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Board 33: Persistence of First-year Engineering Majors with a Design-based Chemistry Laboratory Curriculum In- and Out-of-Sequence

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Conference

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Tampa, Florida

Publication Date

June 15, 2019

Start Date

June 15, 2019

End Date

June 19, 2019

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topic

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

8

DOI

10.18260/1-2--32326

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/32326

Download Count

341

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Paper Authors

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Corey Payne University of Florida

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Kent J. Crippen University of Florida Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-8981-2376

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Kent Crippen is a Professor of STEM education in the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research involves the design, development, and evaluation of STEM cyberlearning environments as well as scientist-teacher forms of professional development. Operating from a design-based research perspective, this work focuses on using innovative, iterative and theoretically grounded design for the dual purpose of addressing contemporary, complex, in situ learning problems while concurrently generating new theoretical insight related to the process of learning and the relationships among the people, tools and context of the problem space.

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Lorelie Imperial

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School of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, University of Florida

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Chang-Yu Wu University of Florida Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-2100-8816

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Dr. Chang-Yu Wu is Professor and Head of the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences at the University of Florida. His teaching and research interests are in air pollution control, aerosol, incineration and engineering education. He has published more than 130 refereed journal articles, given more than 260 conference presentations and delivered 70+ invited speeches. He has received numerous recognizing his achievements in research and education, including the Lyman A. Ripperton Environmental Educator Award from Air & Waste Management Association in 2015 and the New Teacher Award from SE Section of American Society for Engineering Education in 2001.

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Philip J. Brucat University of Florida

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Department of Chemistry

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Maria Korolev University of Florida

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Maria Korolev is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida.

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Abstract

ChANgE Chem is a curriculum reform model that uses Design Challenges to translate chemistry concepts and laboratory protocols into contextualized problems and methods unique to the way engineering students are expected to learn, think and collaborate. This unique approach is designed to maintain motivation towards an engineering major in the first year while students are taking general chemistry requirements by helping them to better understand the profession and practice. For engineering majors, contextualizing the learning of chemistry in such a way is theorized to strengthen the connection between their knowledge of chemistry and its application in everyday work as an engineer, which should support persistence. This poster reports on a field study across the first semester course for three groups taking general chemistry laboratory for engineers, comparing outcomes for the use of the new curriculum with a more typical business-as-usual approach. This quasi-experimental study compared self-efficacy, academic and career persistence at four milestones for students taking the course in-sequence (fall) versus out-of-sequence (spring). From the institutional perspective, out-of-sequence students are different due to some outside factor(s), which imply that they may face greater persistence related issues. The results reveal a maintenance of self-efficacy across the semester for students using the new curriculum regardless of sequence, compared to an overall decrease for the business-as-usual group, which is what would be predicted by the literature as the norm. No changes in academic or professional persistence were detected for any groups. This suggests that the new curriculum can be effective for promoting academic persistence for students in the first year, regardless of when they take it. However, out-of-sequence students started with and finished with lower levels of self-efficacy, which supports the notion that sequencing is likely an indicator of issues that threaten their persistence. Plans for additional revision to the approach and further study are also discussed.

Payne, C., & Crippen, K. J., & Imperial, L., & Wu, C., & Brucat, P. J., & Korolev, M. (2019, June), Board 33: Persistence of First-year Engineering Majors with a Design-based Chemistry Laboratory Curriculum In- and Out-of-Sequence Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32326

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