Keys to the Engineering Gateway: Using Creative Technology to Retain Women and Underrepresented Students  
By Sue V. Rosser, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and professor of public policy and of history, technology, and society at the Georgia Institute of Technology

In recent years, the media have focused significant attention on the gender imbalance of students in higher education. Newspaper headlines and television spotlights leave the impression that women’s numbers have surpassed men’s in all areas of college, with articles that underline “firsts” and highlight achievements of star women scientists reinforcing the impression that equity has been reached. Indeed, women have made great strides in higher education at large, where they now represent the majority of students in many disciplines, even in some of the sciences. But this coverage often tells only a partial story.

In short, women’s success in the sciences, as in all disciplines, varies by field. In many social science and life sciences fields, women have reached parity in the percentages of degrees received. In other fields, such as the geosciences, mathematics, and the physical sciences, women still receive under half of degrees awarded, but their percentages among degree earners continue to increase. Meanwhile, in engineering and the computer sciences, the percentages of women degree earners have leveled out or even dropped during the last decade.

These fields, particularly computer science and engineering, represent the fastest-growing areas in STEM with the greatest workforce demands in our increasingly technological society. It is therefore imperative not only for women’s equity, but for the sake of the workforce, that more women pursue STEM careers. At Georgia Tech, we are revising our curricular approaches to address this imperative. We hope that by incorporating new uses of computer technology, we will encourage women and underrepresented minority students to persist in engineering.

A Closer Look at the Numbers

It is true, as the media coverage suggests, that in the United States, women currently earn more bachelor’s degrees than men. In 2004, women earned 57.6 percent of bachelor’s degrees in all fields (and 61.1 percent of bachelor’s degrees earned in non-science and engineering fields like humanities, education, and fine arts), and they have earned the majority of bachelor’s degrees granted in STEM since 2000 (with 50.4 percent in 2004) (NSF 2007). But these aggregated data mask the wide variance of women’s participation among the STEM fields. While in 2004 women earned the majority of bachelor’s degrees in psychology (77.8 percent), social sciences (54.2 percent), agricultural sciences (52.2 percent), and biological sciences (62.5 percent), men earned most bachelor’s degrees in the physical sciences (57.9 percent), earth, atmospheric, and ocean sciences (57.8 percent), mathematics and statistics (54.1 percent), computer sciences (74.9 percent), and engineering (79.5 percent) (NSF 2007). 

Similar trends appear at the master’s degree level, where women earned 59.1 percent of all master’s degrees in 2004 but only 43.6 percent of master’s degrees in science and engineering (NSF 2007). Within science and engineering, women earned the majority of master’s degrees in agricultural sciences (53.5 percent), biological sciences (58.6 percent), psychology (78.1 percent), and the social sciences (55.9 percent) (NSF 2007). But women earned less than half of master’s degrees in earth, atmospheric, and ocean sciences (44.6 percent), mathematics and statistics (45.4 percent), physical sciences (37.5 percent), computer sciences (31.2 percent), and engineering (21.1 percent) (NSF 2007).

At the PhD level, women earned 60 percent of degrees in non-STEM fields, but only 44 percent in STEM (counting only degrees received by U.S. citizens and permanent residents) (NSF 2007). Women were the majority of PhD earners in science and engineering only in psychology (67.3 percent) and a few social sciences, including anthropology (55.1 percent), history of science (58.9 percent), and sociology (58.7 percent). Meanwhile, women earned a mere 38.0 percent of PhD degrees in agricultural sciences, 46.3 percent in biological sciences, 20.5 percent in computer sciences, 33.9 percent in earth, atmospheric, and ocean sciences, 28.4 percent in mathematics and statistics, 25.9 percent in physical sciences, and 17.6 percent in engineering (NSF 2007).

Among the STEM disciplines, engineering in particular has failed to attract women and underrepresented minorities (URMs), and the current U.S. engineering workforce remains 90 percent white and male (CPST 2006). Baccalaureate degrees in engineering received by both URM students and women peaked in 1999-2000 and have trended downward since then (Council on Competitiveness 2005). Although women earn about one half of baccalaureate degrees in science and engineering as a whole, in physics, engineering, engineering technology, and computer science, these rates drop to one in five (Chubin and Babco 2006). And as in the STEM disciplines as a whole, substantial variation occurs among subdisciplines in engineering. While women earned 20 percent of engineering and 14 percent of engineering technology degrees, their participation in civil (24 percent), electrical (14 percent), and mechanical engineering (14 percent) lagged behind chemical engineering (35 percent) and “all other engineering fields” (29 percent) (Chubin and Babco 2006).

Improving the Numbers with Promising Pedagogies

These numbers suggest what numerous national studies have shown: there is a need to increase enrollment in engineering programs and to graduate a more diverse population of engineers. Given that engineers are in demand and earn high salaries relative to many other fields, why aren’t women attracted to engineering? A substantial body of research has uncovered some contributing factors. These include a technical experience gap relative to male peers (Margolis and Fisher 2002); classroom experiences that leave women feeling isolated, unsupported, and discouraged (Selby 1999); lower self-confidence than male peers (Engineers Dedicated to a Better Tomorrow 2006); and a tendency not to perceive the practical applications of engineering, the creativity and inventiveness engineering requires, and the social usefulness of engineering (Engineers Dedicated to a Better Tomorrow 2006). URM students experience similar deterrents, particularly the preference for practical applications and the challenge of overcoming the experience gap (Engineers Dedicated to a Better Tomorrow 2006).

In short, research documents that women and URM students are attracted to engineering when they see its “specific and tangible contributions to society and in bettering local communities, our nation, and the world” (Engineers Dedicated to a Better Tomorrow 2006). Fittingly, people who want to contribute to the world are exactly the kinds of individuals society needs as engineers. The logical conclusion is that attracting more women and underrepresented minorities to engineering would benefit both engineering and women and underrepresented minorities.

So how can educators make courses in engineering more attractive? Scholars in the social sciences (Seymour and Hewitt 1994), women’s studies (Rosser 1997), and education (Barton and Osborne 2000) have uncovered some pedagogical and curricular techniques more likely to attract and retain women and URM students.

Of particular importance is the need to offer students opportunities for extended experimentation, observation, and holistic problem-solving (Rosser 1997). Engineering is an intrinsically “hands-on profession,” historically learned by apprenticeship but increasingly distanced from laboratory work (Feisel and Rose 2005). Previous generations of engineering students (young men in particular) commonly entered the university with experience in backyard exploration, repair of the family car, and disassembly and reassembly of common household devices. But in the digital age, such exploration has become a thing of the past, and even today’s male students lack the extended hands-on experiences that served previous generations so well. Some universities fill the gap with hands-on lab work (Alcon 2003), but these methods do not scale well to the large lecture courses that are the staples of most engineering departments. Nevertheless, these experiences remain critical, as they build confidence and nurture an intuition about how the physical world works. Students who build their own bridges and operate their own backhoes gain experience in trial and error and learn to manipulate objects in the real world.   

Research also tells us that women and underrepresented minorities are more likely to succeed when assignments are placed in a real-world context (Smith 2005). Assignments that are socially and personally relevant are thus another strategy that can impact retention. In contrast to conventional textbook problems that focus on fundamental principles found in struts, trusses, and peaveys without reference to how engineers use these instruments, problems that provide a richer social context allow students to see how engineers actually help people. Research has shown that women in particular do better at solving problems that are framed in relation to human needs (Harding 1985; Rosser 1993). Indeed, women’s enrollments are closer to men’s in fields like biomedical engineering where the altruistic purpose is clear. Nevertheless, examples in engineering textbooks are usually devoid of context, and students find it hard to connect their homework to the real world.

The challenge for engineering educators, then, is to identify specific interventions that can successfully nurture hands-on, socially relevant disciplinary engagement early in the curricular sequence. These first experiences are often essential to students’ career paths, as they verify or undermine students’ aspirations to pursue an engineering degree. This challenge provides unique opportunities for humanities, social science, and women’s studies faculty to collaborate with their colleagues in science and engineering. Just as collaborators with different backgrounds and skills can work as a team to solve complex research problems beyond the boundaries of any one discipline, collaborators across disciplines can make significant contributions to curriculum and pedagogy.

Opening the Gateway through Entry-Level Courses

At Georgia Tech, our interdisciplinary team decided to attempt an intervention in the Statics course, a gateway class typically taken during the sophomore year. Statics serves much the same purpose in engineering that organic chemistry does in premedical curricula: it teaches students challenging but essential foundational concepts and tends to “weed out” those with weaker academic preparation. Student success in this course is thus critical to retention and future success in engineering. At Georgia Tech, Statics is a required prerequisite for eight engineering majors: biomedical, mechanical, civil, environmental, materials, nuclear, textiles, and aerospace. Of these majors, only biomedical and environmental engineering attract substantial numbers of women.

The Statics course introduces the model-based engineering approach to problem solving, teaching students to understand the free-body diagram and its pivotal function in describing and constraining a problem. Through the course, future engineers develop the critical ability to abstract and define a problem by forming an appropriate idealized model. Sadly, students routinely leave the course having learned to “plug and chug,” using mathematical equations without first articulating the problem in diagrammatic form. In short, they rely on rote application of equations without understanding how the mathematics arise from the model. Students who encounter difficulty in the fundamental cognitive act of model building may experience decreased confidence and a diminished sense of self-efficacy—effects that may be particularly problematic for women and URM students. We believed that an approach to teaching and learning Statics that teaches model building by connecting abstract problems with real-world applications would benefit all students and promote diversity in engineering.

In order to implement our approach in a large classroom environment with limited time and resources, we turned to computer technology. A computer-based interactive system can help students make the crucial connections between mathematical models and real-world problems. Computer models offer a way to give students embodied experiences without having to provide jackhammers. They improve on textbook presentations without requiring the extra time and resources of a traditional hands-on building experience. Students do best when these simulations are problem-oriented, with hints and provocative questions generated by the system and with monitoring of their results (Hanson, Narayanan, and Schrimpser 2000).

Interactive methods using creative technology have many additional benefits, particularly for students deterred by poor-quality classroom experiences and competitive learning environments. Computer models allow students to explore different approaches privately while receiving direct feedback for guesses. Thus computer models offer a safe place to fail and can provide hints that scaffold success. These interactive methods can also improve classroom instruction by providing brief periods of active problem solving and cooperative learning that break up the alienating monotony of the traditional lecture (Smith 2005; Mazur 1997; Crouch and Mazur 2001). Furthermore, a computer-based system in which socially contextualized images from the real world (such as the rebuilding of a home destroyed in a hurricane) are mapped to abstract diagrams helps students make the crucial connection between engineering methods and human needs. Such strategies not only incorporate the interests and expectations typically held by women and URM students, but encourage the more flexible thinking essential for all future engineers (National Academy of Engineering 2004).

Implementing the Project

Figure 1: Minneapolis Bridge Problem. An idealized rendering of the Minneapolis Bridge will serve as a truss problem that illustrates both joints and sections. The problem shows a so-called “simple truss,” with no redundant supports, meaning that the failure of one structural element results in the failure of the entire structure. This problem demonstrates the social relevance of engineering.
Figure 2: Woman Performing a Squat on the Smith Machine. This figure shows a woman performing a Smith-machine-assisted squat. This exercise demonstrates the contact force between the woman’s shoulders and the barbell, as well as the normal and friction forces at her feet as she performs the exercise.

On March 1, 2007, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded funding for our project, titled “InTEL: Interactive Toolkit for Engineering Learning.” Project funding has allowed us to develop three teams that work independently and collaboratively to design, implement, and evaluate digital exercises relevant to every major topic in the Statics course. The engineering team designs problems and develops solutions, with an eye toward including examples that are socially useful and relevant to women’s experiences (Figures 1-2). The digital media team programs the computer simulations. The evaluation team clarifies learning goals and conducts assessments.

Throughout the project, we have spent considerable time clarifying the problem-solving process and determining what kinds of visual displays and feedback are most suitable to our goals. We settled on a method that shows the free-body diagram as an overlay on a depiction of a real-world object, like a human arm or a bridge. We allow students to hide layers so they can see the free-body diagram with or without the contextualized view. Taking a cue from psychology and its verbal protocol analysis, we encourage students to “think aloud,” or verbalize what they are thinking as they complete a task.

We are only halfway through this three-year project, so we do not yet have data on whether our efforts have improved retention of women and underrepresented minorities in engineering majors. But preliminary indicators appear positive and suggest that the software allows for a low-risk environment for experimentation and practice. The InTEL program capitalizes on the strengths of computer-based inquiry to engage students in problem solving and strengthen their understanding of the foundational methods of the free-body diagram. We think that our approach will build students’ confidence, particularly women and URM students, and enable them to see the social benefits of engineering. We hope that the InTEL program will help us retain more women and URM students as engineering majors while encouraging all engineers to better understand the social consequences of their work.

Project Collaborators*

Principal Investigator:
Sue V. Rosser, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and professor of public policy and of history, technology, and society

Co-Principal Investigators: 
Laurence Jacobs, associate dean of engineering and professor of civil engineering
Janet H. Murray, graduate director of digital media and professor of literature, communication, and culture
Wendy Newstetter, director of learning sciences research, biomedical engineering
Christine Valle, lecturer in mechanical engineering

*Several graduate students from both the College of Engineering and Ivan Allen College are also contributing to the project.

References

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