Nathan Mentzer

Design thinking is critical in engineering and a fundamental for secondary students in introductory technology and engineering courses. The goal of this investigation was to measure impacts of a simple primer called Learning by Evaluating on students’ design process. Students in introductory high school design courses were introduced to the primer as part of a treatment group. A comparison group did not receive the primer. Design documentation was collected in the form of students’ design journals which were evaluated using a rubric. Results showed no significant differences in design journal scores between the group that received the treatment and the group that did not. While the primer did not result in measurable differences in design documentation, an interesting discovery emerged during the analysis. Design documentation, regardless of group, was not well aligned with standard practice. This discovery may warrant further investigation into how design documentation, a key design practice, is being implemented in classrooms and what kinds of support teachers may need to implement design with fidelity.

Engaging more students in STEM fields is a growing priority. This pilot study examined the impacts of the Neupulator, a novel co-robotics curriculum in which secondary students are engaged in robotic design activities where they use their own muscle signals measured by an EMG sensor to control a robotic arm. Framed within an assistive technology context, the curriculum emphasizes human–robot collaboration and socially relevant design challenges to enhance students’ engineering self-efficacy and motivation. The study involved 177 students across five Indiana classrooms, with 131 consenting to participate. Using a retrospective pre–post design, we measured changes in four self-efficacy subconstructs (general, experimental, tinkering, and design) and four motivation subconstructs (intrinsic, identified regulation, extrinsic, and amotivation). Results showed statistically significant, medium-sized gains across all self-efficacy subconstructs, indicating that students felt more capable of engaging in engineering tasks after completing the curriculum. In contrast, motivation scores showed no significant changes, likely reflecting ceiling effects given high baseline levels in this elective course context. Findings demonstrate that secondary teachers can successfully implement this technically complex co-robotics platform after only one day of professional development, and that students benefit from hands-on mastery experiences embedded in a human-centered engineering framework. As a pilot for a larger NSF-funded study, these results suggest that co-robotics curricula framed around socially relevant applications can play a critical role in strengthening engineering self-efficacy, with future research needed to explore broader impacts in required courses and diverse student populations.

As HyFlex instruction has gained popularity in higher education, instructors face new demands when developing skills tailored to dual-modality teaching. While prior studies have examined instructors’ experiences with HyFlex through single-point surveys or interviews, researchers have yet to explore new instructors’ adaptation to HyFlex teaching over time. This qualitative study with sequential qualitative-quantitative mixed data analysis investigates the longitudinal HyFlex teaching experiences of two new instructors to understand how their perceptions, challenges, and instructional practices evolved throughout a semester in undergraduate, project-based design thinking course. Data were collected through weekly reflections and interviews over ten weeks across semester. We employed sequential qualitative-quantitative mixed analysis, combining inductive thematic analysis, qualitative time series analysis, and frequency analysis using text mining. Results revealed that new instructors primarily focused on technology integration, class preparation, engaging both remote and in-person students, setting expectations, and defining HyFlex instruction. Frequency analysis showed that technology integration was the most discussed theme, while defining HyFlex was the least. The findings were interpreted through the lens of the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. Instructors perceived Technological and Pedagogical Knowledge as the most needed TPACK domain for improving teaching in HyFlex as the most needed for improving instruction in HyFlex teaching. Practical implications for teacher development and institutional support are discussed, along with recommendations for future research.

Although HyFlex teaching has been studied for decades and has become part of the teaching norm since the 2020 pandemic, studies have generally not investigated the learning experiences of students with disabilities in HyFlex classrooms. This study compared the basic psychological needs (BPN) and engagement of undergraduate students who did (SwA) and did not (SwoA) request academic disability accommodations in an introductory, active learning, human-centered design thinking course, a core component of engineering technology education. Data were collected from 3748 primarily first-year undergraduate engineering technology students between fall 2021 and spring 2024, 126 of whom requested disability accommodation through the disability office. The data sources consisted of an end-of-course survey, in which students reported their basic psychological satisfaction level on a Likert scale and described their BPN experiences and engagement in response to open-ended survey questions. As a novel contribution, this study integrates the descriptive analysis of Likert-scale measures with textual- and word-level sentiment analysis, advancing conceptual understanding of reported BPN satisfaction and engagement and revealing divergent patterns across analytic approaches. While the SwA group reported lower scores across all BPN constructs compared to their counterparts, the highest number of them provided positive feedback statements across all BPN domains. Conversely, the SwoA group reported higher BPN scores across all constructs, yet the highest number of them used negative sentiments in their responses across all BPN constructs. The majority of SwA provided positive feedback on autonomy satisfaction, while the majority of SwoA’s positive feedback was on relatedness to the instructor. Future directions for advancing engineering technology education and disability data collection in higher education are provided.

This study explores how Learning by Evaluating (LbE) can be integrated into the 5E instructional model to support Technology and Engineering Education. LbE, influenced by comparative judgment, engages students in analyzing peer work to foster reflection, design reasoning, and iterative thinking. Using qualitative content analysis of teacher interviews, this research investigates how LbE can contribute to each phase of the 5E model: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. Findings suggest that LbE enhances engagement during the Engage phase by leveraging real-world examples and peer comparisons to activate interest and prior knowledge. In the Explore phase, it aids design ideation and constraint recognition, though students often need structure to express their insights. During the Explain phase, LbE supports analytical thinking by helping students distinguish strong and weak designs, yet misconceptions may persist without debriefing. In the Elaborate phase, LbE reinforces the value of feedback and supports refinement of criteria and constraints, serving as a primer for redesign. In the Evaluate phase, it promotes reflection and group communication, though many students struggle to articulate evaluative reasoning without scaffolding. Overall, LbE offers a flexible and impactful way to deepen learning when intentionally embedded across the 5E framework. However, its success depends on thoughtful implementation and alignment with broader design thinking goals. The study recommends future research to explore how LbE supports long-term learning outcomes and how it may be adapted for diverse classroom settings.

In 2018, the U.S. Federal government published a STEM education strategy report outlining a vision with three goals (building a strong foundation for STEM literacy, increasing diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM, preparing the STEM workers for the future) for providing Americans access to high-quality STEM education and acquisition of future workforce skills (National Science & Technology Council, 2018). This report identified a quality STEM education for American students as one solution with the potential to meet this challenge. In an effort to support the 2018 federal STEM education initiative, this study was designed to evaluate the impact of student engagement in an integrated STEM unit on self-efficacy. Specifically, this research reports on the impact of an integrated robotics educational unit developed within a life-centered context that appealed to underrepresented populations on the level of student Engineering and Design self-efficacy. Participants in this quasi-experimental, one-sample study included 30 seventh-grade students from a suburban middle school. Once participants completed the unit, individuals responded to the Engineering Skills Self-Efficacy Instrument (ESSE) in a retrospective pretest and a posttest. Gain scores for each student were analyzed with one-sample t-tests and Kruskal-Wallis tests. The one-sample t-test results indicated a significant gain in all constructs of the ESSE. The Kruskal-Wallis analysis displayed no significant difference between minority and majority groups indicating an equitable learning experience for all. The integrated learning experience impacted student self-efficacy and provided an equitable unit where all students could develop knowledge and skills.

The current study explores the quality of students’ argumentation within the context of Adaptive Comparative Judgment (ACJ) and Learning by Evaluation (LbE), focusing on the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) framework. The aim is to understand what students consider essential for superior engineering design journals and why, particularly examining evidence and reasoning components. Thirty-five students from four high schools participated in LbE, justifying their preferences for selected options. These schools were part of a broader five-school project, though one did not conduct the relevant session and was excluded from the study. Utilizing the CER framework, the study analyzed the structure of scientific argumentation, supplemented by thematic analysis to elucidate students' reasoning. Three response models emerged: Claim-Evidence (CE), Claim-Reasoning (CR), and CER. CE responses lacked reasoning, while CR responses lacked evidence. Students favored design portfolios with visual aids, detailed content, documentation of design failures, and clearly stated challenges. For reasoning, students highlighted the value of clear explanations of the design process, facilitation of group and individual work, idea generation, and instructional clarity. The study underscores the importance of teacher-led scaffolding to help students articulate comprehensive claims and suggests structured group discussions and modeling as effective supports.

Integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education provides opportunities for interdisciplinary collaborations. To explore the nature of interdisciplinary collaborations, we investigated the disciplinary identity of 11 secondary preservice teachers (PSTs) enrolled in a semester-long secondary integrated STEM methods course. The pedagogical approach in the course aimed to provide secondary PSTs with the opportunity to experience interdisciplinary collaboration, where secondary PSTs from different disciplines collaborate on designing and implementing integrated STEM curricula. Through positioning theory, we analyzed the PSTs’ discussion during each team’s initial collaboration meeting. Findings indicate that PSTs take a strong disciplinary identity position in their discipline. Their identification in other disciplines varied and was negotiated throughout the meeting by shifting either positively or negatively. Findings could inform teacher preparation programs to articulate ways that would help preservice and in-service teachers to conduct successful collaborations across disciplines. Future research should investigate potential ways to disrupt negative disciplinary identity shifts, while encouraging positive ones.