Gender differences in first-year students’ expectations towards a new engineering multidisciplinary curriculum

Abstract

Research on engineering first-year students' expectations and perceptions is important to understand what influences interest, achievement and persistence. This is particularly relevant when assessing the impact of new engineering education curricula. This paper reports a quantitative analysis of a pre-degree survey targeting students' expectations at the very beginning of the new Integrated Engineering Programme, which spans across the whole UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences. Of a cohort of approximately 700 enrolled students, 309 completed the survey. Results suggest that, on graduation, both male and female students expect to have similar opportunities, such as to be able to contribute positively to the world. They also share identical learning expectations and educational experiences regarding their time studying engineering. However, results also suggest that female students were more aware of the societal impact of engineering, and less confident in their engineering specific skills.

Establishing Social Learning in an Engineering MOOC: Benefits for Diversity and Inclusion in Engineering Education

“…We included learning activities which highlighted engineering innovation and creativity [7] such as those focussed on robots in space and sound and music in virtual reality. We also chose to emphasise not just the technical underpinning of engineering, but also important social and human-centred aspects, for example in the learning steps concerning healthcare and water hygiene [6,8,10,25].…”

“…Researchers and engineering educators have posited a variety of reasons for this apparent lack of diversity in engineering which include [6][7][8][9][10]:…”

“…First, the need for engineering teaching and learning activities to emphasise that engineering encompasses technical, social, and creative aspects [8,10,23]. Indeed, the recently introduced UK Design and Technology A-level has shifted the focus away from engineering science (maths and physics) toward design engineering/applied engineering, and currently attracts 30% female students [24].…”

The Soft Skills Inventory: Developmental procedures and psychometric analysis

“…In fact, several studies found that men self-reported an overall higher level of softs skills, when compared to women (Alpay & Walsh, 2008; Whittle & Eaton, 2001). However, women seem to consider these skills as more important (Direito et al., 2018; Nabi & Bagley, 1998), and tend to work harder to acquire them (De Juan-Vigaray et al., 2012), in comparison to men. Other studies have found that men and women endorse different dimensions of self-efficacy leadership (Javidan et al., 2016), and that women score higher on specific personal skills such as team working, time management, planning/ organizing, and prioritizing skills (Nabi & Bagley, 1998).…”

Professional Identity Development for Engineering Students in a PBL Context

“…These constraints from the learning environment could become obstacles for women engineering students to develop a sense of belonging in engineering groups (Godwin & Potvin, 2017;Hatmaker, 2013). Moreover, researchers pointed out that he chill clima e also had a negative influence on internal sources for engineering identity, including higher pressure to pursue engineering, lower competence beliefs, fewer intrinsic motivations, and less selfrecognition as future engineers (Baker et al, 2007;Direito et al, 2018;Pierrakos et al, 2009).…”