Professional Societies Making Engineering Outreach Work: Good Input Results in Good Output

Abstract

This paper addresses the current and potential impact of the outreach activities that engineering professional societies (and others) offer to children and young adults and describes how to advance the outreach state of the art by using methods and tools that most engineers routinely use in their technical projects but do not typically transfer to an outreach project: research, training, adoption of best practices, and awareness of user needs and culture. Also critical, assessment (establishing goals, identifying outcomes metrics, and evaluating success) is discussed in the companion paper "Outcomes-Based Assessment: Driving Outreach Program Effectiveness" published in this special issue. Specifically, the paper discusses challenges facing professional society outreach efforts; key and proven practices for outreach success, including assessment; and the use of social science research in designing outreach programs.

Board 7: Work in Progress: Toy Adaptation as Engineering Outreach to Diverse High School Students

“…Gathering data on effectiveness is further complicated by issues in methodology, including data that is self-reported and tightly clustered -for example, all participants reporting high scores for enjoyment and perceived learning [27] as we found in our study. In addition, outreach initiatives targeting underrepresented students may be prone to failure for a variety of reasons, including absence of assessment and unintentional sabotage by volunteers who do not represent diverse groups or who lack awareness of cultural differences and their own implicit bias [20].…”

“…Most reports of service learning outreach focus on the experience of undergraduate and graduate student volunteers, including recent studies of efforts to recruit women [15,16]. Other studies involving K-12 outreach do not address effectiveness of specific materials in engaging underrepresented students, but instead focus on general best practices, program development, or assessment [17][18][19][20]. Additionally, groundbreaking studies involving best practices in teaching engineering to K-12 students have not been within the context of outreach, but instead have focused on formal classroom teaching approaches in general such as problem-, inquiry-and project-based approaches [21].…”

Lessons Learned in K-12 Engineering Outreach and Their Impact on Program Planning (Evaluation)

“…Jeffers et al [3] note the decline may be a result of students' limited understanding of engineering and Rockland et al [11] and Yates [12] note that students are just not exposed to relevant topics. Similarly, Bogue et al [10] state that there is little evidence that outreach activities effectively reach women and those from underrepresented minorities. If the percentage of such groups in engineering is to remain comparable with percentages of the United States' population, organizations must focus their efforts on these groups.…”

“…Likewise, enrollment in undergraduate engineering programs has also declined in years past [6,7]. Particularly, the number of females and underrepresented minorities pursuing engineering degrees does not correlate with percentages in other disciplines [8][9][10]. Jeffers et al [3] note the decline may be a result of students' limited understanding of engineering and Rockland et al [11] and Yates [12] note that students are just not exposed to relevant topics.…”

“…If the percentage of such groups in engineering is to remain comparable with percentages of the United States' population, organizations must focus their efforts on these groups. Consequently, an abundance of outreach activities exist throughout the country with a common goal to increase the awareness of and interest in engineering [2,3,[5][6][7][8][9][10][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Sullivan et al [13] and Jeffers et al [3] list a number of activities typically taken by outreach programs, which generally fall into three focus areas: 1) students, 2) teachers, and 3) curriculum development.…”