Embedding Personal Narratives in Engineering Courses to Improve Engineering Student Success

该项目旨在通过在工程学课程中嵌入讲故事活动，提高学生的坚持性，特别是在历史上被边缘化的学生群体中的坚持性，从而服务于国家利益。学生的归属感和工程认同感对学生在工程专业的持久度有预测作用。需要有意识地设计有效的教育干预措施来提高学生的归属感和工程认同感。这个项目将考察工程专业学生在遇到工程项目中智力最严格的部分时，如何让他们参与个人和职业反思活动，这会如何影响学生的坚持性。将在现有的工程课程中开发和实施讲故事课程，目标是二年级和三年级的工程学本科生。学生将学习如何撰写关于他们工程教育经历的个人叙事，并通过现场表演或录像与观众交流。每个学期都会有一个公开的讲故事课程，学生和更广泛的社区都会参加，在这个课程中，工科学生将有机会分享他们的故事。讲故事课程将通过在线公共资源库提供给工程教育界。该项目的目标是开发、实施和检验一种新的讲故事干预的机制和效果，旨在帮助形成和加强工科学生的自我观点。过去的研究表明，讲故事教学法可以支持身份认同的发展。然而，个人反思和讲故事通常不包括在专注于应用科学知识解决工程问题的传统工程课程中。这个项目将把讲故事和公开表演的元素融入到多门工程课程的教学中。工科本科生将学习讲故事的技巧，并将这些技巧应用于讲述他们在工程教育中的个人经历。使用混合方法，本项目将从学生的归属感、职业认同感和对专业的坚持性方面考察讲故事对学生成功的影响。这个项目将确定学生故事中与对学生成功结果最重要的影响相关的主题。这项研究将提供关于为什么讲故事作业提高学生成功的洞察力，以及哪些类型的故事对学生成功的影响最大。项目成果将有助于关于叙事身份的文献，并为后续改进讲故事作业的努力提供信息，以增强其对工科学生自我观点的影响。NSF IUSE：EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过参与的学生学习路径，该计划支持有前景的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。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。

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving student persistence, particularly among historically marginalized student groups, through storytelling activities embedded in engineering courses. Students’ sense of belonging and engineering identity are predictors of students’ persistence in in engineering programs. Effective educational interventions are needed that are intentionally designed to improve students’ sense of belonging and engineering identity. This project will examine how engaging engineering students in personal and professional reflection activities at a time when they are encountering the most intellectually rigorous part of their engineering programs affects student persistence. A storytelling curriculum will be developed and implemented in existing engineering courses and will target undergraduate engineering students in their second and third years. Students will learn how to write personal narratives about their engineering education experiences and communicate them to audiences through live performances or video recordings. Each semester will culminate in a public storytelling session attended by students and the broader community in which engineering students will have the opportunity to share their stories. The storytelling curriculum will be made available to the engineering education community through an online public repository.The goal of this project is to develop, implement, and examine the mechanisms and effects of a new storytelling intervention designed to help shape and reinforce engineering students’ self-view. Past work suggests that storytelling pedagogy can support identity development. However, individual reflection and storytelling are typically not included in a traditional engineering curriculum that is focused on the application of scientific knowledge to solve engineering problems. This project will incorporate the element of storytelling and public performance into the pedagogy of multiple engineering courses. Undergraduate engineering students will learn storytelling techniques and apply these techniques to narratively communicate their personal experiences in engineering education. Using a mixed methods approach, this project will examine the efficacy of storytelling on student success in terms of students’ sense of belonging, professional identity, and persistence in the major. This project will identify themes in students’ stories that are associated with the most substantial impact on student success outcomes. This study will provide insights on why storytelling assignments enhance student success, and what types of stories have the most impact on student success. Project results will contribute to the literature on narrative identity and inform subsequent efforts to refine storytelling assignments to enhance its influence on aspects of engineering students’ self-view. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.