Collaborative Research: Research: Agency in Chemical Engineering Experiments

化学工程实验机构（ACEE）项目将调查不同的实验室实验教学方法如何影响学生作为化学工程师的学习和发展。实验室实验在化学工程师的专业形成中起着关键作用，化学工程师在工业中使用实验来开发创新产品，在研究中使用实验来进行研究，在设计中使用实验来收集信息和测试解决方案。然而，在许多机构中，实验课程相对保持不变，现代化的努力主要集中在更新设备、内容和程序上。学生可以做出许多不同的决定——换句话说，他们可以通过许多方式拥有自主性——从选择变量到选择向哪个受众报告他们的结果。本计画将评估在整个实验中给予学生不同程度的代理对学生实验室体验的影响。ACEE项目将研究新墨西哥大学和蒙大拿州立大学的化学工程实验室课程，以更好地了解这些课程如何更好地支持学生独立解决问题和沟通的发展，从而培养毕业生更好地为专业工程的挑战做好准备。ACEE项目的主要目的是扩展关于间接代理功能如何支持学习和工程身份的理论。过去的研究将代理、学习和身份联系起来，并提供了对高代理学习经验的好处和障碍的见解。为了确定对专业形成至关重要的经验，ACEE项目将调查学生在四个领域的代理：(1)实验前的实验设计；(2)实验室期间的实验监督，包括操作变量、数据收集频率和实验期间的文件；(3)数据分析与解释；(4)交流他们的目的、方法和结论。本项目扩展了最近对代理的研究，以回答以下研究问题：(1)现有的实验室实验在多大程度上为学生提供了四个领域（即实验设计，实验监督，数据分析，沟通）的相应代理？(2)四个领域的结果代理感知在多大程度上促进了学生对工程/工程身份的归属感以及如何设计和报告实验的学习？(3)在这些方面，少数群体和特权群体之间是否存在差异？该团队将检查学生可能拥有的代理，区分低级代理和间接代理，后者被定义为拥有并接受机会做出决定，这些决定对学生的学习方式、学习内容以及学习活动本身都有影响。在实验室实验的背景下，这意味着学生可以做出影响他们工作后续步骤的决定；例如，如果学生选择他们实验的一些参数，这将影响他们收集的数据和他们将要做的分析类型。ACEE项目将调查两个化学工程专业现有的高年级本科生实验室实验，这将提供一个比较各种现有和常用教学方法的机会。学生在特定领域获得相应代理的机会将使用学习机会工具中的代理水平（ALLOT）进行评估，而学生对代理和工程身份的看法将使用调查来衡量。通过回答所提出的问题，ACEE项目将扩展对代理在联合学习/身份形成过程中的重要性的更细致的理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Agency in Chemical Engineering Experiments (ACEE) project will investigate how different approaches to teaching laboratory experiments impact students’ learning and development as chemical engineers. Laboratory experiments play a key role in the professional formation of chemical engineers, who use experiments in industry to develop innovative products, in research to conduct studies, and in design to gather information and test solutions. Yet at many institutions, laboratory courses have remained relatively unchanged, and modernizing efforts have primarily focused on updating equipment, content, and procedures. There are many different decisions students could make — in other words, many ways they could have agency — from choosing variables to choosing which audience to report their results to. This project will evaluate the effect of giving students differing levels of agency throughout the experiment on the students’ lab experience. The ACEE project will study chemical engineering laboratory courses at the University of New Mexico and Montana State University to better understand how such courses can better support student development toward independent problem-solving and communication, thus producing graduates better prepared for the challenges of professional engineering. The primary aim of the ACEE project is to extend theory about how consequential agency functions to support learning and engineering identity. Past research has connected agency, learning, and identity, and provided insights into both benefits of and barriers to high-agency learning experiences. To identify experiences critical to professional formation, the ACEE Project will investigate students’ agency in four domains: (1) experimental design prior to doing the lab; (2) experimental oversight during the lab, including variables to manipulate, data collection frequency, and documentation during their experiments; (3) data analysis and interpretation; and (4) communication of their purpose, methods, and conclusions. This project extends recent research on agency to answer the following research questions: (1) To what extent do existing laboratory experiments offer students consequential agency in the four domains (i.e., experimental design, experimental oversight, data analysis, communication)? (2) To what extent does perceived consequential agency in the four domains contribute to students’ sense of belonging in engineering/engineering identity and learning how to design and report experiments? (3) Across these, are there differences between minoritized and privileged groups? The team will examine the agency students might have, differentiating between lower agency and consequential agency, which is defined as having and taking up opportunities to make decisions that are consequential to how students learn, to what students learn, and to the learning activities themselves. In the context of a laboratory experiment, this means that students can make decisions that affect later steps of their work; for instance, if students choose some parameters of their experiment, this impacts the data they collect and the kinds of analysis they will do. The ACEE Project will investigate existing upper-division, undergraduate laboratory experiments across two chemical engineering programs which will offer a chance to conduct comparisons of various existing and common teaching approaches. Students’ opportunities for consequential agency in specific domains will be assessed using the Agency Levels in Learning Opportunities Tool (ALLOT) while students’ perceptions of agency and engineering identity will be measured using surveys. By answering the proposed questions, the ACEE Project will extend a more nuanced understanding of the criticality of agency in the conjoined learning/identity-formation process.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.