Attracting Underrepresented Groups To Engineering With Service Learning

Barrington, Linda; Duffy, John

doi:10.18260/1-2--2993

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Recent experience at Purdue indicates that voluntary S-L courses attract twice the percentage of women engineering students compared to the student engineering population 11 . Our own experience with voluntary capstone courses also indicates a similar overrepresentation of women (in one course 4 to 1 over 6 years) and older and more diverse students (Duffy, 2008; Barrington et al, 2007) 12,13 . Page 13.1074.3…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 52%

Service Learning Projects In 35 Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Duffy¹,

Barry²,

Barrington³

et al.

2008 Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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The College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) has integrated service-learning (S-L) into many of its core required undergraduate courses over the last three years. Projects that meet real community needs and that help students achieve academic objectives in the courses are difficult to create. Projects for 35 different undergraduate required courses are summarized to help faculty, staff, and students develop S-L projects for their own courses. Faculty at UML were encouraged to "start small rather than not at all." Courses and projects include, for example: first-year introduction to engineering with 340 students in which student teams have designed and built moving displays illustrating various technologies for 60,000 middle school students that every year visit a history center which is part of a national park; sophomore kinematics in which student teams visit local playgrounds to assess safety using the equations for deceleration, forces, and impact from the course in a structured way; junior heat transfer courses in which analyses of heat loss and suggestions for heating system savings for a local food pantry, a city hall building, and community mental health center as well as the university itself were developed and presented to the stakeholders; sophomore materials in which student teams presented findings to the staff of a local textile history museum to help it begin updating its displays on recent developments in materials; junior fluids, junior circuits, senior microprocessor, senior design of machine elements, and senior capstone design are having students design and build various parts of an automated canal lock opener for a local national park. Many of the projects are low-cost and can be implemented by individual faculty members without the requirement of a formal institutional program. These S-L projects are integrated into a wide variety of core courses (and not just design courses) and represent typically from 10 to 20% of the grade.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 52%

Service Learning Projects In 35 Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Duffy¹,

Barry²,

Barrington³

et al.

2008 Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Our sample was limited in size and scope, and we do not suggest that the results generalize to all populations. Since we only had one SBL female in our sample, a future research direction would be to include more females in our sample and perhaps get a better understanding of why women are drawn to SBL experiences in higher numbers than in engineering overall 2,3,15,25,26 . A second direction is formatting the design task using a digital workbook supported by Robobooks TM software, which would allow for more widespread testing by other universities and using more participants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… a better understanding of how problems are socially embedded, reducing stereotyping and prejudicial perspectives.  a higher percentage of women participants in relation to the percentage of women in engineering overall 2,10,12,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] .…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Service learning has been defined as an activity that integrates academic subject matter with service to a community that helps foster civic responsibility and strengthens communities [2][3][4][5][6] . Although some researchers 5 consider academic credit a necessary component of service learning, Jacoby 7 defined service learning simply as experiential-based activities designed to promote learning through engagement in real life opportunities that address the needs of a community.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Effects of Service-Based Learning on Metacognitive Strategies During an Engineering Design Task

Carberry

Swan

Jarvin³

2011

IJSLE

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Service-based learning has become an emerging pedagogical tool for engineering education. Although there is a large body of literature reporting the benefits of service activities, most studies have relied on self-report measures and generalized learning contributions. Our evaluation went beyond self-perceptions by investigating the impact that service-based learning programs had on specific cognitive elements of engineering design. The primary goal of this project was to investigate what effects, if any, service activities had on the engineering design process. Verbal protocols were collected from ten engineering students during an open-ended, model-building design task. The five service students and five non-service students also completed post-task interviews and reflection papers. The students in our sample who had participated in service-based learning activities voiced more metacognitive phrases, demonstrated more accurate task analysis and clearer strategic planning skills, were more skilled at discriminating useful from superfluous information, and had a better understanding of clients’ needs and constraints. From our sample, it appears that participation in service-based learning activities enhances the design process of engineering students.

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“…The goal was to have students exposed to S-L in on average one course in each of eight semesters during their engineering program with an overarching aim to graduate better engineers and more engaged citizens. Previous papers have summarized earlier results [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do Students Think About Service-learning in Required Engineering Courses?

Duffy¹,

Barrington²,

Reynaud³

et al.

2012 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Service-learning (S-L) has been integrated into an average of 30 engineering courses every year since 2004 in five undergraduate departments. Forty-three faculty members have tried S-L, over half the engineering faculty. In 2010-2011, 1267 students (out of an enrollment of 1600) engaged in S-L projects in 33 courses contributing an estimated 49,500 hours to the community. This approach to trying to develop better engineers and more engaged citizens was motivated by the growing body of research showing widespread benefits of S-L, the meeting of academic objectives through addressing real community needs in credit-bearing courses. But what do the students who are part of this program think about S-L? In this study surveys of student views were collected and analyzed. In general, the students are significantly positive in response to S-L. For example, two-thirds agree in principle with combining service and academic coursework. On average they agree that learning and interest in subject matter as well as professional skills are all improved with S-L. Two-thirds agree that S-L has helped keep them in engineering. Forty percent of those who knew about the S-L program said it was one of the factors for their coming to the engineering school. Significant large differences were found comparing female and male responses, with females more positive toward S-L. Over 75% of students indicate that service should be an expected part of the engineering profession. The implication is that service should be an expected and integrated part of the engineering curriculum.

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Attracting Underrepresented Groups To Engineering With Service Learning

Cited by 16 publications

References 7 publications

Service Learning Projects In 35 Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Service Learning Projects In 35 Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses

The Effects of Service-Based Learning on Metacognitive Strategies During an Engineering Design Task

What Do Students Think About Service-learning in Required Engineering Courses?

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