DeBoer received funding for her proposal on evaluating and improving online courses for engineering undergraduates from diverse backgrounds.

“Increasing the retention and achievement of women, minorities, and high attrition groups in engineering is of paramount national strategic interest,” she says, “and online learning has emerged as a popular strategy for expanding access.”

There is limited evidence that online courses work for the diverse groups of students in engineering classes.  In fact, early findings from other disciplines suggest that virtual instruction exacerbates achievement gaps.

DeBoer’s proposal pushes research and practice to better serve all of the varieties of engineering students in three major ways:

1. It analyzes underrepresented or high attrition student groups independently, rather than studying average effects for a whole class.
2. It tracks individual student behaviors to better explain differences in student success and better recommend support systems that are tailored to unique students.
3. It studies undergraduate online and blended learning in five widely varying contexts, including two international sites, to greatly expand the spectrum of tools that can inform undergraduate engineering in the United States.

Universities involved in the project are Purdue University, MIT, Taylor’s University (Malaysia), Morgan State University (historically black college/university), and University of Geneva’s partnership with adult learners in Kenyan refugee camps. A key part of the project is ENGR 131: Ideas to Innovation I, a First-Year Engineering course DeBoer teaches at Purdue. Its online modules will be used as a “test bed” to immediately apply some of the best practices derived from the research.

This five-year project builds on initial results to improve and reevaluate the structure of online materials. Enhancing digital educational tools to better support unique groups of students, especially those that have high rates of attrition, can fulfill the nation’s growing need for a highly qualified and diverse engineering workforce.

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is an NSF-wide activity that offers the Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of these two activities within the context of the mission of their organizations.