Journal of Civil Engineering Education

This study explores engineering students’ enactment of collective agency and perceptions of professional identity. Empirical data were drawn from observation and group interviews with 30 engineering students in a civil engineering course using a problem and project-based learning (PBL) approach. Using the technique of quantifying qualitative data, the study identified patterns of agency manifestation in seven domains within project work: (1) motivation, (2) goal setting, (3) planning, (4) project progression, (5) self-reflection and evaluation, (6) team dynamics, and (7) external support and resources. The study identified a significant correlation between the engineering students’ collective agency in these seven aspects of their learning process and their project team outcomes based on group-based project grades. Although students reported many reasons for choosing to study engineering, the majority of the students were found to have a general uncertainty regarding their sense of professional identity, suggesting more activities to support the building of professional competences, such as PBL, should be provided at an earlier stage of engineering curricula.

This study examined self, peer, and instructor ratings of leadership behaviors in four areas: collaboration, creativity, organization/control, and competition for 98 students in one civil engineering capstone design course. There was no significant difference between ratings of students based on gender identification within or across all three rater groups. However, peer ratings for all four leadership behaviors for underrepresented race/ethnicity minorities (URM) were lower than for non-URM students. Instructor ratings were lower for international students than for domestic students. Even with low sample sizes, these results warrant further research on implicit bias in leadership ratings within engineering education, with a special focus on the bias against URM and international students.

Recruitment, retention, and preparation of students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields are critical to meeting the global challenges of the 21st century. Gamification—game playing concepts used in another activity—has been postulated as an active teaching strategy that engages students, encourages a sense of community, and develops students’ professional skills, which are all core components to recruitment, retention, and preparation. To explore the impact of game design and play on students’ higher levels of perceived cognitive/learning engineering-related and course-specific concepts, higher levels of student engagement, a sense of community, professional skills, retention, and easy transferability for university-level educators, board game design and play projects were implemented in three civil, environmental, and construction engineering courses at the University of Pittsburgh, Arizona State University, and Clemson University in 2016. Findings obtained from analyzing students’ responses to an open-ended survey and focus group questions indicated that game design and play were effective in learning technical course content, including content related to sustainability and construction terminology, but these results were related to lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Both the classroom observations and the focus group/interviews revealed that game design and game play enhanced engagement. The Likert survey results did not show a statistically significant difference in the sense of community but did show a statistically significant positive difference in the professional skill of writing. Lastly, neither the Likert survey results nor the focus group/interview results showed that game design and play impacted retention. Given these results, the findings of this study are cautiously optimistic at best for the applications of game design and play in engineering curricula as a method for recruiting, retaining, and preparing students. Recommendations for improving game design studies as well as the implementation of game design projects in engineering courses are provided.

Although the construction industry is a major player in the global economy, it is dealing with problems such as declining productivity, workplace safety, and work disputes. The human element—construction project managers in particular—is key to solving many of these persisting problems. A thorough understanding of construction project managers’ performance is important to identifying training needs, and enables executives to better match competent construction project managers with the appropriate projects. This paper examined competencies required for construction project managers and competency identification tools and techniques. Potentially relevant references were searched using appropriate search terms, topics, and publication dates in the ASCE Library. The process resulted in 2,102 references. Titles, abstracts, and contents of the references were examined further to select the most relevant references from the list; 31 of the initial 2,102 references were selected for content analysis. A systematic review and detailed content analysis of the 31 selected references from the ASCE Library published over the last 3 decades was conducted. Results of content analysis revealed that to identify competencies, two information gathering techniques predominantly were used in the selected sources, whereas three techniques seldom were used. A total of 39 competency categories required for construction project managers were identified. The most frequently identified competency categories were technical, leadership, communication, managing, organizing, and planning, teaming/teamwork, and determination. Findings of this study can assist the construction industry in directing its efforts toward key competency development areas and catering training and professional development to the real needs of the workforce.

Civil engineers will face increasing challenges in their careers due to climate change. The infrastructure they design and construct will directly contribute to or mitigate it. Action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change requires both a belief in human-caused global warming and a basic understanding of climate science. To understand which current engineering education efforts are successful or may need more consideration, a national sample of civil engineering students and students from other engineering disciplines was asked about their belief in global warming, understanding of greenhouse gases, the causes of global climate change, and ways to help reduce or slow it. The overwhelming majority of civil engineering students (83%) and students from other engineering disciplines (81%) acknowledged that global warming is happening. Nearly three of every four civil engineering students (73.5%) and other engineering students (71.3%) believed that global warming is caused by humans. However, only about half of civil engineering students (55.6%) and other engineering students (52.3%) felt that global warming is personally important. The majority of civil engineering students and other engineering students did not understand the causes and actions to reduce global warming. More than half of civil engineering students (60%) believed that nuclear power generation is a cause of global warming, which is significantly more than students from other engineering disciplines (52.6%). More than 8 of every 10 civil engineering students (83%) incorrectly believed or were unsure that the ozone hole in the upper atmosphere is a cause of global warming. A possible explanation for these misconceptions is that civil engineering students recognized general problems, such as nuclear waste and the ozone hole, but they did not link particular causes with particular consequences. Possible interventions were discussed for making climate change information personally relevant to engage students to think about cause and effect related to the climate.

Despite growing efforts, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have yet to address long-standing engineering participation disparities. Often, diversity and inclusion issues, along with other societal challenges, are perceived as unrelated to engineering. Conversely, engineering as currently practiced and taught is embedded in dominant culture norms that are frequently invisible to the majority of the students and faculty. One strategy to shift this erroneous “neutral” perspective is to integrate diversity and inclusion into engineering curricula. Using inclusive professional identities as a theoretical lens, we developed an activity that incorporates diversity and inclusion into the technical content of Engineering Mechanics: Statics. Using thematic analysis, we found that students’ responses to prompts about their identities, engineering as a profession, and their perceived learning revealed two primary themes: teamwork and engineering/math-related skills/experiences. Although diversity and inclusion were included in responses, students did not connect diversity and inclusion to engineering as a profession. Therefore, students might need more support to make this connection. Although singular activities cannot explicitly overcome racism, sexism, or other deeply entrenched biases in our society, the activity type we describe might help students develop a more holistic perspective of engineering and understand the importance of addressing biases in their future engineering careers.