Background: In the United States, there is increased demand to expand the engineering workforce. Many military veterans have received technical training that can be leveraged in engineering. Their pursuit of engineering degrees has great potential to expand and diversify the engineering workforce. Purpose: This study examines the pathways of US…

Background: As more universities seek to offer international experiences for engineering students, it is important to design such programs to effectively support student learning abroad. Previous research on study abroad has focused on a limited number of outcomes and therefore failed to consider the diversity of experiences students may have in…

Design processes can be decomposed into several steps, including information acquisition and application. Retrieving prior knowledge and experience is an important method of acquiring design information, thus designers' precedents retrieval styles reflect their design thinking. The obvious difference between industrial (ID) and mechanical design…

Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of gamification on the five dimensions of meaningful learning (i.e. cooperative, active, authentic, constructive and intentional learning) and undergraduate student performance taking online lessons. Design/methodology/approach: Therefore, the authors conducted an experiment among undergraduate…

We conducted a descriptive study among first-year engineering students at the Anton de Kom University of Suriname. We analyzed students' errors regarding necessary prior knowledge in a calculus A exam. We found that the stage of the solution in which prior knowledge is required impacts the importance of prior knowledge. We also found that many…

Contribution: Model-based learning improves systems thinking (ST) based on students' prior knowledge and gender. Relations were found between textual, visual, and mixed question types and student achievements. Background: ST is essential to judicious decision-making and problem-solving. Undergraduate students can be taught to apply better ST, and…

Background: Engineering-oriented bridge programs and camps are popular strategies for broadening participation. The students who often serve as counselors and mentors in these programs are integral to their success. Purpose: Predicated on the belief that mentoring contributes to positive outcomes for the mentors themselves, we sought to understand…

In Engineering Design education, huge numbers of students are a challenge in university teaching, especially since the students have an initially heterogeneous level of technical knowledge, which influences their acquisition of competences. In frontal classroom lectures, individual deficits can hardly be addressed and in self-study phases,…

This article is an extension of a work in progress paper originally presented at the conference FiE 2020, Frontiers in Education by (Schirichian et al., 2020), as a result of Schirichian's master's in science dissertation. It studies the relations between academic performance, protection factors, life at university, and personal characteristics to…

Background: Students who are the first in their families to attend college are an integral part of undergraduate engineering programs. Growing bodies of research argue that educators could better support these students if they understood the unique backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge they bring with them to higher education.…

Research on self-regulated learning (SRL) in engineering design is growing. While SRL is an effective way of learning, however, not all learners can regulate themselves successfully. There is a lack of research regarding how student characteristics, such as science knowledge and design knowledge, interact with SRL. Adapting the SRL theory in the…

Epistemic beliefs, epistemic cognitions, and self-regulation processes have a significant role in students' learning. Through this study, I investigated the role of mechanical engineering students' epistemic beliefs and epistemic cognitions involved in self-regulation processes while working on tasks with different difficulty levels. In this…

Approaches to learning have been identified as crucial factors that influence students' mathematics performance. However, there have been mixed findings on which of the different approaches improve performance in undergraduate mathematics. Thus, this study aimed to unravel the specific effects of prior mathematics knowledge and approaches to…

With the immense interest in ChatGPT worldwide, education has seen a mix of both excitement and skepticism. To properly evaluate its impact on education, it is crucial to understand how far it can help students without prior knowledge answer assessment questions. This study aims to address this question as well as the impact of the question type.…

Based on the largest multi-institutional observational study of undergraduate courses in the United States, this article describes exemplar teaching practices in engineering courses as an interdisciplinary science field. The College Educational Quality (CEQ) research project studied 587 courses in nine different U.S. colleges and universities.…