Research Initiation: Addressing the Readiness Gap through Examining Engineering Students' Perceptions of their Future Professional Selves

研究表明，应届工程毕业生没有为工作做好充分准备，特别是在专业、非技术技能(如沟通和团队合作)方面。工程教育工作者调整了课程设置，更新了教学方法，以提升这些技能，但差距依然存在。这项研究将不是从雇主的角度来考察缺失的期望技能，而是从学生对劳动力的期望的角度来考察准备程度的差距。到工科学生毕业时，他们将在学校度过一生中的大部分时间：向劳动力的过渡不是普通的过渡，而是迈向未知的一步。这个项目将试图：1)了解学生对毕业后生活的期望；2)确定一个简短的干预(向学生播放最近校友讨论他们从学校到工作的个人转变的短视频)可以在多大程度上影响学生对工作的期望以及他们对未来自我的看法。学生们将在观看视频之前和之后进行调查，看看观看视频是否影响了他们对未来自我的感觉或对未来工程工作的期望。领导这项研究的PI是工程形成研究领域的新成员，将由一名成熟的工程教育研究员进行指导，该研究员致力于将新的工程教育研究人员引入该领域的计划目标。多项研究已经证明，应届工程毕业生的准备与雇主的期望之间存在偏差。这项研究将通过调查学生对职业未来的期望来研究新工科毕业生进入职场的“准备差距”。识别、理解和潜在地解决他们对工程的信念和误解如何有助于纠正这种错位？这项研究将解决两个研究问题：1)工科本科生如何想象自己的职业未来？2)让学生观看最近校友的一系列短视频这一简短的发明，如何影响他们对自己职业未来的看法？这一干预活动由一系列简短的、有主题的视频剪辑组成，视频中早期职业工程师回答了在校学生关于毕业后生活和工作的问题。将采用混合方法，使用事前和事后调查以及对观看视频的学生进行半结构化访谈。该项目每年将对150名学生进行前后调查；从150名答复者中，将有30名学生参加后续的半结构化访谈。我们将通过两种方式对参与者进行过度抽样：第一，来自工程学专业历来代表性不足的人群的学生；第二，对被问及干预的价值的问题有最强烈正面和负面反应的学生。前后调查将包括一个有效的量表，即未来自我连续性问卷，这些数据将帮助学生在一系列固定的、流动的身份上定位他们作为工程专业人员的未来自我的感觉，确定他们对未来职业自我的看法在干预后是否发生变化，并为定性数据的分析提供信息。研究成果包括为了解工科学生的职业期望建立一个起点，并通过生动和积极的早期职业工程师例子推动促进职业准备的努力；视频干预的使用将可移植和适应其他类型和规模的机构。特别是，这项研究将调查来自历史上代表性不足的人群的学生和第一代大学生的视角和潜在的变化。此外，该项目还开发了PI在工程教育研究方面的能力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Research documents a “readiness gap” that new engineering graduates are not fully prepared for the workforce, particularly in terms of professional, non-technical skills (such as communication and teamwork). Engineering educators have adapted curriculum and updated teaching methods to promote these skills, but the gap persists. This study will examine the readiness gap not from the employers’ perspective of the missing desired skills, but from the students’ perspective about their expectations for the workforce. By the time engineering students graduate, they will have been in school for most of their lives: the transition to the workforce is no ordinary transition — it is a step into the unknown. This project will attempt to: 1) understand students’ expectations about life after graduation; and 2) determine to what extent a brief intervention (showing students short videos of recent alumni discussing their personal transitions from school to work) can affect students’ expectations about work and their perspectives about their future selves. Students will be surveyed before and after watching the videos to see if watching the videos affected their sense of their future selves or their expectations for their future work in engineering. The PI leading this study is new to the field of engineering formation research and will be mentored by an established engineering education researcher, which addresses the program goals of initiating new engineering education researchers into the field. Multiple studies have documented a misalignment between new engineering graduates’ preparedness and employer expectations. This study will study the identified “readiness gap” of new engineering graduates entering the workforce by examining students’ expectations toward their professional future. How might identifying, understanding, and potentially addressing their beliefs and misconceptions about engineering contribute to correcting the misalignment? The study will address two Research Questions: 1) How do undergraduate engineering students imagine their professional futures? and 2) How does a brief invention of having students watch a series of short videos by recent alumni affect their perceptions about their professional future? The intervention consists of a series of short, thematically curated video clips of early career engineers answering questions from current students about life and work after graduation. A mixed methods approach will be employed, using pre- and post-surveys and semi-structured interviews of students who watch the videos. Each year of the project, pre- and post-surveys will be conducted with 150 students; from that pool of 150 respondents, 30 students will participate in follow-up semi-structured interviews. We will oversample participants in two ways: first, students from populations historically underrepresented in engineering; second, those who had the strongest positive and negative reactions to a question asking the about the value of intervention. The pre- and post-surveys will include a validated scale, the Future Self Continuity Questionnaire, and the data will help locate students’ sense of their future selves as engineering professionals on a range of fixed to fluid identities, determine whether their perceptions of their future professional selves change after the intervention, and inform analysis of the qualitative data. Study outcomes include establishing a starting point for understanding engineering students’ career expectations and advancing efforts to promote professional readiness through vivid and positive examples of early career engineers; the use of a video intervention will be transferable and adaptable to other types and sizes of institutions. In particular, the study will investigate the perspectives and potential changes in perspective of students from historically underrepresented populations and first-generation university students. Additionally, this project develops the capacity of the PI in engineering education research.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.