Collaborative Research: Research Initiation: Assessing Global Engagement Interventions to Advance Global Engineering Competence for Engineering Formation

工程专业的学生在日益全球化的环境中生活和工作。与那些需要在毕业后学习这些技能的人相比，在理解、与不同文化互动和重视不同文化方面有经验的毕业生在工作场所具有优势。这种潜在的全球学习者心态是培养全球工程能力的关键因素。大多数跨文化能力研究和相关的全球工程教育都侧重于通过长期的旅行经历（如出国留学计划）来培养学生的全球工程技能。这些计划可能是昂贵的，需要大量的时间和金钱的投资，限制了社区中更有特权的成员的参与，并且无法扩展以支持大量工程专业学生的参与。拟议的工作将填补研究的空白，专注于培养学生的全球学习者心态，而不需要广泛的国际旅行。具体来说，该项目将调查四种不同的全球参与干预措施（工程案例研究的使用、跨国学生团队的有意组建、协作在线国际学习（COIL）研究项目以及短期内的社区参与项目）如何发展全球学习者心态。四名工程教育工作者谁是新的工程形成研究领域将由社会科学和工程教育研究人员在研究方法进行培训，以评估将在本研究中开发和实施的全球参与干预措施。这一过程符合该计划的目标，即启动新的研究人员进入工程形成研究，并有助于制定一个整体的全球工程教育方法。这项工作将培养本科工程专业学生的全球能力，以满足工程专业当前和未来的需求。在该项目中，四个全球参与干预措施将以全球工程能力（GEC）理论框架为基础，并评估其培养工程专业学生全球学习者心态的能力。一个混合方法的方法将被用来衡量学生的文化谦逊，全球公民意识和批判性反思作为全球学习者心态的关键要素。要回答的具体研究问题是：1）在何种程度上可以通过使用拟议的全球参与干预措施，在工程专业学生的全球能力的发展;和2）什么是每一个拟议的全球参与干预措施在发展全球工程能力的相对优势？用于回答这些研究问题的具体评估工具包括全球参与调查（GES）和研究人员开发的特定问题，以评估参与学生全球工程技能的改进。结合起来，这些研究措施不仅将提供每个全球参与干预如何影响工程教育中全球学习者心态形成的准确图片，而且还将提供其开发和/或提高全球工程技能的相关能力。这项研究的结果将产生有价值的知识，以了解每一个全球参与干预如何影响全球工程能力的形成。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Engineering students live and work in an increasing global environment. Graduates with experience in understanding, interacting with and valuing differing cultures have advantages in the workplace compared with those who will need to learn those skills post-graduation. This underlying global learner mindset is a key ingredient in cultivating a global engineering competency. Most intercultural competence research and associated global engineering education is focused on developing the global engineering skillset of students through long-term travel experiences such as study abroad programs. These programs can be expensive, requiring a significant investment of time and money, limiting the participation to more privileged members of a community, and are not scalable to support participation from large numbers of engineering students. The proposed work will fill a gap in the research by focusing on the development of the students’ global learner mindset without requiring extensive international travel. Specifically, the project will investigate how four different global engagement interventions (the use of engineering case studies, the intentional formation of multi-national student teams, a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) research project, and a community engaged project within a short course) can develop a global learner mindset. Four engineering educators who are new to the field of engineering formation research will be trained by social science and engineering education researchers in research methods in order to assess the global engagement interventions that will be developed and implemented in this study. This process aligns with the program’s goals of initiating new researchers into engineering formation research, and is instrumental in developing a holistic global engineering education approach. This work will foster global competence in undergraduate engineering students in order to meet the current and future needs of the engineering profession. In this project, four global engagement interventions will be grounded in the Global Engineering Competency (GEC) theoretical framework and assessed for their ability to foster a global learner mindset in engineering students. A mixed-methods approach will be used to measure students’ cultural humility, global citizenship, and critical reflection as the key elements of the global learner mindset. The specific research questions to be answered are: 1) To what extent can global competence be developed in engineering students through the use of the proposed global engagement interventions; and 2) what are the relative strengths of each of the proposed global engagement interventions in developing global engineering competence? The specific assessment tools used to answer these research questions include the Global Engagement Survey (GES) and specific questions developed by the researchers to evaluate improvements in the participating students’ global engineering skillset. Combined, these research measures will provide not only an accurate picture of how each global engagement intervention impacts the formation of a global learner mindset in engineering education, but also its associated ability to develop and/or improve global engineering skills. The outcomes of this study will generate valuable knowledge to understand how each global engagement intervention impacts the formation of global engineering competence.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.