(197b) Promoting Chemical Engineering Identity through Student Agency and Experiment Relevance

Laboratory courses play a crucial role in the education of chemical engineers. However, early chemistry courses often focus on cookbook style laboratory experiments, which can shape students’ expectations about upper division chemical engineering laboratory courses 1, 2. In such courses, students are often highly scaffolded in all aspects of their work, leaving them little room to make meaningful decisions. Furthermore, considering the foundational chemistry courses and chemical engineering laboratory courses, most experiments are predetermined, meaning the solution is known ahead of time. While such laboratory experiments are easier to instruct, they offer students limited opportunities for decision-making; in other words, the students have little agency.

ABET criteria have made clear, however, that students should have agency: “an ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions” 3. In particular, the idea that students should “develop”—not just conduct—and “use engineering judgment” suggests a level of agency that far exceeds what students experience in the typical introductory chemistry laboratories. In response, faculty in chemical engineering have studied varied higher agency approaches 4, including course-based undergraduate research experiences 5, 6, integrating data science 7, and enhancing student agency over specific aspects, like making choices about data analysis in a unit ops laboratory 8.

Our strategy to enhance student engagement and sense of belonging in chemical engineering involves examining the influence of consequential agency in laboratory experiments. We aim to assess the impact of agency on students by investigating various aspects of laboratory experiments through a survey measuring consequential agency, engineering identity, relevance, and persistence intentions. The project aims to expand existing theories on agency in learning and the formation of professional identity in advanced chemical engineering laboratory courses.

To assess the influence of making consequential decisions on student development, we investigated students' perspectives on four domains within laboratory experiments: (1) experimental design prior to doing the laboratory experiment; (2) data collection and documentation during experiments; (3) data analysis and interpretation; and (4) communication of purpose, methods, and conclusions—contributes to students’ development. In addition, we wondered about the impact of perceived relevance—that is, the degree to which students viewed the experiments as similar to or relevant to the work professional chemical engineers do. In terms of student development, we investigated students’ persistence intentions and engineering identity. We posed a research question:

• To what extent do study constructs (consequential agency in four domains, relevance) explain variance in students’ identities as engineers?

We hypothesized that having agency in domains like 1 and 3 may matter more than domain 2.

Methods

We used a previously developed survey to assess consequential agency across each of the four domains, as well as engineering identity and relevance. A total of 74 students from two research universities participated in the survey as part of their post-lab activities. At one university, seniors were enrolled in a 3-credit laboratory course (the 2nd in a 2-semester sequence) in which they completed four-unit operations experiments (a heat exchanger experiment, fluid flow and friction, a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) experiment, and an enzyme reaction kinetics experiment). At the other, juniors were enrolled in a 1-credit laboratory course (the 2nd in a 4-semester sequence) in which they completed three transport phenomenon experiments (investigating how pipe length impacts efflux from a tank, how types of wood impact conductive heat transfer, and how fittings and pipes impact frictional pressure loss); seniors were enrolled in a 1-credit laboratory course (the 4th in a 4-semester sequence) in which they completed two kinetics and process control experiments (investigating different catalysts used in the selective hydrogenation of ethane, and determining and comparing tuning parameters for a level controller on a water tank).

We used regression modeling in order to investigate trends in the data.

Results

We found engineering identity was positively and significantly predicted by perceived relevance and data analysis and interpretation consequentiality (Domain 3), and negatively, significantly predicted by consequentiality during the experiment (Domain 2), F(58, 5) = 4.03, r2 =.129 (Table 1). Neither consequential agency in Domains 1 nor 4 explained significant variance.

Implications

This study examined how having consequential agency in each domain, alongside perceptions of relevance, influences student development. Our results showed that students exercising agency in tasks such as data analysis and result interpretation (Domain 3) contributes more to their identity as engineers compared to other domains. Similarly, tasks perceived as relevant, meaning that students believe they resemble the work of chemical engineers, offer a more impactful experience for students' evolving engineering identities. Although our results are preliminary, they suggest that faculty aiming to enhance their laboratory courses can prioritize empowering students to make decisions regarding analysis and interpretation, while also helping them grasp the connections between experiments and the work of chemical engineers. However, it's important to acknowledge a notable limitation: relatively few students reported high agency experiences in Domain 1. Consequently, our findings indicating that consequentiality in Domain 1 did not account for variance in engineering identity may be attributed to the limited variability in scores on Domain 1. Given that this domain is where students are least likely to exercise agency9, 10, our ongoing research endeavors are strategically designed to identify such instances to ensure comprehensive modeling of the impacts of each domain.

References

(1) Kirn, A.; Benson, L. Engineering students’ perceptions of problem solving and their future. Journal of Engineering Education 2018, 107 (1), 87-112. DOI: 10.1002/jee.20190.

(2) Pisani, S.; Haw, M. D. Learner agency in a chemical engineering curriculum: Perceptions and critical thinking. Education for Chemical Engineers 2023, 44, 200-215. DOI: 10.1016/j.ece.2023.06.003.

(3) ABET Inc. Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, 2024 – 2025. 2024. https://www.abet.org/accreditation/accreditation-criteria/criteria-for-accrediting-engineering-programs-2024-2025/ (accessed 1/2024).

(4) Anagnos, T.; Komives, C.; Mourtos, N. J.; McMullin, K. M. Evaluating student mastery of design of experiment. Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference 2007, T3G-7-T3G-12. DOI: 10.1109/FIE.2007.4417923.

(5) Wilson-Fetrow, M.; Svihla, V.; Burnside, B.; Datye, A. K. Course-based undergraduate research experiences in a chemical engineering laboratory promote consequential agency. Journal of Chemical Education 2023, 100 (10), 3752-3763. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00582.

(6) Giordano, A. N.; Styers-Barnett, D. Training tomorrow’s scientists: Embedding professional skills in the physical chemistry curriculum with a guided grant and laboratory project. Journal of Chemical Education 2022, 99 (6), 2417-2424. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.1c00817.

(7) Helmbrecht, H. Effective laboratory education with TEXTILE: Tutorials in EXperimentalisT Interactive LEarning. Chemical Engineering Education 2022, 56 (4), 1-11. DOI: 10.18260/2-1-370.660-129820

(8) Elkhatat, A.; Al-Muhtaseb, S. A. Fostering Engineering Laboratory Course Teaching by Embedding an Inquiry-Guided Learning Approach Using Computer-Aided Learning Packages: Evaluation of Learning Outcomes in a Cooling Tower Experiment in the Unit Operations Lab. Chemical Engineering Education 2022, 56 (3), 190-198. DOI: 10.18260/2-1-370.660-129133.

(9) Stoodley, R.; Knox, K. J.; Gillis, E. A. Application of a cognitive task framework to characterize opportunities for student preparation for research in the undergraduate chemistry laboratory. Journal of Chemical Education 2023, 100 (5), 1831-1842. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00948

(10) Wieman, C. Comparative cognitive task analyses of experimental science and instructional laboratory courses. The Physics Teacher 2015, 53 (6), 349-351. DOI: 10.1119/1.4928349.