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

研究记录了一个“准备缺口”，即新的工程专业毕业生没有为劳动力做好充分的准备，特别是在专业、非技术技能（如沟通和团队合作）方面。工程教育工作者已经调整了课程和更新了教学方法来提高这些技能，但差距仍然存在。本研究将从学生对劳动力的期望角度出发，而不是从雇主对缺少所需技能的角度来考察准备差距。到工程专业的学生毕业时，他们将在学校度过大半生：向劳动力的过渡不是普通的过渡——这是迈向未知的一步。本项目将尝试：1)了解学生对毕业后生活的期望；2)确定一个简短的干预（向学生展示最近的校友讨论他们从学校到工作的个人转变的短视频）能在多大程度上影响学生对工作的期望和他们对未来自我的看法。学生们将在观看视频之前和之后接受调查，看看观看视频是否影响了他们对未来自我的感觉，或者他们对未来工程工作的期望。领导这项研究的PI是工程地层研究领域的新成员，将由一位成熟的工程教育研究人员指导，这将解决启动新的工程教育研究人员进入该领域的项目目标。多项研究表明，工科毕业生的准备与雇主期望之间存在偏差。本研究将通过调查学生对其职业未来的期望来研究新工程专业毕业生进入劳动力市场的“准备差距”。如何识别、理解和潜在地解决他们对工程的信念和误解有助于纠正这种偏差？本研究将解决两个研究问题：1)工科本科生如何想象他们的职业未来？2)让学生观看近期校友制作的一系列短视频，这个简单的发明会如何影响他们对自己职业未来的看法？干预包括一系列短的，主题策划的视频片段，早期职业工程师回答当前学生关于毕业后生活和工作的问题。将采用混合方法，对观看视频的学生进行前后调查和半结构化访谈。项目每年对150名学生进行前后调查；从150名受访者中，30名学生将参加后续的半结构化访谈。我们将以两种方式对参与者进行抽样：首先，来自历史上工程专业代表性不足的人群的学生；第二组是那些对干预的价值有强烈积极和消极反应的人。事前和事后的调查将包括一个有效的量表，未来自我连续性问卷，这些数据将帮助学生在一系列固定到流动的身份中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了变化，并为定性数据的分析提供信息。研究结果包括：为理解工科学生的职业期望建立一个起点，并通过早期职业工程师的生动和积极的例子推进促进职业准备的努力；视频干预的使用将可转移并适用于其他类型和规模的机构。特别是，该研究将调查历史上代表性不足的人群和第一代大学生的观点和潜在变化。此外，本项目发展了PI在工程教育研究中的能力。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。

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.