Elsa Q. Villa

Demonstrating sustainable success: Using ethnographic interviews to document the impact of the Affinity Research Group model

The Affinity Research Group (ARG) is a model of undergraduate research that extends the undergraduate research experience to a broad range of students by providing opportunities to learn and integrate the knowledge and skills that are required for research with those required for cooperative work. ARG creates an integrated research environment in which a collective of diverse students and faculty contribute to the research effort. The framework and pedagogy enable faculty to create and sustain a cooperative environment that explicitly develops skills needed for success in research, academe, and the workforce. This paper describes a qualitative design used to investigate ARG. The objectives of the effort were to gather alumni descriptions and to gauge the long-term effects of their experiences in the research group. The study shows that former ARG members readily describe specific aspects of the ARG model, such as paper and presentation critiques, through which they developed technical and social skills that they continue to use in the workplace and that they believe have contributed significantly to their professional mobility and success. To ground the findings, the paper relates components of the ARG model to sociocultural learning theory.

K-16 partnerships: casting a broad net for filling the critical gaps in engineering

The University of Texas at El Paso (USA) has a long standing commitment to pre-college outreach and recruitment in engineering and science. An array of programs provides rich venues for attracting young people into engineering-, technology- and science-related careers. These account for contact with over 8,000 young people every year- each with opportunities to explore a number of career-related options and to interact with professional engineers, scientists, undergraduate/graduate science and engineering students and university faculty. Moreover, the College aggressively supports K-12 mathematics and science education reform in area schools-advocating and facilitating the implementation of hands-on standards-based curriculum in subject/content areas most critical in preparing young people for pursuing a more rigorous course of study at the university.

Model collaboration for advancing student-centered engineering education

The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering (Olin) are establishing a student-centered hands-on interactive approach to engineering education (similar to Olins) at UTEP, where it will reside in UTEPs innovative B.S. in Leadership Engineering (LE) program. The goal of the proposed collaboration is to catalyze UTEPs educational innovation through a cross-campus collaboration between the two institutions by incorporating the Olin educational process, both design and features, into the first offerings of the Bachelor of Science in Leadership Engineering (BSLE) program. Specifically, the collaboration includes faculty exchanges between the two institutions; a series of retreats for planning and assessment; curriculum development; and student recruitment practices. The 21st century workplace demands a new engineer - one who effectively contributes to solving problems using innovation, creativity, and strategic foresight. Graduates of the Olin-UTEP developed Bachelor of Science in Leadership Engineering (LE) program will possess these attributes through the programs rigorous yet flexible major in engineering, and in-depth study of leadership and its effect upon technology and society. In this panel we will share the context for our innovative approach, key features of the partnership to date, and acclaim the value of inter-institutional sharing.

Work in progress: Supporting Latino and English Language Learners' written communication skills: A research-based pedagogical intervention

This paper reports preliminary findings from a qualitative study of a research-based pedagogical intervention in a freshman-level course for engineering majors. In this intervention, engineering instructors collaborated with an applied linguist in education to design activities to improve writing skills, an important professional skill in engineering. Development of effective writing skills is challenging for students, and particularly for Latinos and English Language Learners (ELLs). This challenge can be effectively addressed with meaningful writing tasks and appropriate pedagogy. Preliminary findings show improved communication and interpersonal skills among students.

ACM RETENTION COMMITTEE: Minority voices: interrupting the social environment to retain undergraduates in computing.

T he low enrollment and graduation rates of underrepresented students in computer science, particularly those students who are women and Latinx1, is well documented and of deep concern to computer science educators, industry, and other stakeholders. This concern was the motivation for the ACM Education Board to establish the ACM Retention Committee, with co-chairs Alison Derbenwick Miller (Oracle) and Chris Stephenson (Google). The main charge of the committee was to collect and analyze data to gain deeper insights into programmatic issues of recruitment and retention of underrepresented students to broaden participation in computing. As a companion piece to this charge, the committee is publishing a series of opinion pieces [9,11,19]. This article is the last in the series and presents a perspective from a minority voice in examining the challenges and opportunities for Latinx undergraduate students.

Panel: Influencing culture and curriculum via revolution

The goal of this panel session is to introduce audience members to the challenges and successes of significant cultural and curricular change as enacted by awardees in the NSF program Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED). This panel will explore how organizations go about the process of cultural investigation and how they embark on culture change, using RED awardees of 2016 as the featured panelists (the second cohort). These teams are engaged in high-risk, high-trust-required activities focused on both the organizational and operational structure of their departments, and on re-envisioning engineering and computer science curricula to create professionals with 21st century skills like problem solving and teamwork. A panel session allows the wider community to peek into these projects to see from the inside whats happening, even if only a bit. This paper captures short narratives on different themes of interest, developed by the individual teams and aggregated here as a first glimpse into the operations, challenges, and successes of these projects.

Learning to learn: Creating engineering classrooms for deep understanding

Metacognition involves an ability to reflect upon a learning episode, understand what strategies provoked learning, and gauge ones current level of understanding. This paper details preliminary evidence regarding the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Metacognitive Learners course, a pre-engineering course structured to develop metacognitive strategies and habits through scaffolded collaborative group work, small and large group discussions about learning, and guided writing exercises designed to support learner reflection. Course curriculum addressed metacognition and metacognitive skill development in three explicit ways: a) team problem solving, b) student goal setting, and c) reflective writing about group process, project progress, and individual learning. Following this course, student survey data across all 4 sections suggests initial success in creating a learning environment that supports developing metacognition - students considered how they learned best, described their knowledge to others, and were asked to check their own understanding and progress throughout the course via dialogue and reflective writing.

Workshop - engaging undergraduate students in research using the Affinity Research Group model

An affinity research group is a comprehensive model for the creation and maintenance of dynamic, productive, and inclusive research groups in engineering and computing. The model is comprised of a set of fundamental principles and effective practices that emphasize the conscious development of studentspsila domain knowledge as well as research and professional skills. This workshop introduces the model and engages the participants in exercises that illustrate the use of the model.

Engineering learning communities approach at the University of Texas at El Paso

With funding from Hewlett Packard, the Colleges of Engineering and Education at the University of Texas at El Paso have developed an interdisciplinary research project to measure and analyze the outcomes of reformed processes of teaching and learning. The targeted course is a required sophomore level course for electrical engineering and computer science majors. It had been taught using a traditional lecture mode yielding low pass rates and effectively functioning as a gatekeeper. The reform process included revision of the pedagogical framework, implementation of new policies and practices, and evaluation of these reform efforts utilizing quantitative/qualitative methodology. Initial analysis has generated insights about the potential for educational research methods to clarify key issues in improving engineering education for diverse undergraduate student populations.