Examining Engineering Technology Students: How They Perceive and Order Their Thoughts

Abstract

Dr. Lucietto has focused her research in engineering technology education and the understanding of engineering technology students. She teaches in an active learning style which engages and develops practical skills in the students. Currently she is exploring the performance and attributes of engineering technology students and using that knowledge to engage them in their studies. Dr. Jennifer Drapinski Moss, Purdue UniversityDr. Jennifer Moss is an educational psychologist, studying motivation among pre-service teachers and college faculty members. Along with teaching pre-service teachers, she is the project manager for the STEAM project, a First in the World grant project, funded by the US Department of Education. She works for the Center for Instructional of Excellence at Purdue University. Dr. Mark French, Purdue UniversityMark French started his career as a civilian aerospace engineer for the US Air Force after getting a BS in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at VA Tech. While working for the Air Force, he did an MS and a PhD at the University of Dayton. His dissertation was on the design of aeroelastically scaled wind tunnel models. After 10 years with the Air Force, he moved to the auto industry, spending 3 years with Lear and 6 years with Bosch. He came to Purdue in 2004 where he is now a professor in the School of Engineering Technology. He works on musical instrument design and structural mechanics. Over the years, he's published the usual collection of articles and conference papers along with two books.

Assessing Intuition Used Among Undergraduate Engineering Technology and Engineering Students

“…Studies on the engineering technology student population show that the Gregorc categories of concrete random and concrete sequential are commonly found in engineering technology students. This finding suggests that classrooms should be structured more straightforwardly and logically since they prefer solving problems in a trial-and-error method while using intuition [7]. When comparing engineering technology students to engineering students, there was a statistically different result when considering the concrete random category.…”

“…Others are not accepted into their first-choice program and often selecting engineering technology as a major. Others may transfer to engineering technology from other fields [7].…”

“…The Gregorc Style Delineator's use provides a greater understanding of how students perceive and organize their thoughts [7]. This instrument categorizes the reasoning into concrete random, abstract random, concrete sequential, and abstract sequential classifications.…”

Engineering Technology Undergraduate Students: A Survey of Demographics and Mentoring

“…The survey discussed in this paper addresses recommendations promoting research into this population of students. Existing work reports that ET students are concrete and logical in their thinking and rely on intuition when making decisions [6]. When compared with their peers in engineering, ET students demonstrate a preference for working individually, taking risks, and utilizing trial and error to solve problems while engineering students work better in teams and prefer formal documentation and calculation to solve problems [7].…”

Advancing High School STEM Education: Implications for Engineering Technology

“…While the high school being studied is intended to provide preparation for a STEM competencybased college experience, the authors focused on educators involved with engineering technology (ET), as it is an often-overlooked field of study. Often ET is either combined with engineering or ignored, with little literature available regarding its pedagogy and the skills needed to succeed in ET and other similar technology programs [1]. Further, faculty preparing curriculum and pedagogies for students considering these areas of study are challenged by their students' ability to perceive materials, differences in learning abilities, and differences resulting from background experiences [1].…”