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

工科学生在日益全球化的环境中生活和工作。与那些在毕业后需要学习这些技能的人相比，拥有理解、互动和重视不同文化经验的毕业生在职场中具有优势。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侧重于通过长期旅行经历（如出国留学项目）培养学生的全球工程技能。这些项目可能很昂贵，需要大量的时间和金钱投入，限制了社区中更有特权的成员的参与，并且无法扩展到支持大量工程专业学生的参与。建议的工作将通过关注学生全球学习者心态的发展来填补研究中的空白，而不需要广泛的国际旅行。具体而言，该项目将调查四种不同的全球参与干预（使用工程案例研究，有意组建多国学生团队，协作在线国际学习（COIL）研究项目，以及短期课程中的社区参与项目）如何培养全球学习者的心态。社会科学和工程教育研究人员将对四名刚进入工程形态研究领域的工程教育工作者进行研究方法方面的培训，以评估将在本研究中开发和实施的全球参与干预措施。这个过程与项目的目标是一致的，即启动新的研究人员进入工程地层研究，并有助于开发一个全面的全球工程教育方法。这项工作将培养工程本科学生的全球能力，以满足工程专业当前和未来的需要。在本项目中，四项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。将采用混合方法来衡量学生的文化谦逊、全球公民和批判性反思，这些都是全球学习者心态的关键要素。需要回答的具体研究问题是：1)通过使用拟议的全球参与干预措施，工程专业学生的全球能力可以发展到何种程度；2)在发展全球工程能力方面，每种提议的全球参与干预措施的相对优势是什么？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）和研究人员开发的具体问题，以评估参与学生全球工程技能的改进。综合起来，这些研究措施不仅将提供一幅准确的图景，说明每种全球参与干预如何影响工程教育中全球学习者心态的形成，而且还将提供其发展和/或提高全球工程技能的相关能力。本研究的结果将产生有价值的知识，以了解每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。

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.