Research Initiation: Enhancing Engineering Students’ Innovation Self-Efficacy through Design of K-12 STEM Projects

创新是经济增长和可持续发展的重要动力。在当今全球化和快速变化的世界中学习和工作需要能够创新思考和产生新颖想法的工程师。这个项目关注的是工科学生的创新自我效能感（ISE），它衡量了一个人对自己执行创新设计能力的信心。该项目正在研究如何通过课程干预（即为全球受众设计的K-12 STEM项目）在工程本科学生中增强ISE，并将支持工程教育领域的新研究人员社区。这项研究的结果将产生新的、以证据为基础的教学实践，以培养学生的创新自我效能感，这有助于培养能够对快速变化的社会需求做出反应的工程师。这项研究的预期社会效益将是：1)通过将结果传播到符合标准的课程资源，推动环境工程领域的K-12 STEM教育活动，这将为全球K-12教育者提供免费访问；2)从我们多样化的学生群体中招募三名本科研究助理；3)为公立学校STEM教师提供专业发展机会，他们将与工程为重点的活动设计合作。本研究将探讨以创新自我效能为基础的课程干预，作为鼓励工科学生创新能力的一种手段，从而有助于更具创新性的工程课程、设计过程和工作场所。本研究将在一门有针对性的课程中实现一种基于ise的教学实践。学生的ISE发展程度将通过五个总体研究问题来衡量，这些问题旨在独立捕捉ISE的每个行为组成部分的影响：1)干预在多大程度上改变了学生提出挑战假设和现有状况的问题的能力？2)干预在多大程度上改变了学生通过研究世界来思考新思想的能力？3)干预在多大程度上改变了学生对实验的参与，以探索选项并产生新颖的设计？4)干预在多大程度上改变了学生创建网络的能力，从而产生新的想法？5)干预如何增强学生将不同领域的想法联系起来的能力？混合方法（顺序设计）研究将用于回答这些研究问题。这些组成部分的变化将使用社会科学文献中发现的经过验证的工具进行量化，并将在干预结束时由焦点小组陪同，以生成定性叙述，为定量措施增加价值。这项研究的结果将促进工程教育界对如何为全球受众设计K-12 STEM项目的认识，以有意地实现学生的目标自我效能发展。本研究的成果将有可能在工程课程中实现ise混合，循证教学实践和教学法的新研究途径。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。

Innovation is an important driver of economic growth and sustainable development. Learning and working in today’s global and fast-changing world requires engineers who can think innovatively and generate novel ideas. This project focuses on the innovation self-efficacy (ISE) of engineering students, which measures one’s belief in their capacity to execute innovative designs. The project is investigating how ISE is enhanced by a curricular intervention (i.e., a K-12 STEM project designed for a global audience) among undergraduate engineering students and will support a community of new researchers in engineering education. The outcomes of the study will generate new, evidence-based teaching practices to develop students’ self-efficacy in innovation which aids in the formation of engineers who are responsive to the needs of a rapidly changing society. The desired societal benefits of this study will be: 1) advancement of K-12 STEM educational activities in the field of environmental engineering through dissemination of results to a standards-aligned curricular resource, which will provide free access to global K-12 educators, 2) incorporating three undergraduate research assistants drawn from our diverse student population, and 3) providing a professional development opportunity for a public-school STEM teacher who will be partnered in the engineering-focused activity design. In this study, a curricular intervention grounded in innovative self-efficacy (ISE) will be explored as a means to encourage innovational competence into engineering students, which contributes toward a more innovative engineering curriculum, design process, and workplace. This study will actualize an ISE-grounded teaching practice in a targeted course. The extent of students’ ISE development will be measured by five overarching research questions designed to independently capture the impact of each behavioral components of ISE: 1) To what extent does the intervention shift students’ ability to raise questions that challenge assumptions and existing states of affairs?; 2) To what extent did the intervention shift students’ ability to think of new ideas that come though studying the world?; 3) To what extent does the intervention shift students’ engagement in experimentation to explore options and generate novel designs?; 4) To what extent does the intervention shift students’ ability in creating networks that could lead to new ideas?; and 5) How are students’ ability to connect ideas from different and diverse areas enhanced by the intervention? A mixed method (sequential design) study will be used to answer those research questions. Shifts in those components will be quantified using a blend of validated instruments found in the social sciences literature and will be accompanied by focus groups at the end of the intervention to generate qualitative narratives that add value to the quantitative measures. The outcomes of the study will advance the engineering education community’s knowledge of how K-12 STEM project design for a global audience might be used to intentionally achieve targeted self-efficacy development in students. The outcomes of this research will have the potential to realize new research avenues in ISE-blended, evidence-based teaching practices and pedagogies in engineering curriculum.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.