Fostering Equity in Engineering Education

Faculty Mentor Name

Ashley Rea, Jonathan Adams

Format Preference

Poster

Abstract

Students in introductory engineering courses face challenges communicating and integrating their ideas in team projects. Often, these challenges with team communication fall along gendered lines, where women students experience marginalization in team settings. This project builds from prior research in the field of engineering education, which integrated frameworks from the domains of engineering education and technical and professional communication to implement this research into a classroom intervention aimed at reducing the gendered disparity in these communication challenges. To help resolve these issues, this project utilizes a new research method called "infrastructural rhetorical analysis" to develop an educational intervention case study involving the experiences of women in the first-year engineering classroom to determine a concrete classroom intervention that aims to make the most difference with the least amount of resources needed to implement it.

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Fostering Equity in Engineering Education

Students in introductory engineering courses face challenges communicating and integrating their ideas in team projects. Often, these challenges with team communication fall along gendered lines, where women students experience marginalization in team settings. This project builds from prior research in the field of engineering education, which integrated frameworks from the domains of engineering education and technical and professional communication to implement this research into a classroom intervention aimed at reducing the gendered disparity in these communication challenges. To help resolve these issues, this project utilizes a new research method called "infrastructural rhetorical analysis" to develop an educational intervention case study involving the experiences of women in the first-year engineering classroom to determine a concrete classroom intervention that aims to make the most difference with the least amount of resources needed to implement it.