Preparing university students to lead K-12 engineering outreach programmes: a design experiment

ABSTRACT

This paper describes an engineering outreach programme designed to increase the interest of under-represented youth in engineering and to disseminate pre-engineering design challenge materials to K-12 educators and volunteers. Given university students’ critical role as facilitators of the outreach programme, researchers conducted a two-year design experiment to examine the programme's effectiveness at preparing university students to lead pre-engineering activities. Pre- and post-surveys incorporated items from the Student Engagement sub-scale of the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale. Surveys were analysed using paired-samples t-test. Interview and open-ended survey data were analysed using discourse analysis and the constant comparative method. As a result of participation in the programme, university students reported a gain in efficacy to lead pre-engineering activities. The paper discusses programme features that supported efficacy gains and concludes with a set of design principles for developing learning environments that effectively prepare university students to facilitate pre-engineering outreach programmes.

KEYWORDS:

• Engineering education
• outreach programmes
• self-efficacy

Notes on contributors

Anika B. Anthony, PhD, is Associate Professor of Educational Studies at The Ohio State University. She investigates innovation in education, educational technology leadership, and the systemic nature of school organisations.

Howard Greene, PhD, directs K-12 Education Outreach for the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University. Prior to his present position at Ohio State, he worked in medical device development and was a professor of Electronics Engineering Technology. He received PhD and MS degrees from The Ohio State University in Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, respectively.

Paul E. Post, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University. He investigates technological literacy and innovation in technology and engineering education curriculum.

Andrew Parkhurst is a Lecturer in the College of Engineering, Engineering Education Innovation Center at The Ohio State University. He holds BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University.

Xi Zhan is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Administration programme at The Ohio State University. She studies leadership of specialised Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) schools.

Notes

1. K-12 is an abbreviation of the US kindergarten (K) through 12th grade (12) educational system. In the US, youth ages 4–10 typically enrol in grades K-5, which correspond to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) level 1 primary education; Youth ages 11–13 typically enrol in grades 6–8 (also known as middle school), which correspond with ISCED level 2 lower secondary education; and Youth ages 14–18 typically enrol in grades 9–12, which correspond to ISCED level 3 upper secondary education (UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2011).

2. Throughout this paper, the term ‘student' denotes university engineering students, while the term ‘pupil' denotes youth enrolled in K-12 (primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary) schools.