scholarly journals Developing and Validating an Individual Sustainability Instrument with Engineering Students to Motivate Intentional Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 2885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Barrella ◽  
Elisabeth Spratto ◽  
Eric Pappas ◽  
Robert Nagel

This paper describes three studies that were conducted sequentially for purposes of validating the Individual Sustainability survey for use with undergraduate engineering students. During the first study, researchers administered the original 50-item Individual Sustainability survey to an undergraduate engineering class at a mid-sized University, using real and ideal self. Following exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the survey instrument was reduced to 36 items, and reframed to compare real self to ideal professional engineer. The new version was administered to three cohorts of engineering students at the same institution, and factor structures were analyzed again. In order to provide more stable parameter estimates, a third study with 34 items was run with engineering students in similar courses at four different institutions. The methods and results of all three studies are described, to justify the survey’s evolution. This is followed by a discussion of the final survey instrument and approaches for administering the survey to undergraduate engineering students, or adapting survey administration for other student populations. The instrument, in its current form, is an effective way to identify dissonance between one’s real and ideal conceptualizations of self, and help individual students identify opportunities for personal change and professional growth toward sustainability values and behaviors.

Author(s):  
Max Ullrich ◽  
David S. Strong

How undergraduate engineering students define their success and plan for their future differs notably amongst students. With a push for greater diversity and inclusion in engineering schools, it is valuable to also better understand the differences in these areas among different students to allow institutions to better serve the needs of these diverse groups.  The purpose of this research study is to explore students’ definition of success both in the present and projecting forward 5 to 10 years, as well as to understand to what level students reflect on, and plan for, the future. The proposed survey instrument for the pilot stage of this research includes 56 closed-ended questions and 3 open-ended questions. Evidence for the validity of the research instrument is established through a mixed-method pilot study. This paper will discuss the survey instrument, the pilot study, and outline plans for the full study.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle C. Howell Smith ◽  
Wayne A. Babchuk ◽  
Jared Stevens ◽  
Amanda L. Garrett ◽  
Sherry C. Wang ◽  
...  

Mixed methods–grounded theory (MM–GT) has emerged as a promising methodology that intersects the value of mixed methods with rigorous qualitative design. However, recent reviews have found that MM–GT empirical studies tend to lack procedural details. The purpose of this article is to apply the “best practices” for conducting MM–GT in a study designed to develop and then test a theoretical model for how undergraduate engineering students develop interest in the engineering PhD. This study contributes to the field of mixed methods research by (a) illustrating best practices for MM–GT, (b) providing an MM–GT scale development example, (c) demonstrating how an MM-GT scale could potentially bypass exploratory factor analysis and proceed directly to confirmatory factor analysis for testing psychometric properties, and showing how a joint display for data collection planning can be used to strengthen integration in an instrument development study.


Author(s):  
A. Grocutt ◽  
A. Barron ◽  
M. Khakhar ◽  
T.A. O'Neill ◽  
W.D. Rosehart ◽  
...  

The Engineers Canada Accreditation Board outlines 12 Canadian Engineering Graduate Attributes required for program accreditation. One of these attributes is Individual and Team Work. Since 2016, at the University of Calgary, there has been a voluntary, undergraduate-wide survey administered to the Schulich School of Engineering students every spring via an online platform. The purpose of the survey is to assess students’ perceived development of teamwork skills during their program, and identify avenues to improve program offerings. After four consecutive years of this survey, with sample sizes ranging from 683-973 students, there are three main trends that can be identified: students perceive teamwork skills as highly important for their future careers, there are noticeable differences between male and female students regarding teamwork experiences, and students value teamwork skills training and opportunities for peer feedback. Implications of these findings are that there are gendered teamwork experiences among undergraduate engineering students and more research is needed to understand interventions that can mitigate this.


Author(s):  
Wan Akmal Izzati Wan Mohd Zawawi ◽  
Khairiyah Mohd Yusof ◽  
Nur Fazirah Jumari ◽  
Nor Azlinda Azmi ◽  
Tengku Nur Zulaikha Tengku Malim Busu

Utilization of BLOSSOMS Thermodynamics Energy Conversion video to properly incorporate active learning techniques had been shown to increase the students’ performance in learning introductory Thermodynamics topics. In this study, the effectiveness of using BLOSSOMS Thermodynamics Energy Conver-sion video towards students’ learning in a classroom when adopted by lecturers who is not trained in active learning is investigated. Two groups of undergraduate engineering students from a control class and a treatment class were involved in this study. The students from the treatment class were taught by a lecturer using the BLOSSOMS Thermodynamics Energy Conversion video, while the students from control class underwent conventional lecture style. The students were given pre and post inventory tests and their results were analysed using SPSS. It was found that BLOSSOMS Thermodynamics Energy Conversion video without the proper implementation of active learning technique does not have a significant ef-fect on the individual learning gain of the inventory test among students. The uti-lization of the video could be more effective if the instructor is well-trained in ac-tive learning techniques.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-82
Author(s):  
Seung Youn (Yonnie) Chyung ◽  
Donald J. Winiecki ◽  
Gary Hunt ◽  
Carol M. Sevier

Team projects are increasingly used in engineering courses. Students may develop attitudes toward team projects from prior experience, and their attitudinal responses could influence their performance during team project-based learning in the future. Thus, instructors need to measure students’ attitudes toward team projects during their learner analysis to better understand students’ characteristics and be proactive in providing effective strategies to help students succeed in a team project environment. The purpose of our study was to develop a survey instrument that measures students’ attitudes toward team projects to be used as a learner analysis tool, derived from our local practical needs and due to the lack of appropriate existing instruments. The study was conducted at a mid-sized university in the northwestern United States during 2015-2016. After we generated an initial pool of 50 items, we administered the survey to 225 undergraduate engineering students, performed exploratory factor analysis on the data, and arrived at a four-factor solution of 20 items and a three-factor solution of 14 items. We tested the two competing solutions with another set of 330 undergraduate engineering students. Based on our confirmatory factor analysis results, we arrived at a three-factor model of 12 items as the finalized scale, which measures: (a) professional capacity building, (b) learning and problem-solving skills development, and (c) workload challenges. We call the scale, the Attitudes toward Team Projects Scale on Capacity, Learning, and Workload (ATPS-CLW). Suggestions for future research include continuous development, testing, and validation of the scale.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Floriana Irtelli ◽  
Federico Durbano ◽  
Barbara Marchesi

Every human psychic aspect, even the development of the Self, cannot be considered separately from the financial and cultural context in which it is inserted: ad a Matteo of fact the realization of individual freedom is correlated to broader economic and social changes, which influence the individual on self-realization. In the chapter, various theories about this topic and about the ideal self are explored, and it concludes by considering that self expression helps people to satisfy their real emotions and their real self, it also highlights the fact that self-realization and self-expression are among the highest needs on the human needs scale, and they affect human health.


Author(s):  
Bunga Ade Tama

Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menguji validitas konstruk dari skala presentasi diri online yang diadaptasi dari skala SPFBQ yang dikembangkan oleh Michikyan, Dennis, dan Subrahmanyam (2014). Presentasi diri online pada  Facebook memiliki tiga aspek, yaitu real self, false self dan ideal self. Data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini berasal dari subjek penelitian sebanyak 158 orang. Metode analisis faktor yang digunakan adalah confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) dengan program M.Plus 7. Pengujian validitas skala presentasi diri online pada penelitian ini dilakukan dengan satu model analisis.  The purpose of this study was to examine the construct validity of the online self presentation scale adapted from the SPFBQ scale developed by Michikyan, Dennis, and Subrahmanyam (2014). Online self presentation on Facebook has three aspects, namely real self, false self and ideal self. The data used in this study came from research subjects as many as 158 people. The factor analysis method used was confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with the M.Plus 7 program. Testing the validity of the online self-presentation scale in this study was carried out with one analysis model.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Burtscher ◽  
Jeannette Oostlander

Abstract. Team cognition plays an important role in predicting team processes and outcomes. Thus far, research has focused on structured cognition while paying little attention to perceptual cognition. The lack of research on perceptual team cognition can be attributed to the absence of an appropriate measure. To address this gap, we introduce the construct of perceived mutual understanding (PMU) as a type of perceptual team cognition and describe the development of a respective measure – the PMU-scale. Based on three samples from different team settings ( NTotal = 566), our findings show that the scale has good psychometric properties – both at the individual as well as at the team-level. Item parameters were improved during a multistage process. Exploratory as well as confirmatory factor analyses indicate that PMU is a one-dimensional construct. The scale demonstrates sufficient internal reliability. Correlational analyses provide initial proof of construct validity. Finally, common indicators for inter-rater reliability and inter-rater agreement suggest that treating PMU as a team-level construct is justified. The PMU-scale represents a convenient and versatile measure that will potentially foster empirical research on perceptual team cognition and thereby contribute to the advancement of team cognition research in general.


Methodology ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan C. Schmukle ◽  
Jochen Hardt

Abstract. Incremental fit indices (IFIs) are regularly used when assessing the fit of structural equation models. IFIs are based on the comparison of the fit of a target model with that of a null model. For maximum-likelihood estimation, IFIs are usually computed by using the χ2 statistics of the maximum-likelihood fitting function (ML-χ2). However, LISREL recently changed the computation of IFIs. Since version 8.52, IFIs reported by LISREL are based on the χ2 statistics of the reweighted least squares fitting function (RLS-χ2). Although both functions lead to the same maximum-likelihood parameter estimates, the two χ2 statistics reach different values. Because these differences are especially large for null models, IFIs are affected in particular. Consequently, RLS-χ2 based IFIs in combination with conventional cut-off values explored for ML-χ2 based IFIs may lead to a wrong acceptance of models. We demonstrate this point by a confirmatory factor analysis in a sample of 2449 subjects.


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