Research Initiation: Promoting first year engineering students agency to navigate their college experience through time management and metacognition skills

高等教育的学生群体在不断变化，这使得关注新一代在实现学业目标时面临的过多挑战变得至关重要。为了履行我们支持他们成功的承诺，我们需要利用他们的优势，并支持他们应对挑战。此外，工程学的淘汰文化需要被一种文化所取代，这种文化支持更广泛的学生多样性的成功，并对成功意味着什么有更大的概念化。随着不得不工作支付大学学费的学生比例不断增加，让学生充分利用他们有限的时间是很重要的。学习时间管理技能对实现这一目标大有帮助。同样，元认知技能的发展，即思考一个人的思维的能力，对于学生参与成功的循环至关重要。这个研究项目将调查时间管理和元认知技能对学生代理和随后的成功之间的潜在联系，这些成功通过传统的指标（如成绩、GPA和留校率）以及非传统的成功方法（如幸福感）来衡量。这个项目的意义在于，它与多样化的途径和通过工程的目标一致，因为它旨在通过他们的工程培训支持更广泛的不同学生的成功。此外，将允许首席研究员，一个在传统工程领域的成熟的研究人员，通过在该领域的专家指导经验，正式从事工程教育研究。本项目将探讨翻译实践的研究，以支持日益多样化的学生群体的成功。该项目旨在探讨工程学生在时间管理和元认知技能方面的收获在多大程度上促进了他们在该领域的整体成功。因此，我们在重新定义成功的框架内进行这项研究，包括传统成功的衡量标准（如成绩，保留率）以及非传统的衡量标准（如幸福感）。我们的设计依赖于第一次干预，包括学生想象他们可能成功的自我，以产生一个实现它的计划。随后将进行干预，为学生提供元认知技能并提高他们的时间管理技能。在一个学期中，将使用已建立的工具进行重复测量，以探索这些技能的纵向发展。此外，将在第一年的第二学期对这些知识和技能的保留情况进行评估，以探讨干预措施的有效性。最后，学生对这些干预措施的影响的看法以及他们对目标技能发展的持续挑战将通过访谈进行定性探讨。研究设计将允许研究周期的两次迭代，这将提供可传播给其他机构的精炼材料，供他们使用，以提高工程学生的元认知和时间管理技能。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。

The student body in higher education keeps changing, making it critical to pay attention to the plethora of challenges that new generations face to achieve their academic goals. To honor our commitment to support their success, we need to capitalize on their strengths as well as supporting the navigation of their challenges. In addition, the weed-out culture of engineering needs to be replaced with a culture that supports the success of a wider diversity of students and a larger conceptualization of what it means to be successful. As the proportion of students having to work to pay for college keeps increasing, it is important to equip students to make the best of their scarce time. The learning of time management skills would go a long way to support that goal. Similarly, the development of metacognitive skills, the ability to think about one's thinking, is essential for students to engage in cycles of success. This research project will investigate the potential link between time management and metacognition skills on student agency and subsequent success as measured by traditional metrics such as grades, GPA, and retention, as well as non-traditional approaches to success, like wellbeing. The significance of this project is that it aligns with the goal of diversifying pathways to and through engineering, as it is designed to support a wider range of diverse students’ success through their engineering training. In addition, will allow the Principal Investigator, a well-established researcher in a traditional engineering field, to formally engage in engineering education research through a mentored experience with experts in the field.This project will explore the research to practice translation towards supporting the success of an increasingly diverse body of students. The project is designed to explore to what extent gains in time management and metacognition skills of engineering students advance their holistic success in the field. Therefore, we frame this research within a redefinition of success that includes measures of traditional success (e.g. grades, retention) as well as non-traditional measures (e.g. wellbeing). Our design relies on a first intervention involving students’ imagining their possible successful selves in order to generate a plan to achieve it. An intervention to provide students with metacognitive skills and enhance their time management skills will follow. Repeated measures with established instruments will be taken through one semester to explore the longitudinal development of such skills. In addition, the retention of such knowledge and skills will be gauged during the second semester of their first year to explore the effectiveness of the interventions. Finally, students’ perceptions of the impact of such interventions and their persisting challenges to the development of the targeted skills will be explored qualitatively through interviews. The research design will allow for two iterations of the research cycle which will provide refined materials that can be disseminated to other institutions for their use to promote metacognitive and time management skills of engineering students.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.