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

IEECI 探索性项目：女性为何留下来：对两个成功项目的调查

• 批准号: 0835932
• 负责人: Brenda Brand
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-05-01 至 2012-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0835932&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: IEECI; Exploratory; Project; Why; Women

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.

拟议的研究将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，通过调查两个成功的工程/预工程项目，这些项目是专门为促进工程学生的自我效能而设计的。其中一个项目是围绕国家FIRST机器人竞赛建立的一个完善的全年高中课程。另一个是一个新的工程项目在所有妇女甜石楠学院。研究所假设，在设计和制定这两个方案时，注重社会文化方面，侧重于实现学生的自我效能，这是女生在这些方案中保留70-90%的原因。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/工程预科方案的问题的理解，并确定这些现有方案的组成部分，供其他方案复制。三个小组将参加这项研究：高中的男女生和大学的女大学生。将采用定量和定性措施来评估方案的性别相关成果。影响信念变化的因素以及影响学生决定留在该计划的因素将进行调查。来自女学生的数据将与对照组（男学生）的反应进行比较，以具体确定女性特有的因素。提高保留率将有助于增加妇女参与工程项目，这将增加将进入劳动力市场的工程专业学生的数量和多样性。该项目将评估两个方案中导致女生保持高比例的因素，通过多个渠道传播结果，应用结果改进现有方案的活动，并促进在新倡议中推广战略。研究团队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/大学教育界的学者和从业者之间的传播。