A New Method of Assessing the Effects of a Service-Learning Class on Engineering Undergraduate Students

Abstract

-Increases in engineering service learning courses and enrolled undergraduates necessitate further research and recommendations concerning the assessment of student learning and growth. Assessment of such growth may be difficult in service learning courses because of the types of skills it fosters: interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and other professional skills not easily tested for in a classroom. Some previous attempts at assessment were predominantly standards-based and designed to measure what researchers thought students should gain from the course, rather than being based in what students thought. In this paper, we first ask students what skills they learned in service learning, determine their thoughts about the usefulness of different kinds of assessment, and then use their words to construct a naturalistic assessment that can serve as a pre-and post-test to measure growth in engineering service learning courses. The data come from 96 students and three semesters of a service learning section of a large Introduction to Engineering course at a large state university. Overall, we conclude that students perceive that they have grown at statistically significant levels in communication skills, teamwork, leadership, time management, and other engineering skills noted below. We argue that student perceptions of growth matter for their persistence in engineering and resilience after professional or academic setbacks.

Inspiring next generation of engineers through service-learning robotics outreach and mentorship programme

“…One reason this study has not been carried out is that the soft skills fostered by a service-learning programme such as this are difficult to assess in the classroom, though Maloney et al 34 have developed a new method which can be helpful in carrying out such assessment.…”

Hosting a Pipeline of K-12 Robotics Competitions at a College of Engineering – A Review of Benefits and Challenges

“…The authors were successful in publishing their results in journals such as IEEE Transaction on Education 24 , American Journal of Engineering Education 25 , and the IEEE/ASEE Frontier in Education Conference 19 26 27 28 . Engineering faculty and teachers regularly present at K-12 STEM conferences for K-12 teachers and also hold robotics workshops at these events 29 . One of them was awarded the TTU Integrated Scholar Award 30 for the integration of teaching, research, and service around robotics as well as the Hewlett-Packard/Harriett B. Rigas Award from the IEEE Education Society.…”

Self-Efficacy Development among Students Enrolled in an Engineering Service-Learning Section

“…The goal of this research is to examine the effects of service-learning on undergraduates' selfefficacy in skill areas important for careers in engineering. The Engineering Skills Assessment (ESA) was developed in Maloney, Dent, and Karp 7 to understand student self-efficacy in engineering. Development of this metric used qualitative analysis to determine the skills that students believe are important for careers in engineering and identified 11 such skill areas.…”