A longitudinal evaluation of an AP type, dual enrollment introduction to engineering course: Examining teacher effect on student self efficacy and interest in engineering (evaluation)

ENGR 102 HS is an introduction to engineering course taught by 37 high school teachers in both public and private high school classrooms. This university level, dual enrollment course offers high school students three units of credit towards an engineering degree. Unlike an Advanced Placement (AP) class, students who successfully complete the course receive a university transcript. In the ten years since the initial pilot, more than four thousand high school students have taken the course and of those, 2704 students have enrolled and received college credit. With a nearly identical core curriculum as the semester long, ENGR 102 on campus course, the high school program runs for a full school year and thus provides students with increased contact time. Extra classroom time in the high school program allows students to participate in service learning projects, online modules and multiple teacher-designed hands-on projects. Each spring students in the program are asked questions about multiple topics as part of a course evaluation survey. In this longitudinal evaluation, we examine seven years of survey data and report on changes over time in teacher (n=66) effectiveness and explore how teachers influence student self-efficacy and interest in pursuing a career in engineering. The effects of teacher/student gender match was also explored. Teachers with engineering degrees were compared to teachers without and no significant differences were found in effectiveness, course quality or student interest in engineering. However, when students were divided by gender, results showed that female students preferred teachers without the master's in engineering whereas teachers with the master's in engineering were preferred by male students.