Board 45: A mandatory early internship course: An analysis of engineering identity of students.

Magdalena Villaseca; Juan Felipe Calderon; Maria Elena Truyol

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: College Industry Partnerships Division (CIP) Poster Session
Tagged Division: College Industry Partnerships Division (CIP)
Page Count: 10
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--42816
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/42816
Download Count: 125

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Paper Authors

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Magdalena Villaseca Universidad Andres Bello

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Assistant professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the Universidad Andres Bello. Business Engineer from Universidad del Pacífico and MBA from Universidad Mayor, with more than 11 years of professional experience in different industries, mainly in prominent private and public institutions, national and international, in positions of trust.

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Juan Felipe Calderon Universidad Andres Bello, Viña del Mar, Chile

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Juan Felipe Calderón received the bachelor's in computer science and MSc and PhD degrees in engineering sciences from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
He is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the Universidad Andres Bello. His research interests are learning design supported by technology, innovation in engineering education, sustainability in cloud computing, technological infrastructure.

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Maria Elena Truyol Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile orcid.org/0000-0003-1153-4967

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María Elena Truyol, Ph.D., is full professor and researcher of the Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB). She graduated as physics teacher (for middle and high school), physics (M.Sc.) and Ph.D. in Physics at Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. In 2013 she obtained a three-year postdoctoral position at the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her focus is set on educational research, physics education, problem-solving, design of instructional material, teacher training and gender studies. She teaches undergraduate courses related to environmental management, energy and fundamentals of industrial processes at the School of Engineering, UNAB. She currently is coordinating the Educational and Academic Innovation Unit at the School of Engineering (UNAB) that is engaged with the continuing teacher training in active learning methodologies at the three campuses of the School of Engineering (Santiago, Viña del Mar and Concepción, Chile). She authored several manuscripts in the science education area, joined several research projects, participated in international conferences with oral presentations and key note lectures and serves as referee for journals, funding institutions and associations.

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Abstract

According to the literature, engineering identity significantly affects motivation and retention among students, and engagement and involvement in the industry seem crucial in attaining such identity. For this evidence-based paper, we report the experience of a new mandatory early internship course in industrial engineering programs at a large private university. In 2020 the Universidad Andres Bello School of Engineering significantly changed its curricula. One of the most significant changes was the redesign of internships to address observations made by peers during previous accreditation processes that pointed out the lack of supervision and guidance during students’ internships. Thus, we designed a mandatory internship course to complement and enhance students’ experience before and during their first approach to the working world through mentorship and webinars that intend to support the role and identity of future engineers. For one term, students from the program’s second year participated in initiatives with the industry, attending webinars with high executives and recognizing people from the public and private sectors. That presented them with several areas where they could perform their profession and the challenges for their future engineering role. Also, they participate in small groups with a teacher who guides them before and during their internship to better give them tools to introduce them to the opportunities available in the industry and empower them as engineers. Consequently, this paper intends to assess the impact of these new redesign courses on students’ engineering identity. We collected data through a validated survey from three different samples of students currently enrolled in Industrial Engineering programs to evaluate whether these groups have significant differences regarding their engineering identity. The first group included students presently going through the mandatory early internship course. The second group involved students at the end of their first year who had not yet gone through this class. The final group included third-year students that went through the former model of internships, without mentorship or course associated, used as a control group. We found significant differences between one of the items that would impact students’ engineering identity.

Citation
Format

Villaseca, M., & Calderon, J. F., & Truyol, M. E. (2023, June), Board 45: A mandatory early internship course: An analysis of engineering identity of students. Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42816

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - According to the literature, engineering identity significantly affects motivation and retention among students, and engagement and involvement in the industry seem crucial in attaining such identity.
For this evidence-based paper, we report the experience of a new mandatory early internship course in industrial engineering programs at a large private university. In 2020 the Universidad Andres Bello School of Engineering significantly changed its curricula. One of the most significant changes was the redesign of internships to address observations made by peers during previous accreditation processes that pointed out the lack of supervision and guidance during students’ internships. Thus, we designed a mandatory internship course to complement and enhance students’ experience before and during their first approach to the working world through mentorship and webinars that intend to support the role and identity of future engineers. For one term, students from the program’s second year participated in initiatives with the industry, attending webinars with high executives and recognizing people from the public and private sectors. That presented them with several areas where they could perform their profession and the challenges for their future engineering role. Also, they participate in small groups with a teacher who guides them before and during their internship to better give them tools to introduce them to the opportunities available in the industry and empower them as engineers.
Consequently, this paper intends to assess the impact of these new redesign courses on students’ engineering identity. We collected data through a validated survey from three different samples of students currently enrolled in Industrial Engineering programs to evaluate whether these groups have significant differences regarding their engineering identity. The first group included students presently going through the mandatory early internship course. The second group involved students at the end of their first year who had not yet gone through this class. The final group included third-year students that went through the former model of internships, without mentorship or course associated, used as a control group. We found significant differences between one of the items that would impact students’ engineering identity.


AU  - Magdalena Villaseca
AU  - Juan Felipe Calderon
AU  - Maria Elena Truyol
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 45: A mandatory early internship course: An analysis of engineering identity of students.
UR  - https://strategy.asee.org/42816
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--42816
ER  -