Research Initiation: Enhancing Engineering Students’ Innovation Self-Efficacy through Design of K-12 STEM Projects

创新是经济增长和可持续发展的重要动力。在当今全球化和快速变化的世界中学习和工作需要能够创新思维并产生新颖想法的工程师。该项目的重点是创新自我效能感（伊势）的工程专业学生，它衡量一个人的信念，他们的能力，执行创新设计。该项目正在调查如何通过课程干预（即，这是一个为全球受众设计的K-12 STEM项目），将在工程专业本科生中开展，并将支持工程教育领域的新研究人员社区。该研究的成果将产生新的，以证据为基础的教学实践，以发展学生的创新自我效能，这有助于形成谁是响应快速变化的社会的需求的工程师。本研究的预期社会效益将是：1）通过将结果传播到与标准一致的课程资源，促进K-12 STEM教育活动在环境工程领域的发展，这将为全球K-12教育工作者提供免费访问，2）从我们多样化的学生群体中抽取三名本科生研究助理，以及3）为公立学校STEM教师提供专业发展机会，他们将在以工程为重点的活动设计中合作。在这项研究中，基于创新自我效能（伊势）的课程干预将被探索作为一种手段，以鼓励创新能力到工程专业的学生，这有助于走向一个更具创新性的工程课程，设计过程，和工作场所。本研究将在一门有针对性的课程中实施基于ISE的教学实践。学生的伊势发展程度将通过五个主要的研究问题来衡量，这些问题旨在独立地捕捉伊势每个行为组成部分的影响：1）干预在多大程度上改变了学生提出挑战假设和现有事态的问题的能力？2)干预在多大程度上改变了学生思考通过研究世界而产生的新想法的能力？3)干预在多大程度上改变了学生对实验的参与，使他们探索各种选择并产生新颖的设计？4)这种干预在多大程度上改变了学生建立能产生新思想的网络的能力？以及5）干预如何增强学生将不同和多样化领域的想法联系起来的能力？将使用混合方法（序贯设计）研究来回答这些研究问题。这些组成部分的变化将使用社会科学文献中发现的经过验证的工具进行量化，并在干预措施结束时与重点小组一起进行，以产生定性叙述，增加定量措施的价值。这项研究的结果将促进工程教育界对K-12 STEM项目设计如何用于全球受众的知识，以有意实现学生有针对性的自我效能发展。这项研究的成果将有可能实现新的研究途径，在ISE混合，以证据为基础的教学实践和工程courses.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

Innovation is an important driver of economic growth and sustainable development. Learning and working in today’s global and fast-changing world requires engineers who can think innovatively and generate novel ideas. This project focuses on the innovation self-efficacy (ISE) of engineering students, which measures one’s belief in their capacity to execute innovative designs. The project is investigating how ISE is enhanced by a curricular intervention (i.e., a K-12 STEM project designed for a global audience) among undergraduate engineering students and will support a community of new researchers in engineering education. The outcomes of the study will generate new, evidence-based teaching practices to develop students’ self-efficacy in innovation which aids in the formation of engineers who are responsive to the needs of a rapidly changing society. The desired societal benefits of this study will be: 1) advancement of K-12 STEM educational activities in the field of environmental engineering through dissemination of results to a standards-aligned curricular resource, which will provide free access to global K-12 educators, 2) incorporating three undergraduate research assistants drawn from our diverse student population, and 3) providing a professional development opportunity for a public-school STEM teacher who will be partnered in the engineering-focused activity design. In this study, a curricular intervention grounded in innovative self-efficacy (ISE) will be explored as a means to encourage innovational competence into engineering students, which contributes toward a more innovative engineering curriculum, design process, and workplace. This study will actualize an ISE-grounded teaching practice in a targeted course. The extent of students’ ISE development will be measured by five overarching research questions designed to independently capture the impact of each behavioral components of ISE: 1) To what extent does the intervention shift students’ ability to raise questions that challenge assumptions and existing states of affairs?; 2) To what extent did the intervention shift students’ ability to think of new ideas that come though studying the world?; 3) To what extent does the intervention shift students’ engagement in experimentation to explore options and generate novel designs?; 4) To what extent does the intervention shift students’ ability in creating networks that could lead to new ideas?; and 5) How are students’ ability to connect ideas from different and diverse areas enhanced by the intervention? A mixed method (sequential design) study will be used to answer those research questions. Shifts in those components will be quantified using a blend of validated instruments found in the social sciences literature and will be accompanied by focus groups at the end of the intervention to generate qualitative narratives that add value to the quantitative measures. The outcomes of the study will advance the engineering education community’s knowledge of how K-12 STEM project design for a global audience might be used to intentionally achieve targeted self-efficacy development in students. The outcomes of this research will have the potential to realize new research avenues in ISE-blended, evidence-based teaching practices and pedagogies in engineering curriculum.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.