Mapping Multiple Roads to Increased Engagement

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This research seeks to identify what faculty in engineering and related STEM fields do that causes students to feel more supported. The literature tells us that students who feel more supported by faculty and interact more with them engage more, feel better, and do better academically. Yet, we lack an understanding of the impacts of faculty behaviors that is detailed enough to give faculty and other instructors specific strategies for success to apply to diverse students in a range of settings and classes.Without this knowledge, faculty attempts to support students can be diluted or fail altogether. This project's goal is to take the randomness out of the equation so that faculty can effectively help and strongly support students. This project adopts both quantitative and qualitative data collected in both course-level case studies and longitudinal research designs over short (quarter-long) time scales. A wide range of instruments including surveys, interviews, faculty/TA reports, and observations will be used. The overall goal is to capture a rich picture of particular courses with the goal of understanding how students become highly engaged or when they do not engage, what appears to limit or hold back their engagement.