Uncovering the Role of Emotion in Engineering Education within an Integrated Curricular Experience

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the role of emotion within an interdisciplinary, projectbased design studio as implemented in 2009 and 2010. This qualitative research study involves a narrative analysis of data collected over two semesters of the design studios to identify the types of emotions described, the change in these emotions over the semester, and the interaction of these emotions with learning. This analysis is conducted on students' written reflections, as it is important to understand emotions from the perspective of the student and within the desired context. More specifically, the research study consisted of a narrative analysis of individual reflection reports written by students after participating in multiple reflective activities over the course of one semester. Two student narratives are highlighted in this analysis. The analysis of this data indicates that emotions at the high end of the activation spectrum, for example angry, tense, and excited, were described by the students as leading to critical learning incidents. The students described how their emotions changed over time as participating in the overall class or an individual project. The presence of high-activation emotions within the student narratives indicates that higher order thinking strategies were present. Additionally, the presence of negative emotions at the beginning of projects and positive emotions later in the project suggests a need for more scaffolding of projects and activities at the beginning of the time period and less later in the project or activity.

Using Positioning Theory to Study the Role of Emotions in Engineering Problem Solving: Methodological Issues and Recommendations for Future Research

“…Research on emotions in engineering education is rapidly increasing in recent years, but most studies conducted so far take their theoretical departure in individual and cognitivist perspectives (Kellam et al, 2011;Lönngren, Adawi, Bellocchi, et al, (forthcoming); . In this paper, we have introduced an analytical framework for studying emotions through positioning theory and multimodal analysis.…”

“…Most of the existing studies on emotions in engineering education take their theoretical departure in individual and cognitivist perspectives on emotions (Kellam, Constantino, Walther, & Sochacka, 2011;. The focus of that research is on emotions as individual competencies or experiences, such as empathy (Hess, Miller, Higbee, Fore, & Wallace, 2020;Walther, Miller, & Sochacka, 2017), shame (Huff, Okai, Shanachilubwa, Sochacka, & Walther, 2021), and frustration (Estrada & Atwood, 2012).…”

Engineering students' epistemic affect and meta‐affect in solving ill‐defined problems

“…Affect is part of doing and being an engineer. Kellam and colleagues have studied the activation (level of energy associated with the emotion) and valence (positivity or negativity) of emotions experienced by engineering students (Kellam et al, 2011(Kellam et al, , 2015(Kellam et al, , 2018. They found connections between emotions and learning: the presence of high-activation emotions is often tied to high-order thinking and learning (including metacognition), while low activation is associated with lower order learning such as memorization.…”

“…Even though engineering work is often cast as a rational process (Lönngren et al, 2020), emotions have been found and studied in engineering students (Aleong et al, 2018;Ge & Leifer, 2020;Kellam et al, 2011Kellam et al, , 2018Lönngren, Bellocchi, et al, 2021). Emotions are one aspect of students' affect, which collectively refers to the emotions experienced during disciplinary activity as well as the less changeable beliefs, attitudes, and values that a student holds within or about the subject (DeBellis & Goldin, 2006).…”

Emotions Experienced by First-Year Engineering Students During Programming Tasks

“…Some work has, nevertheless, started to emerge in the engineering education research community. One qualitative research study uses narrative analysis of student reflections to understand the role of emotions in learning while experiencing an integrated curriculum within an interdisciplinary, project-based design studio (Kellam, Costantino, Walther, & Sochacka, 2011). The findings suggest that students at the start of the semester were anxious and frustrated, but as the semester progressed, they began to feel more positive emotions as they learned more self-regulation strategies.…”