The National Science Foundation contracted with Abt Associates to conduct an evaluation of its Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) program, which supports intellectually substantive collaborations between U.S. and foreign researchers in which the international partnership is essential to the research effort. The evaluation…

Background: Since students' success in their first-semester college mathematics course is a key factor in their success in engineering, many summer bridge programs for underrepresented students focus on their preparation in mathematics. However, research on the design and efficacy of such programs is limited. We examine the design and…

Background: Students' beliefs about their intellectual ability influence their use of learning strategies, learning effort, and response to failure or setbacks. Students with incremental views of intelligence believe that learning is possible with sufficient effort, whereas those with entity views believe that intelligence is a fixed quality and…

Novice learners are typically unfamiliar with abstract engineering symbols. They are also often unaccustomed to instructional materials consisting of a combination of text, diagrams, and equations. This raises the question of whether instruction on elementary electrical circuit analysis for novice learners should employ contextualized…

This article reports the development and validation study of tests to assess achievements at three levels of knowledge structure, following the model proposed by Sugrue to measure problem-solving skills. The literature has reported this proposal as a model consistent with the theoretical constructs underlying problem-based learning (PBL)…

Developing solutions to engineering design problems requires access to information. Research has shown that appropriately accessing and using information in the design process improves solution quality. This quasi-experimental study provides two groups of high school students with a design problem in a three hour design experience. One group has…

Interpersonal problem solving skills allow engineers to prevent interpersonal difficulties more effectively and to manage conflict, both of which are critical to successful participation on teams. This research provides evidence that the "Career"WISE online learning environment can improve those skills among women in engineering graduate…

Numerous nanoparticle (NP) fabrication methodologies employ "bottom-up" syntheses, which may result in heterogeneous mixtures of NPs or may require toxic capping agents to reduce NP polydispersity. Tangential flow filtration (TFF) is an alternative "green" technique for the purification, concentration, and size-selection of…

The rising need for engineers has led to increased interest in community outreach in engineering departments nationwide. We present a sustainable outreach model involving trained undergraduate mentors to build ties with K-12 teachers and students. An associated online module database of chemical engineering demonstrations, available to educators…

In this article, the authors provide an overview of engineering and the engineering design process, and describe the steps they took to develop a fifth grade-level, standards-based engineering design task titled "Getting the Dirt on Decomposition." Their main goal was to focus more on modeling the discrete steps they took to create and…

A huge increase in engineering graduates from the BRIC countries in recent decades potentially threatens the competitiveness of developed countries in producing high value-added products and services, while also holding great promise for substantially increasing the level of global basic and applied innovation. The key question is whether the…

Research experience has been proven to be effective in enhancing the overall educational experience for undergraduate students. In this article, two engineering research projects with undergraduate students involvement are discussed. The projects provided the undergraduate student researchers with motivation for independent research work and…

This study compares an interactive learning manager for graphic engineering to develop spatial vision (ILMAGE_SV) to traditional methods. ILMAGE_SV is an asynchronous web-based learning tool that allows the manipulation of objects with a 3D viewer, self-evaluation, and continuous assessment. In addition, student learning may be monitored, which…

This report examines the representation of Hispanics among bachelor's degree recipients in the physical sciences and engineering in the US. Hispanics have been increasing their representation across the physical sciences and engineering at an outstanding rate. More broadly, from 2002-2012 there has been a significant increase in…

This paper concerns a competencies-based analysis of the outcomes of a role-play activity aimed to foster conceptual understanding of mathematics for first year engineering students. The teacher role has been considered in order to investigate the competencies addressed by the questions created by the students and their matching with the…