Intervention to Improve Engagement and Mediate Conclusion Fear in Engineering Education

PI提出了一种非正统的和变革性的方法来改善工程教育。它需要接受一个概念，这个概念已经被从营销公司到教育电视的其他组织成功地使用：幽默。尽管这一主题很轻松，但该团队将进行一项大规模的对照研究，以定量确定幽默在改善工程教育方面是否在统计上有效。具体地说，他们将测试幽默的一般干预是否可以改善一般工程教育的结果和留存。假设这种改善是由于教师互动的直接性的增加，他们将测试这种机制是任何观察到的改善背后的可能性。他们还将测试使用不低于技术严格性的幽默或异想天开的系统(例如，膨胀的橡皮糖熊与热交换器)是否会减少学生人数？无法从工程分析中得出结论(结论恐惧)。基于认知-情感人格理论，该团队认为学生？考虑到教师是领域专家的内在印象，他们害怕做出结论，这会严厉批评他们的结论。通过使用幽默的系统进行数据或模型分析，它们将消除这种印象，并使学生能够做出他们做出工程设计决策所需的重要结论，从而改善教育结果。这项拟议的工作使用了一个独特的团队，该团队由一名在工程教育方面经验丰富的教育研究人员和一名工程教授组成，他也是一名专业喜剧演员。智力优势：这将是第一个确定幽默对技术教育有效性的大型对照实验，在大量行动研究调查中，这些调查几乎没有或没有统计意义上的结果。本研究还将为基于现有人格理论的幽默干预的有效性背后的机制提供洞察力。这种洞察力将允许更广泛地应用幽默来改善工科教育。广泛影响：本研究的结果将对(I)远程学习(我们的幽默干预所涉及的即时概念在这种学习模式中更加重要)和(Ii)工科学生的流失率产生重大影响。鉴于这种非正统的本质将吸引通常不考虑工程学研究的人群，它有可能在工程外展和招聘方面创造一个显著的趋势，以满足美国在不久的将来对大量工程师的需求。

The PIs propose an unorthodox and transformational approach to improving engineering education.It requires embracing a concept that has been used with great success by other organizations from marketing firms to educational television: humor. Despite the light nature of the subject, the team will conduct a large-scale controlled study to quantitatively determine if humor is statistically effective in improving engineering education. Specifically, they will test if the general intervention of humor can improve general engineering educational outcomes and retention. The hypothesis is that such an improvement would be due to an increase in the immediacy of the instructor interaction and they will test the likelihood that this mechanism is behind any observed improvement. They will also test if the use of humorous or whimsical systems with no less technical rigor (i.e. swelling gummi bears vs. heat exchangers) will reduce students? inability to make conclusions from engineering analysis (Conclusion Fear). Based on Cognitive-Affective personality theory, the team believes students? fear making conclusions given the internal impression that faculty are domain-experts that will severely criticize their conclusions. By using humorous systems for data or model analysis they will dispel this impression and empower students to make the important conclusions they need to make engineering design decisions thereby improving educational outcomes. The proposed work uses a unique team of an educational researcher experienced in engineering education and an engineering professor who is also a professionalcomedian.Intellectual Merit :This will be the first large-scale controlled experiment to determine the effectiveness ofhumor on technical education, amid a sea of action-research investigations that have littleor no statistically significant results. This study will also provide insight into the mechanismbehind the effectiveness of a humorous intervention based on current personality theories.Such insight will allow more general application of humor to improve engineering education.Broader Impacts :The results of this study will have significant impact on (i) distance learning (the immediacyconcept addressed by our humorous intervention is even more important in this learning mode),and (ii) attrition rates among engineering students. Given that the unorthodox nature of ourapproach will appeal to a demographic that does not usually consider engineering studies,it has the potential to create a significant trend in engineering outreach and recruitingto address the U.S. need for significant numbers of engineers in the near future.