Engineering Education Directory

Research: Investigation of engineering practice: (1) cross-disciplinary ways of thinking, acting, and being; (2) design knowing and learning; and (3) the everyday nature of engineering thinking (at home, in school, at work). Creating "systems" bridges between education research and the practice of engineering education: (1) cross-disciplinary communities; (2) research-based instructional resources; and (3) translating research methods into pedagogical methods

Research: Development of effective learning environments that develop adaptive expertise. This research focuses on the mechanisms and knowledge to comprehend, analyze, troubleshoot and design complex systems, exploring how these mechanisms mature and how we can foster developing these abilities through learning activities that use simulations, analogical reasoning, and model construction/evaluation.

Research: Assessment of learning engineering; digital system design and fault tolerant systems; recruitment and retention initiatives in STEM disciplines.

Research: Characterization of mathematical thinking practices, responses to ambiguity and uncertainty, and overall design behavior of undergraduate engineering students, practicing engineers, and young children. Investigation of parents' role in pre-kindergarten through 5th grade engineering education.

Research: Development and validation of assessment tools within K-12, undergraduate, and graduate engineering education; assessment of engineering doctoral education; undergraduate and graduate students' acquisition of engineering norms, skills, and attributes within academia and industry; assessment of pedagogy within engineering classrooms and laboratories

Research: Development, classroom implementation, and authentic assessment of student work on engineering-based, client-driven, open-ended mathematical modeling activities, with particular emphasis on first-year engineering and elementary students. Elementary teacher professional development with engineering thinking, engineering design, and mathematical modeling.

Research: Multidisciplinary entrepreneurship education; Environments and conditions that foster entrepreneurial activity among students; Educational program evaluation and assessment; Women and leadership; Market and technology assessment

Research: History and social studies of engineering, engineering education, and computing; Engineering epistemologies; Global engineering education; Open source software and hardware; History of embedded devices and systems; Software and hardware development methodologies.

Research: Focuses broadly on cyberinfrastructure for engineering education research, cyberlearning, virtual and immersive environments, and large-scale data mining tools for engineering education research

Research: Student persistence and outcomes; advising and mentoring; women in science and engineering; global engineering; social stratification; higher education; education policy

Research: Student pathways, success, and institutional policy (using longitudinal data from 1,000,000+ students). Team-member effectiveness, learning, and social relations investigated using peer evaluations of over 60,000 students. Effect of team formation strategies on individuals and teams.

Research: Use of qualitative methods to investigate engineering epistemology, engineering identity, and boundary work to understand better how to make engineering an inclusive discipline. Crossing the boundaries of engineering education, science and technology studies, and women's studies, this research focuses on how, what, and why we (engineers and engineering educators) understand engineering to be.

Research: How self-efficacy beliefs affect individual student achievement during teamwork. Argumentation in engineering design. P-12 engineering education.

Research: The nature of engineering as a profession; how it perceived and practiced, how it is learned especially outside the classroom, and how an engineering identity is shaped. The design of creative learning places and of ways to foster distributed communities of research practice in engineering education.

Research: Building rigorous research capabilities in engineering education. The role of cooperation in learning and design. Problem formulation, modeling, and knowledge engineering. Project and knowledge management and leadership.

Research: Difficult concepts in engineering science. Specific research questions are: What concepts are difficult to learn? How does one measure conceptual understanding? Why are some concepts difficult to learn? How can one construct learning environments that help people learn these difficult concepts?