{"id":104,"date":"2021-02-18T18:11:14","date_gmt":"2021-02-18T18:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.purdue.edu\/STORIES\/?page_id=104"},"modified":"2021-06-22T14:15:58","modified_gmt":"2021-06-22T14:15:58","slug":"about-project","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/engineering.purdue.edu\/STORIES\/about-project\/","title":{"rendered":"About the Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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About the Project<\/h1>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The STORIES project is part of a larger funded study<\/a> developed by the STRIDE<\/a> research group. The purpose of this study is threefold: understand the attitudes, beliefs, and mindsets that students bring with them into engineering (aka latent diversity<\/a>), explore how these characteristics shape their experiences and pathways, and study whether the norms and values of engineering culture support latent diversity, inclusion, and the development of innovative engineering solutions.<\/p>

This website is a compilation and exploration of the qualitative data from this study. It draws on six semesters’ worth of interviews with 25 students from colleges and universities across the United States. These interviews allowed the research team to take a deep dive into students\u2019 experiences and inform the development of some best practices for inclusive classrooms in engineering. Check out the information below to learn more about the CAREER study and the STORIES project!<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\r\n Ideation<\/span>\r\n \r\n

All good things start with an idea! Dr. Allison Godwin spent a few years thinking about the concepts<\/a> that guide this study. You can check out this article about latent diversity<\/a> that shows this ideation. She then turned these ideas in a proposal for a CAREER award, which is a type of grant that allows researchers to dive deeply into a topic. Dr. Godwin was awarded a CAREER grant in 2016.<\/p><\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/article>

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\r\n Planning and Formation<\/span>\r\n \r\n

The study involves the collection of quantitative<\/em> and qualitative<\/em> data. The quantitative<\/em> (numbers) data came from a survey that was filled out by 3,855 first-year engineering students from 32 institutions across the United States. The STRIDE team spent a lot of time designing and testing the quantitative survey, to ensure we would get useful information from the measures. The goal of the survey was to measure a range of ideas regarding students' attitudes, beliefs, and mindsets (latent diversity) that could be analyzed for common patterns. There\u2019s a whole science of instrument development called psychometrics;<\/i> you can learn more about how we used psychometrics when developing our survey<\/a> by checking out one of our publications.<\/p>

The qualitative<\/em> (words) data come from multiple interviews with engineering students. Like with the survey, the STRIDE team wanted to make sure that these interviews touched on all the information we were interested in. We conducted 12 pilot interviews where we had the chance to test out ideas and improve the questions being asked. You can read about these pilot interviews here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/article>

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\r\n Survey Planning and Recruitment<\/span>\r\n \r\n

Sending out a survey across the country takes a lot of logistics planning! We partnered with 32 colleges and universities. We picked an array of institutions in order to have a roughly equal representation of students who attended small schools, medium schools, and large schools.<\/p><\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/article>

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\r\n Survey Deployment<\/span>\r\n \r\n

We sent out paper copies of the survey to all of the schools with which we partnered. Students filled out the survey in their first-year engineering programs classrooms, which were then sent back to the STRIDE team.<\/p><\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/article>

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