Measuring the Authenticity of Engineering Learning in Community of Practice: An Instrument Development and Validation

Abstract

Authentic engineering learning means that students learn in authentic environments with rich, real-world, immersive, and engaging tasks, which was regarded as an effective way to align engineering concepts and principles with ill-structured and complex workplace engineering problems. The purpose of this research paper is to describe the development and validation process of instruments to measure the authenticity of engineering learning. In the qualitative research stage, a thorough literature review about authentic engineering learning and qualitative interviews in some different engineering communities of practice were performed to collect and form a total of 26 original items, followed by discussions with professional engineers and engineering students were organized to clarify the statement of every item. In the quantitative research stage, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) based on the data we gathered from engineering universities or other institutions in China were conducted to explore the factor structure of authenticity in engineering learning. The results of factor analysis indicated that the instrument we developed had acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) and could extract three sub-constructs: context authenticity, task authenticity, and impact authenticity. This study provided a new measure for engineering education researchers to deeply explore the construct of effective engineering learning environments.