The Impact of Inclusive Excellence Programs on the Development of Engineering Identity among First-Year Underrepresented Students

Abstract

is the engineering assessment specialist at the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program and Laboratory. He holds a BA in psychology from Louisiana State University, and an MS degree in industrial/organizational psychology and PhD degree in counseling psychology, both from the University of Tennessee. Prior to joining the University of Colorado at Boulder, he gained extensive experience in assessment and teamwork in an engineering education context through the development and evaluation of a team facilitation training course for engineering undergraduate students. Dr. Knight's research interests are in the areas of retention, program evaluation and teamwork practices in engineering education. His current duties include the assessment and evaluation of the ITL Program's hands-on undergraduate courses and K-12 engineering outreach initiatives.

The assessment cycle: Insights from a systematic literature review on broadening participation in engineering and computer science

“…This design describes assessment plans that involved collecting data before and after an intervention, typically the same types of data, to demonstrate growth and development. For example, D. Knight et al (2013) administered pre-and post-surveys to measure identity development in program participants. One survey was administered before and after two summer bridge programs.…”

“…For example, Donnelly (2007) constructed survey items specifically related to program components, such as monthly meetings or the computer and teaching training they received to measure how agreeable the students were to the fact that these components were beneficial to their development. For the articles using established questionnaires, aspects of validity or reliability were reported in the text or pointed to previously reported literature (Di Salvo et al, 2013;Dunn & Veltman, 1989;D. Knight et al, 2013;B.…”

Adapting the Utrecht‐Management of Identity Commitments Scale to assess engineering identity formation

“…Chachra et al (2008) identified four dimensions of engineering identity: (1) centrality refers to the extent to which a student views themselves as an engineer (e.g., "Being an engineering student is an important reflection of who I am"), (2) private regard refers to the extent to which a student feels positively or negatively about engineering and engineers (e.g., "I feel good about engineers"), (3) public regard refers to a student's perception of other's feeling about engineering and engineer (e.g., "Overall, engineers are considered good by others"), and (4) group identification refers to the value a student places on being an engineer and the emotional-affective dimensions of belonging to this group (e.g., "I am glad to belong to a group of engineering students"). Although this measure has been utilized in several studies (e.g., Chachra et al, 2008;Knight et al, 2013), its psychometric properties, such as reliability and factor structure, were not appraised. Carlone and Johnson (2007) proposed an important theoretical framework centered around the multidimensional nature of science identity.…”

Inclusion & Marginalization: How Perceptions of Design Thinking Pedagogy Influence Computer, Electrical, and Software Engineering Identity

“…Changing U.S. demographics have outpaced the representation of diverse populations in the engineering and STEM workforce. Although engineering education programs have attempted to increase the structural diversity of women students and those of color to rectify this concern, representation has not significantly changed in recent years (Cross & Peretti, 2012;Diekman, Brown, Johnston, & Clark, 2010;Hug, Jurow, & Chi, 2011;Knight et al, 2013).…”