IEECI Exploratory Project: Why Women Stay: An Investigation of Two Successful Programs

这项拟议的研究将通过调查两个成功的工程/工程前课程，帮助工程教育界了解如何更好地吸引和留住更有才华和多样化的学生群体。这两个项目是专门为促进工程专业学生的自我效能而设计的。其中一个项目是围绕全国首届机器人大赛设立的一门完善的全年高中课程。另一个是全女子斯威特·布莱尔学院的一个新工程项目。PIs假设，在这两个项目的设计和开发中，这种对社会文化方面的参与，重点是实现学生的自我效能，归因于这些项目中女性的保留率为70%-90%。这项工作将确定这两个方案的具体组成部分，以提高对导致更多妇女进入和留在工程/工程前方案的问题的理解，并确定这些现有方案中的组成部分，以便在其他方案中复制。三组人将参与这项研究：高中的男女学生和大学的女本科生。将使用定量和定性措施来评估这些方案与性别有关的成果。影响信念改变的因素以及影响学生决定继续留在该项目的因素将被调查。来自女学生的数据将与对照组(男学生)的反应进行比较，以明确女性特有的因素。提高留校率将有助于增加女性参与工程专业的人数，这将增加进入劳动力大军的工程专业学生的数量和多样性。该项目将在两个项目中评估导致女学生保留率高的部分，通过多个地点传播结果，应用结果来改进现有项目的活动，并促进在新倡议中复制战略。研究小组的伙伴关系将促进在多个STEM教育学科、性别研究以及高中和学院/大学一级的教育界的学者和从业人员之间进行传播。

The proposed research will help the engineering education community understand how to better attract and retain a more talented and diverse student body by investigating two successful engineering/pre-engineering programs that have been designed specifically to facilitate self-efficacy of students in engineering. One program is a well established full year high school course built around the national FIRST robotics competition. The other is a new engineering program at all-women Sweet Briar College. The PIs hypothesize that this attendance to the socio-cultural aspects in the design and development of both programs, which focuses on achieving self-efficacy of the students, attributes to the 70-90% retention rates of females in these programs. This work will identify specific components of the two programs to both improve the understanding of the issues which are resulting in more women entering and staying in engineering/pre-engineering programs, and to also identify components from these existing programs for replication in other programs. Three groups will participate in this research study: females and males from the high school, and female undergraduates from the college. Both quantitative and qualitative measures will be used to evaluate the gender related outcomes of the programs. Factors influencing changes in beliefs as well as factors influencing student decisions to remain in the program will be investigated. Data from the female students will be compared with responses from the control group, the male students, to specifically identify factors that are unique to the females. Improving retention will contribute to increasing the participation of women in engineering programs, which will increase the number and diversity of engineering students who will enter the workforce. This project will evaluate components leading to the high retention rates of female students in two programs, disseminate the results through multiple venues, apply the results to improve the activities of the existing programs, and facilitate the replication of strategies in new initiatives. The partnership of the research team will facilitate dissemination among scholars and practitioners in multiple STEM education disciplines, gender studies, and also the education community at the high school and college/university level.