Contextual Research-Empirical--A Direct Method for Teaching and Measuring Engineering Professional Skills

研究人员建议创建一种方法来教授和衡量工程与技术认可委员会(ABET)的专业技能，方法是一种名为课程汇报(CD)的本科生小组学习干预方法。在CD方法之前，没有直接的方法来教授和测量这些技能的同时存在，这些技能现在被公认为本科工程教育领域的标准。本项目将扩展、经验性地研究和完善CD方法和工程专业技能标准(EPS)，这是伴随的测量工具。主要的研究目标是确定将CD方法整合到本科课程中一年级到高级课程的教学和教育影响。为确定CD方法的初步可靠性和有效性，WSU正在进行的研究表明，CD方法有可能在全国范围内产生重大影响。然而，需要更多的研究来提供强有力的证据，证明CD方法作为绩效任务和EPS标准作为测量工具是可靠和有效的。本研究的主要研究目标是严格建立CD方法和EPS标准的信度和效度。将使用描述性集体案例研究方法和随机设计。这一方法将使调查人员能够在了解在三个不同地点和四个不同课程类型的背景下执行并行绩效任务的情况下，确定有效性和有效性。这些学校分别是威斯康星州立大学、爱达荷大学和佛蒙特州的诺维奇大学。该项目将直接为工程教育的基础研究做出贡献，这个问题关系到国家的重要性和利益-国家如何为未来的工程师培养在全球范围内工作所需的技能。

The investigators propose to create a method to teach and measure the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) professional skills in the form of an undergraduate group learning intervention called the curricular debrief (CD) method. No direct method for teaching and measuring the simultaneous presence of these skills, which are now generally recognized as the standard in the undergraduate engineering education field, has existed in the literature prior to the CD method This project will expand, empirically study, and refine the CD method and Engineering Professional Skills Rubric (EPS), which is the accompanying measurement instrument. The primary research goal is to determine the instructional and educational impacts of the integration of the CD method into freshman to senior level courses across the undergraduate curricula.. Ongoing research conducted at WSU to establish the initial reliability and validity of the CD method has shown its potential for significant nationwide impact. Yet, more research is needed to provide strong evidence that the CD method as a performance task and the EPS Rubric as a measurement instrument are reliable and valid. This study's primary research goal is to rigorously establish the reliability and validity of the CD method and the EPS Rubric. A descriptive collective case study methodology and a randomized design will be used. This methodology will allow the investigators to establish efficacy and validity while understanding the contexts in which parallel performance tasks are implemented in three distinct sites and four distinct course-type settings. The settings are WSU, the University of Idaho, and Norwich University in Vermont. This project will directly contribute to fundamental research in engineering education on a problem of national importance and interest---how the nation can prepare future engineers with the skills they need for work in a global context.