Research Initiation: Promoting first year engineering students agency to navigate their college experience through time management and metacognition skills

研究启动：促进一年级工程专业学生通过时间管理和元认知技能来驾驭他们的大学经历

• 批准号: 2306270
• 负责人: Jennifer Zirnheld
• 金额: $ 19.97万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Buffalo
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2306270&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Research; Initiation; Promoting; first; year

The student body in higher education keeps changing, making it critical to pay attention to the plethora of challenges that new generations face to achieve their academic goals. To honor our commitment to support their success, we need to capitalize on their strengths as well as supporting the navigation of their challenges. In addition, the weed-out culture of engineering needs to be replaced with a culture that supports the success of a wider diversity of students and a larger conceptualization of what it means to be successful. As the proportion of students having to work to pay for college keeps increasing, it is important to equip students to make the best of their scarce time. The learning of time management skills would go a long way to support that goal. Similarly, the development of metacognitive skills, the ability to think about one's thinking, is essential for students to engage in cycles of success. This research project will investigate the potential link between time management and metacognition skills on student agency and subsequent success as measured by traditional metrics such as grades, GPA, and retention, as well as non-traditional approaches to success, like wellbeing. The significance of this project is that it aligns with the goal of diversifying pathways to and through engineering, as it is designed to support a wider range of diverse students’ success through their engineering training. In addition, will allow the Principal Investigator, a well-established researcher in a traditional engineering field, to formally engage in engineering education research through a mentored experience with experts in the field.This project will explore the research to practice translation towards supporting the success of an increasingly diverse body of students. The project is designed to explore to what extent gains in time management and metacognition skills of engineering students advance their holistic success in the field. Therefore, we frame this research within a redefinition of success that includes measures of traditional success (e.g. grades, retention) as well as non-traditional measures (e.g. wellbeing). Our design relies on a first intervention involving students’ imagining their possible successful selves in order to generate a plan to achieve it. An intervention to provide students with metacognitive skills and enhance their time management skills will follow. Repeated measures with established instruments will be taken through one semester to explore the longitudinal development of such skills. In addition, the retention of such knowledge and skills will be gauged during the second semester of their first year to explore the effectiveness of the interventions. Finally, students’ perceptions of the impact of such interventions and their persisting challenges to the development of the targeted skills will be explored qualitatively through interviews. The research design will allow for two iterations of the research cycle which will provide refined materials that can be disseminated to other institutions for their use to promote metacognitive and time management skills of engineering students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

高等教育中的学生团体不断变化，这至关重要的是要注意新一代在实现其学术目标方面面临的挑战。为了尊重我们支持他们成功的承诺，我们需要利用他们的优势，并支持他们的挑战的导航。此外，需要将工程学文化替换为一种文化，该文化支持多样化的学生的成功以及对成功意味着什么的更大概念化。随着必须努力为大学付费的学生的比例不断增加，这一点很重要，可以使学生充分利用自己的稀缺时间。学习时间管理技能将大大支持该目标。同样，元认知技能的发展（思考思维的能力）对于学生进行成功周期至关重要。该研究项目将调查时间管理与学生代理的元认知技能之间的潜在联系，并通过传统指标（例如成绩，GPA和保留）以及成功的成功方法来衡量的学生代理，以及成功的成功方法。该项目的意义在于，它符合通过工程和通过工程进行多样化的途径的目标，因为它旨在通过他们的工程培训来支持各种各样的学生的成功。此外，将允许传统工程领域的成熟研究人员首席研究人员通过与该领域的专家的经验正式从事工程教育研究。该项目将探索该研究以实践翻译，以支持日益多样化的学生的成功。该项目旨在探索工程专业学生在时间管理和元认知技能方面的提高程度。因此，我们将这项研究构建在重新定义成功的重新定义，其中包括测量传统成功（例如成绩，保留）以及非传统测量值（例如福祉）。我们的设计依赖于第一次干预措施，涉及学生想象自己可能成功的自我，以制定一个计划来实现这一目标。一项干预措施将随后为学生提供元认知技能并提高其时间管理技能。重复测量已建立的工具将在一个学期中进行，以探索这种技能的纵向发展。此外，将在第一年的第二学期估算此类知识和技能的保留，以探讨干预措施的有效性。最后，将通过访谈定性地探索学生对这种干预措施的影响及其对目标技能发展的持续挑战的看法。研究设计将允许研究周期的两个迭代，这些迭代将提供精制的材料，可以将其传播给其他机构，以促进工程专业学生的元认知和时间管理技能。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子和更广泛影响的评估来通过评估来支持的珍贵支持。