Quantitative analysis methods used to evaluate student’s sociotechnical engineering aptitude

PROJECT NUMBER: 51

AUTHOR: Brandon Dickerson, Electrical Engineering

MENTOR: Stephanie Claussen, Electrical Engineering | MENTOR: Kathryn Johnson, Electrical Engineering

ABSTRACT

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Engineering education emphasizes the technical aspects of engineering but oftentimes does not include its social dimensions. These social aspects are not typically learned until the engineer begins their career in industry. Our research team has been focused on understanding the formation of sociotechnical thinking in core engineering courses. Thus, our goal is to increase the understanding of the methods by which students form their abilities to engineer a solution, while thinking socio-technically, and how to integrate these findings to other courses. Our research includes qualitative and quantitative analysis of student responses to pre- and post-course surveys measuring sociotechnical understanding. This poster focuses primarily on statistical analysis of the quantitative survey data. After students took the pre- and post-surveys, their responses were compiled anonymously. Then, a range of statistical analysis techniques were used to see their change in sociotechnical habits of mind across the course. Performing this analysis on both control and treatment groups ensured that the team could identify any significant differences in the students who were exposed to sociotechnical learning methods.

VISUAL PRESENTATION

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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Brandon Dickerson is a fourth year Electrical Engineering student at the Colorado School of Mines and is graduating in August of 2020. He joined this research team as he has always had a passion for teaching and plans to become an engineering professor after his time in the field.

Sponsored by Phillips 66