Using Social Cognitive Career Theory to Assess Student Outcomes of Group Design Projects in Statics
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AbstractBackgroundEngineering programs strive to retain students and prepare them for engineering careers. Introducing group design projects into courses may help keep students interested while also improving their learning outcomes.Purpose/HypothesisThis study measures differences in student content knowledge and intention to persist in engineering between an intervention section with group design projects and a comparison section without. We hypothesized that students in the intervention section would show an increase in both outcomes that could be demonstrated with structural equation models based on social cognitive career theory (SCCT).Design/MethodIntervention and comparison sections of a statics course were taught by the same instructor with predominately lectures. Students in the intervention section participated in three group design projects that supplemented the course content. All students took pretests and posttests that assessed statics content knowledge and variables in SCCT. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.ResultsThe use of projects did not result in higher selfefficacy, outcome expectations, content knowledge, or intention to persist for students in the intervention. However, for students in the intervention section, there were strong positive relationships between selfefficacy and outcome expectations and between intention to persist and content knowledge that were not demonstrated in the comparison section.ConclusionsBy using SCCT to model how students develop into engineers, we could detect the effect of introducing projects into a statics course. Connections formed by students in the intervention section between their own abilities, goals, and success in engineering demonstrate that group design projects do benefit students.
