Background Studies have highlighted the importance for engineers of leadership, adaptability to change, and synthesis of multiple perspectives. Yet only a few studies and instruments have explored the operational definitions of these concepts for engineering undergraduates.Purpose The goals of this research were to identify observable outcomes that engineering undergraduate students should demonstrate related to leadership, adaptability to change, and synthesis abilities and to create an instrument to assess them.Design/Method In the first phase of the study, 12 engineers working in academia and 11 engineers working in industry were interviewed. The transcripts were analyzed using a constant comparative method to determine constructs related to leadership, change, and synthesis. In the second phase of the study, survey items were developed and administered to 753 engineering undergraduate students in the spring of 2011. An exploratory factor analysis determined the common factors across the survey items.
ResultsThe mixed methods approach resulted in the creation of 45 survey items catego-
The purpose of this article is to investigate student perceptions of college departure in three state universities in Turkey. Since the beginning of the 1990s, higher Education System in Turkey went through a massification of higher education. The rapid growth brought enrollment and dropout issues in the system. A total of 58 participants were included in the qualitative study. Of the 58 participants, 35 students were later enrolled at various other programs. Twenty-three students did not drop out. Results indicated that student retention has been an uncharted territory in Turkey. High levels of dropouts lead to inefficiencies in the higher education system.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.