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

拟议的研究将通过调查两个成功的工程/预工程项目来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学生的自我效能而设计的。其中一个项目是围绕全国FIRST机器人竞赛建立的一个完善的高中全年课程。另一个是女子斯威特布赖尔学院的一个新的工程项目。pi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关注，主要是为了实现学生的自我效能感，归因于这些项目中70-90%的女性保留率。这项工作将确定这两个项目的具体组成部分，以提高对导致更多女性进入和留在工程/预工程项目的问题的理解，并从这些现有项目中确定组成部分，以便在其他项目中复制。参与本次研究的有三组：高中的男女学生和大学的女本科生。将采用定量和定性两种方法来评估项目与性别相关的成果。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被调查。来自女学生的数据将与控制组（男学生）的回答进行比较，以明确确定女性独有的因素。提高保留率将有助于提高女性在工程项目中的参与度，这将增加进入劳动力市场的工程专业学生的数量和多样性。该项目将评估导致两个项目中女学生高保留率的因素，通过多个场所传播结果，将结果应用于改进现有项目的活动，并促进在新举措中复制策略。研究团队的合作将促进STEM多个教育学科、性别研究以及高中和学院/大学教育界的学者和实践者之间的传播。

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.