No abstract

No abstract

This paper presents the progress and findings of the second stage of an NSF sponsored interdisciplinary research project that aims at developing guidelines of effective instructional design using collaborative PBL (CPBL) to boost the self-efficacy of minority students in engineering. To achieve the above goal, an exploratory case study was conducted, where we first utilized an innovative instructional design strategy called Participatory Design Approach to improve the curricular structure and CPBL model in a pilot course (EE440), and then analyzed the students' responses to the revised pedagogical model via mixed methods research based on both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. While this paper describes the complete course redesign process using participatory approach as well as the resulted pedagogical changes in the revised CPBL model, the focus is to share the research findings on the impact of course redesign on student learning. During the implementation of the revised CPBL in the pilot course, significant improvements in student participation and project performance were observed. Detailed data analysis reveals the underlying factors that led to the change of students' learning behaviors. Our research findings indicate that well designed PBL model helps to promote deeper learning.

No abstract

Jianyu Dong is a professor in electrical and computer engineering at CSULA. Her area of expertise is video compression/communication, multimedia networks, QoS, etc. As the PI of the NSF CCLI Project entitled "Enhancing undergraduate computer networking curriculum using remote project-based learning," she works closely with colleagues from computer science to redesign the network curriculum to integrate project-based and inquiry-based learning.c American Society for Engineering Education, 2016 Addressing the Learning Needs of Minority Students in Engineering through Participatory Design AbstractThis paper provides a holistic presentation of an interdisciplinary research project sponsored by NSF RIGEE (Research Initiative Grant in Engineering Education) program. Launched in 2013, this collaborative research studied the learning characteristics of minority students in a senior computer engineering course using Collaborative Project-based Learning (CPBL) pedagogy and leveraged the research findings to improve the instructional design using Participatory Design Approach to increase the success of underrepresented minority students. During the iterative implementation of the revised CPBL in 2014 and 2015, an embedded single-case study was conducted and multiple forms of data were collected to analyze the impact of the course redesign on (a) course related knowledge and skill outcomes, (b) domain-specific efficacy in relation to situated learning, and (c) student engagement (deep vs. surface learning) and team dynamics. In this paper, quantitative and qualitative data collected over the past three years was analyzed collectively, triangulated, and related to relevant research and theories. This process allowed us to work toward: (1) providing a more generalizable description of our overall findings, (2) gaining a greater understanding of the underlying classroom and course factors and their impact on the development of domain-specific efficacy among minority students, and (3) developing a set of guidelines to effectively incorporate participatory design based on the situated learning framework. The significance of the work presented in this paper highlights the need to accelerate current research on using participatory design as a means to empower minority students in engineering and technology related disciplines.