faced with complex design problems use decomposition strategies to tackle manageable sub-problems. Recomposition strategies aims at synthesizing sub-solutions into a unique design proposal. Design theory describes the design process as a combination of decomposition and recomposition strategies. In this paper, we explore dynamic patterns of decomposition and recomposition strategies of design teams. Data were collected from 9 teams of professional engineers. Using protocol analysis, we examined the dominance of decomposition and recomposition strategies over time and the correlations between each strategy and design processes such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation. We expected decomposition strategies to peak early in the design process and decay overtime. Instead, teams maintain decomposition and recomposition strategies consistently during the design process. We observed fast iteration of both strategies over a one hour-long design session. The research presented provides an empirical foundation to model the behaviour of professional engineering teams, and first insights to refine theoretical understanding of the use decomposition and recomposition strategies in design practice.

High School Students Modeling Behaviors During Engineering DesignModeling is an essential practice of engineering design (Brophy, Klein, Portsmore, &Rogers, 2008; Dym, Agogino, Eris, Frey, & Leifer, 2005; Katehi, Pearson, & Feder,2009; Moore & Diefes-Dux, 2004; Moussavi, 1998; Steif & Pantazidou, 2004). Studentsin college engineering programs and expert engineers spend time modeling during designchallenges (Atman et al., 2007). Additionally, high school technology education studentsspend time modeling during design challenges (Becker & Mentzer, 2012). While researchhas indicated that students are spending time modeling, the types of modeling thestudents are performing remains unclear. A significant finding in the National Academiespublication, Engineering in K-12 (2009) stated, “Existing curricula do not fully exploitthe natural connections between engineering and the other three STEM subjects” (p.156). One of these connections, mathematical analysis and modeling, was nearly entirelyabsent from the curricula the committee reviewed (Katehi et al., 2009).Studies have shown that engineering modeling is lacking from common curricula, yetstudents are actively engaging in modeling practices. The purpose of this research is toshed light on the types of modeling students are engaging in. Furthermore, the work aimsto provide evidence about student modeling behaviors and lead to more informeddecisions about how engineering design can be used as a pedagogical strategy in scienceand mathematic instruction.Data collected from an ongoing Discovery Research in K-12 project, Engineering Designas a Innovation in STEM Learning, has uncovered questions about modeling from thepreviously collected data. The sample consists of twenty (20) high school studentsengaging in engineering design challenges. The literature suggests students learndifferently dependent upon gender and ethnicity, among other factors (Hallinan, 1988).Therefore, this research employed a stratified sampling method to randomly selectequally numbers of both the gender of the participants, male and female; and ethnicity,Caucasian and under-represented from a pool of fifty-nine (59) students. The aim is todeduce and discuss the multiple of factors that may lead to a difference among studentmodeling habits.As with any descriptive study, the primary commitment of this study is to depict andclarify what is. In the case of modeling, the depiction is expansive. The scholarship ofmodeling practices in engineering is not novel. Several examples in the literature embodystudies that link modeling to study motivation (Adams, Evangelou, & English, 2011;Diefes-dux, Moore, Zawojewski, Imbrie, & Follman, 2004), meaningful learning(Jonassen & Strobel, 2006), and mathematical achievement (Abrams, 2001; English,2010; Lehrer & Schauble, 2000). None, however, have engaged in meaningful research toprovide clarity on what types of modeling high school engineering students areparticipating in. With that primary emphasis in mind, this research employs descriptivestatistics and qualitative insight to describe the phenomena of modeling in high schoolstudents. The utilization of the qualitative observation and verbal protocol analysissoftware, Nvivo, and methods emulated from Attman (2007) and Becker & Mentzer(2012) allows for the analysis of student modeling in an authentic assessmentenvironment. Furthermore, student examples are provided as exemplars and used as acatalyst for additional discussion.

Engineering communication is a highly desirable competence in industry. However, to become efficient communicators, engineers must consider cross-generational styles in the process. In this exploratory case study, engineering leaders from four industrial segments (High-Tech, Automotive, Aerospace, and Manufacturing) who have had a history of communicating throughout different contexts and projects were studied. Interviews and memos were primary data sources used in this study. Key findings included the need for younger generations of engineers to communicate thoughtfully and with humility. Also, older engineers expressed the need to adjust their communication styles with younger engineers by adapting their communication to include varying modalities (e.g., in person, in writing, with technology). The findings from this exploratory study can help engineering educators consider how to teach communication skills to students while increasing their awareness for cross-generational interactions upon graduation.

Current educational approaches in engineering education should provide students with attributes required in professional practice. Active learning, in the form of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Project-Based Learning (PjBL), as an educational approach, shows promise in engineering. The paper describes the attitudes of students towards the application of problem based learning element in the Mechanics of Machines course in a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering programme. The Mechanics of Machines is a core course in Year 3 of Bachelor of Engineering programme in Mechanical Engineering. The PBL element of the course was an individual project on kinematics of planar linkages; a topic always challenging to students. The project was to help the students in visualizing the motion of mechanisms, to assist them with understanding the entire solution process, and to draw conclusions for relatively simple mechanism. Two surveys were administered to students to assess their attitude towards the PBL element of the course; one before the commencement of the project, and the second just after they submission of the reports, but before marking. Out of 61 students registered for the course 54 responded to the first survey, and 50 to both. The aim was to observe the changes in students' response to the PBL element. The comparison between the results of the surveys shows improvement in students' attitude towards pedagogy. The students declare that the experience with PBL improved their ability in problem solving, critical reasoning, searching effectively for information and use technology as a learning tool. However, they were critical about their ability to negotiate a work load and to prepare and follow a schedule. Those did not improve while negotiating the project.

The use of Information Technology (IT) has been growing over the years in various human endeavours. It has also been adopted in education sector for teaching and learning. Various studies have been conducted to assess the effectiveness and acceptance of e-learning strategy by students. In particular, the current research is an attempt to obtain students' and instructor's perspective on the use of Blackboard software. The technology is a course management system used in a blended learning mode to deliver a third year mechanical engineering course at the University of Botswana (UB). In terms of students' views, the study covered a period of nine years and the questionnaire survey was administered to each succeeding cohort of students. Whereas in terms of the instructor's perspective the motivation and the challenges faced during the years of use of the platform were described. Results indicate that students were generally comfortable with the use of Blackboard as they highly embraced it. Students indicate that their performance improved and communication with instructor was enhanced significantly. The respondents also recommended that Blackboard should be used in other courses in their programme of study. The instructor considered the time factor the most vital challenge related to the use of the platform. However, despite the challenges the application of the learning platform and the development of its material was a positive experience for the instructor and well received by the students.

The paper describes the development of an online Engineering Education Graduate Certificate program. The program targets current and future engineering educators, both in academia (community colleges and universities) and industry. The goal is to improve the quality of engineering teaching and training by empowering students to become better and more knowledgeable engineering instructors through their understanding of educational theories and applications. The program intends to be fully online, with a combination of asynchronous and synchronous instruction.

Engineering curricula should provide a graduate not only with specialized knowledge in a particular engineering subject but should also infuse general skills and abilities in preparation for life of work. The General Education part of a curriculum can be the source of such transferable intellectual skills as critical thinking, written and oral communication, problem solving and teamwork. The paper presents an assessment of an attempt to introduce General Education into curricula at the University of Botswana, with special emphasis on engineering students. It shows general education courses enrolment realities over a period of 12 academic years. It contrasts the results with the previous study covering a shorter period of time. The paper concludes that the attempt of the broadening the perspective of students by the introduction of the general education courses was not successful. The engineering students were not getting the broad education that general education courses were designed for. The same applied to students with limited elements of science and technology in their university curriculum as general education courses from Science and Technology area attracted almost no students from other faculties. The paper proposes a different model for incorporation of general education into the curriculum.

This paper describes a U.S. National Science Foundation-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site program that aims to provide undergraduate students with experiences in engineering education research (i.e., education research in the context of engineering). This paper provides an overview of the program and briefly describes the common intellectual focus of this REU Site program. Over the past two years, a total of 16 undergraduate students, seven graduate mentors, and five faculty mentors have actively participated in the program. Four important components of the program are described in this paper, including student recruitment and selection, REU seminars, weekly reflections, and REU research projects. The results of the project evaluation show that the program has made a positive impact on increasing education research skills and communication skills of the participating REU students. Eighty percent of the participating REU students reported that the research projects they worked increased their motivation and confidence for continuing to engage in engineering education research.

The authors investigated the differences in using problem decomposition and problem recomposition between dyads of engineering experts, engineering seniors, and engineering freshmen. Participants worked in dyads to complete an engineering design challenge within 1 hour. The entire design process was video and audio recorded. After the design session, members participated in a group interview. Video and audio data were transcribed, segmented, and coded to make comparisons. Results show differences between engineering experts, seniors, and freshman in design thinking. Students tend to use depth-first decomposition, and experts tend to use breadth-first decomposition in engineering design. The results also show that students spend less cognitive effort on the problem-definition stage than engineering experts.

Improving high school physics teaching and learning is important to the long-term success of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Increasing our national STEM literacy and workforce readiness includes intensifying and diversifying student participation in STEM learning experiences. Efforts are currently in place to develop an understanding of science among high school students through formal and informal educational experiences in engineering design activities emphasizing the science and engineering practices included in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) framework (NGSS Lead States, 2013).The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) framework has indicated the importance of the engineering design process in K-12 education. The framework was developed in an effort to produce K-12 science standards rich in content and practice and coherent across disciplines (NGSS Lead States, 2013). These standards have been divided into different areas and by disciplinary core ideas. One of the core ideas for grades 9-12 indicates that students should be able to and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that an electric can produce a magnetic field and that changing a magnetic field can produce an electric current (NGSS Lead States, 2013, p. 253). Furthermore, the NGSS (2013) indicates that engineering must be a fundamental part of the new framework since students are required to develop the capability to carry and transfer knowledge across science disciplines through modeling, planning, conducting investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, and constructing explanations to demonstrate understanding of the science core ideas. Students must be able to scientific ideas to solve a design problem, taking into account possible unanticipated effects.(NGSS Lead States, 2013, p. 254). The NGSS, along with the Technology and Engineering Literacy Framework for the 2014 National Assessment of Educational Progress, recommend the integration of engineering and science in K-12 education. The integration and implementation of engineering design activities to the K-12 curriculum has shown that it provides a venue for students to learn relevant STEM content (Hmelo, Holton & Kolodner, 2000; Householder & Hailey, 2012; Schunn, 2008). Moreover, experimental studies have shown that students become more motivated or engaged when they relate a STEM concept/principle to a real world problem (Adams et al., 2008). It is through engineering design that students are able to see the applicability of abstract and somewhat intangible concepts. In addition, students are able to make connections across disciplines and provide improved solutions to specific problems. Students are able to recognize that certain criteria need to be prioritized, distinguish the range of criteria and constrains, and test the validity of their solutions by comparing to the real world (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Learning difficult concepts while working toward an objective (i.e. solving the engineering design problem) allows students to see how possible solutions can be tackled with engineering methods.This article investigates physics learning and teaching research and the use of engineering design in the teaching of physics. By integrating engineering into STEM, students may apply scientific ideas to solving an engineering design problem while carrying and transferring knowledge in core science areas.The Predicament of High School PhysicsHigh school physics, which marks the final stage of high school science(Sadler & Tai, 2000, p.111), is a useful preparation for students who plan to pursue college science and engineering because it introduces fundamental concepts such as force and motion, thermodynamics, fluids, and electric circuits (Sadler & Tai, 2000; Tyson, Lee, Borman, & Hanson, 2007). It is suggested that students should master sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science related issuesbecause science and engineeringpermeate every aspect of modern life (National Research Council, 2011, p. …