Comparing Entering Freshman Engineers: Institutional Differences In Student Attitudes
Magaly Moreno, Mary Besterfield‐Sacre, Larry J. Shuman, Cynthia J. Atman
Abstract
EC 2000 will cause engineering educators to learn more about their students.This includes having a more informed understanding of students' underlying attitudes as they begin their engineering studies and tracking how these attitudes affect learning.Previous research indicates that students enter their first year with a range of perceptions and attitudes about engineering.However, little is known as to how student attitudes vary across institutions.Are initial attitudes correlated with the type of school the individual attends?Do students who attend a private (versus public), or large (versus small) engineering school enter with different perceptions of engineering and their abilities to succeed in engineering?Do students' choice of environment (urban versus rural) and the subsequent culture it provides or whether the institution has a "research" (versus "teaching") focus contribute to their initial attitudes about engineering and about themselves?Such knowledge is important since attitudinal differences among institutions may help to explain differences in academic performance, interest in the engineering pedagogy, and attrition out of or persistence in the program.We have investigated such differences among the freshman classes of 17 US engineering schools.