Expanding Access to and Participation in the Multiple Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development

该项目旨在扩大参与纵向发展调查多机构数据库（中场）的机构数量。 中场是一个资源，使学生的研究，包括纵向，整个人口数据的多个机构。保留，以各种方式衡量，一直是研究学生的成功在工程教育和高等教育的一般模式。 然而，简单地研究谁录取谁毕业并不能告诉学生通过工程课程的路径的完整故事，也不应该被用来作为一个机构的措施。一个全国性的纵向学生单位记录数据库将使工程项目和基准指标的研究一致。 中场已被证明有助于提供按不同工程学科、种族和性别分列的学生入学习惯数据。 然而，由于提供学生数据的机构数量很少（11个），该项目作为预测工具的价值也受到一定的限制，该项目将使中场数据库扩大到包括总共103个机构。在大学数据管理员、工程教育管理员、大容量数据归档专家和研究人员社区的投入下，这项工作将产生一个包含超过105万名学生的数据库。 更具体地说，这些数据将代表超过50%的美国工程本科学位，并增加数据集中机构的多样性。 中场现在将包括公共和私营机构，少数民族服务机构，以及来自广泛的研究分类机构。中场的绝对范围和经度将使高等教育研究的显着改善。它将使研究能力的发展，研究学生的特点（种族/民族/性别/社会阶层）和课程途径（包括课程）由机构和随着时间的推移。 此外，该项目将利用讲习班以及异步培训模块来教育更广泛的研究界，扩大有能力进行这项研究的研究人员网络，并分享除实际数据外的创新研究方法。最后，由于数据集包含了一段时间内所有学生的入学记录，研究人员可以研究所有学科的学生，而不仅仅是工程。由于中场所代表的学科的广泛性，该项目得到了工程，数学和物理科学（MPS），教育和人力资源（EHR）以及综合活动办公室（OIA）。在MPS理事会内部，这项工作得到了天文学和物理学的支持;在EHR内部，这项工作得到了EHR核心研究（ECR）计划的支持。 ECR计划强调基础STEM教育研究，产生该领域的基础知识。 投资是在关键领域是必不可少的，广泛的和持久的：干学习和干学习环境，扩大参与干，干劳动力发展。

This project seeks to expand the number of institutions participating in The Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD). MIDFIELD is a resource enabling the study of students that includes longitudinal, whole population data for multiple institutions. Retention, measured in various ways, has been the dominant mode of studying student success in engineering education and in higher education in general. However, simply studying who matriculates and who graduates does not tell the complete story of a student's path through the engineering curriculum nor should it be used as a measure of an institution. A national, longitudinal student unit-record database would enable study of engineering programs and benchmark metrics consistently. MIDFIELD has already been proven to facilitate data on student matriculation habits disaggregated across various engineering disciplines, ethnicities and genders. However is value as a predictive tool has also been somewhat limited due to the small (eleven) number of institutions who have provided their student data.This project will enable the expansion of the MIDFIELD database to include a total of 103 institutions. With input from university data managers, engineering education administrators, specialists in high volume data archiving and the community of researchers, this work will result in a database containing over 1.05 million students. More specifically the data will represent over 50% of the U.S. engineering undergraduate degrees awarded and increase the diversity of institutions in the dataset. MIDFIELD will now include public and private institutions, minority serving institutions, and institutions from a broad range of research classifications. The sheer scope and longitude of MIDFIELD will enable significant improvements in research in higher education. It will enable the development of research capacity to examine student characteristics (race/ethnicity/gender/social class) and curricular pathways (including coursework) by institution and over time. Furthermore, this project will utilize workshops as well as asynchronous training modules to educate the broader research community, expanding the network of researchers capable of conducting this research and the sharing of innovative research methods in addition to the actual data. Finally, because the dataset contains students records of all students matriculating over a period of time, researchers can study students across all disciplines, not solely engineering.Due to the broad nature of the disciplines represented by MIDFIELD, this project has cross-Directorate support from the Directorates of Engineering, Math and Physical Sciences (MPS), and Education and Human Resources (EHR) as well as the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA). Within the MPS Directorate, this work is supported by Astronomy, and Physics; within EHR, this work is supported by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.