How First Year Students’ Reflections on Themselves as Learners Change Over Time
Presented at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference in 2020.
This work was conducted as part of Rowan University’s Junior/Senior Engineering Clinic Program
Abigail Brown, Barbara Cerefin, Lauren Gallo, Sarah Ramsey, Kaitlin Mallouk
First-semester, first-year engineering students at a mid-sized, Mid-Atlantic public university are required to take a multidisciplinary introduction to engineering course that is offered in sections of 20-24 students. Approximately ⅓ of these students are members of the Engineering Learning Community (ELC), which provides housing in a common location as well as additional supports in the form of weekly group meetings with a student mentor and access to tutoring. Another ⅙ of students were in sections designated as Honors. In Fall 2017, weekly reflections were implemented in this course as a way of encouraging students to explain past experiences and learn from their mistakes. In Fall 2018, the weekly reflection prompts were reduced to biweekly reflections, the first and last of which required students to reflect on themselves as learners. This study used provisional and in-vivo coding to analyze paired reflections from 116 students. Ten total themes were identified and used to characterize each reflection, with interrater reliabilities (quantified by Cohen’s Kappa) of 0.564 and 0.668 for the two pairs of researchers who analyzed this data. The top three themes for each group of students (ELC, Honors, and Non-Honors & Non-ELC) were determined and the representation of this data discussed. Results showed for the beginning of the semester, “Learning” was the top theme for all three groups of students. At the end of the semester, the top theme for all groups was “Time Management Balance”. Through this study, the change of students’ perceptions of themselves as learners at the beginning and end of their first semester was analyzed and is illustrated by, among other things, the change in the top theme highlighted above.
Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash
First-Year Students’ Conceptualization of Entrepreneurial Mindset Through Reflections Linked to Curiosity, Connections, and Creating Value
Published in Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy
Darby Riley, Hayley M. Shuster, Courtney LeMasney, Carla Silvestri, Kaitlin Mallouk
This study was conducted to examine how first-year engineering students conceptualize the Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) and how that conceptualization changes over the course of their first semester of college, using the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN)’s 3Cs as a starting point. Students enrolled in an introductory, multidisciplinary design course responded to biweekly reflection prompts on their educational experiences (either in high school or as a first-year college student) and related this experience to one of the 3Cs of EM: Curiosity, Connections, or Creating Value. Results indicate that students’ conceptualization of the 3Cs often align with definitions of EM from KEEN, as well as foundational works in the entrepreneurship field, and that their interpretation of each of the 3Cs does change during their first semester in college. For instance, students were less likely to write about curiosity and more likely to write about creating value at the end of the semester compared to the beginning.