The Privilege of Student, Experiential Learning, Engineering Competition Teams (SELECT)

STEP 2类型项目是一项研究，旨在确定并检查导致学生参与学生工程竞赛的不同水平的因素。一般来说，工程学院和行业代表对由专业工程学会赞助的学生、体验式学习、工程竞赛团队（SELECT）持积极态度。这些全国竞赛通过设计和建造项目并测试他们的表现，为学生提供了发展技术工程技能、团队合作技能和其他非技术专业技能的机会。例如，专业组织赞助比赛，要求学生解决与在具有挑战性的地形上建造车辆或使用可以执行特定任务的特定材料建造设备相关的问题。这些竞赛旨在通过解决开放式、受限的问题，培养创新思维、工程原理的应用和专业技能。虽然近年来参加这类竞赛的学生人数有所增加，但与工程专业学生的人口统计数据相比，来自传统上代表性不足的群体的学生的参与度仍然低得不成比例。本研究确定并检验了在这些团队竞赛中促成包容和/或排斥文化的潜在信念、假设、政策和实践。该研究的理论框架表明，潜在的社会动机（如权力、意识形态、维持现状）和机制（如政治、经济、语言）塑造了机构中的社会关系。混合定性研究调查了以下问题：在学生、体验式学习、工程竞赛团队中，是什么因素导致了包容或排斥的文化？研究团队假设，影响包容或排斥团队文化的最重要因素可分为几大类：外在影响、群体动态、个人属性、激励因素和能动性。

This STEP Type 2 project is a study that identifies and examines the factors that contribute to differential levels of student participation in student engineering competitions. Generally, engineering faculty and industry representatives have positive views towards Student, Experiential Learning, Engineering Competition Teams (SELECT) that are sponsored by professional engineering societies. These national competitions offer students the opportunity to develop technical engineering skills, teamwork skills, and other non-technical professional skills through designing and building projects and testing their performance. For example, professional organizations sponsor competitions that require students to solve problems associated with building vehicles for challenging terrains or building devices out of specified materials that can perform specific tasks. These competitions are designed to foster innovative thinking, the application of engineering principles, and professional skills through solving open-ended, constrained problems. While the numbers of students participating in these types of competitions have increased over the years, participation by students from traditionally underrepresented groups remains disproportionately low when compared to the demographics of students enrolled in engineering programs. This study identifies and examines the underlying beliefs, assumptions, policies, and practices contributing to cultures of inclusion and/or exclusion in these team competitions. The study is guided by a theoretical framework that suggests that underlying social motivations (e.g., power, ideology, maintenance of the status quo) and mechanisms (e.g., political, economic, language) shape social relationships in institutions. The mixed-qualitative study investigates the following question, What factors contribute to cultures of inclusion or exclusion within Student, Experiential Learning, Engineering Competition Teams? The research team hypothesizes that the most significant factors contributing to team cultures of inclusion or exclusion fall into several general categories: extrinsic influences, group dynamics, and individual attributes, motivators, and agency.