Research Initiation: Leveling the Playing Field: Using Instructional Strategies to Address Disparities in Task Orientation for Women and Underrepresented Group

女性和有色人种学生在工程本科课程中的代表性不足。虽然有许多因素导致代表性不足，但其后果之一是，有色人种的妇女和学生在多数文化占主导地位的群体中工作的动态可能面临一种不友好的气氛。基于团队的项目是机械工程课程中的常见做法，先前的研究表明，工程专业学生设计团队倾向于沿着与性别相关的路线划分任务，女性承担更多的管理和沟通相关任务，较少设计和制造任务。这项建议的重点是“公平竞争”，通过理解和解决学生团队中任务分配的差异，特别注意这与妇女和有色人种学生的关系。为此，项目小组建议评估两项旨在确保所有学生在小组学习环境中享有平等机会的潜在干预措施的有效性。第一个干预，称为个性化设计体验，为所有学生提供设计/制造任务的基线技能和经验，使他们能够在团队环境中更充分地参与这些任务。第二种干预，规定的角色，涉及课程教师有目的地分配学生完成特定的任务，作为小组项目的一部分，目的是破坏学生可能会做出的任务选择。这两种干预措施的有效性进行了研究，跟踪个别学生的贡献，他们的自信心，以及他们的偏好，在多个，基于团队的工程项目多年的特定角色。如果这些干预措施被证明是有效的，这项工作将有更广泛的影响，改善性别和种族多样性在工程本科课程和扩大人才管道工程专业在整个。 女性和其他代表性不足的群体（定义为非白人，非亚洲人）在本科工程课程中代表性不足的原因是多方面的。妇女和代表性不足的群体都可能面临一种不友好的气氛，在这种气氛中，多数文化以含蓄和明确的方式占主导地位，包括以团队为基础的项目的任务导向。基于团队的项目是机械工程设计课程的常见做法，这是本研究的背景。本研究采用基于队列的并行三角混合方法，探讨了四个问题：（1）哪些因素最能预测学生在团队设计项目中的任务选择，包括性别、种族和自信心？(2)个人设计经验在多大程度上可以在团队中创造更平衡的任务导向？(3)教师规定的角色如何影响任务定向？以及（4）这两种干预措施的效果在治疗期后是否持续？通过提供结构化的教育干预措施并研究其效果，项目团队希望开发一种可以在工程项目中转移的教学模式。反过来，这种模式可以用来驱动工程教师的专业发展。

Women and students of color are underrepresented in engineering undergraduate programs. Although there are many factors that contribute to underrepresentation, one of the consequences is that women and students of color potentially face an inhospitable climate in the dynamics of working in groups where majority culture dominates. Team-based projects are a common practice in mechanical engineering courses, and prior research suggests that engineering student design teams tend to divide tasks along gender-correlated lines, with women taking on more managerial and communications-related tasks and less design and fabrication tasks. This proposal focuses on "leveling the playing field" by understanding and addressing disparities in how tasks are divided within teams of students, with particular attention to how this relates to women and students of color. To do this, the project team proposes to evaluate the effectiveness of two potential interventions designed to ensure that all students have access to equal opportunities in group learning environments. The first intervention, called Individualized Design Experiences, provides all students with baseline skills and experience in design/fabrication tasks to enable them to more fully participate in these tasks when they are in team settings. The second intervention, Prescribed Roles, involves course instructors purposefully assigning students to complete specific tasks as part of a group project, with the intention of disrupting the task choices students might otherwise make. The effectiveness of these two interventions is studied by tracking individual students' contributions, their self-confidence, and their preference for particular roles in multiple, team-based engineering projects over multiple years. If these interventions are shown to be effective, this work will have the broader impact of improving gender and racial diversity within engineering undergraduate programs and expanding the talent pipeline within the engineering profession at large. The causes of underrepresentation of women and other underrepresented groups (defined as non-white, non-Asian) in undergraduate engineering programs are multifaceted. Both women and underrepresented groups potentially face an inhospitable climate where majority culture predominates in both implicit and explicit ways, including task orientation on team-based projects. Team-based projects are a common practice in mechanical engineering design courses, which is the setting for this proposed research study. Using a cohort-based concurrent triangulation mixed methods approach, our study addresses four research questions: (1) What factors best predict students' task choices on team-based design projects, including gender, race, and self-confidence? (2) To what extent do individual design experiences create more balanced task orientation in teams? (3) How do instructor prescribed roles affect task orientation? and (4) Do the effects of these two interventions persist after the treatment period? By providing structured educational interventions and studying their effects, the project team hopes to develop a model of instruction that can be transferred across engineering programs. In turn, this model can be used to drive professional development of engineering faculty.