Returning to Graduate School: Expectations of Success, Values of the Degree, and Managing the Costs
Journal of Engineering Education, 2013
ABSTRACT Background Limited research exists on the experiences of engineering returners – those w... more ABSTRACT Background Limited research exists on the experiences of engineering returners – those with undergraduate degrees who work for at least five years and return to academia for graduate degrees. Returners bring a different perspective to their graduate studies and postgraduate work than direct-pathway students but face additional challenges. PurposeOur aim was to understand practitioners' decisions to return to graduate school and complete graduate degrees. Guided by expectancy value theory, we investigated their beliefs about their ability to succeed; the interest, attainment, and utility values returners placed on graduate school; the costs they experienced in returning; and the personal, programmatic, and cultural factors that mitigated these costs. Design/Method We employed a qualitative interpretivist approach to investigate the returning experience through semi-structured interviews with 10 returners. We analyzed the results deductively, using expectancy value theory to understand participants' expectations of success and the values of those experiences, and inductively, to understand the types of costs that influenced the decision to return and complete graduate school. ResultsUtility value drove participants' decisions to return and complete graduate programs, and participants had a high expectancy of success in earning their graduate degrees. Four types of costs emerged from analysis of the interviews: intellectual, balance, cultural and environmental, and financial. Participants employed various strategies to mitigate these costs. Conclusions With the results of our study, potential returners can more effectively plan for success in the graduate environment, and universities can develop initiatives to better recruit returners and support their success.
Uploads
Papers by Shanna Daly
Using a case-study framework, this research examined the types of overall approach and local heuristics engineers used to explore potential designs solutions. Using a think-aloud protocol, engineers at varying levels of expertise were asked to develop conceptual designs for a solar-powered cooking device that was inexpensive, portable, and suitable for family use. The instructions emphasized generating a variety of solution types, and technical requirements were omitted to encourage open consideration of alternatives. Following the think-aloud session, the engineers participated in a retrospective interview designed to provide additional perspective on the source of their ideas and a deeper understanding whether they were aware of their own methods of ideation. The results show evidence of frequent heuristic use in some of the solution sets proposed by engineers, while other solution sets were limited to very few concepts and lacked evidence of many heuristics. Engineers in this study did not report conscious application of local heuristics; that is, they were not aware of applying these techniques in their approaches to concept generation. Evidence for the utility of cognitive heuristics in the ideation stage is examined, along with guidelines for lessons incorporating design heuristics.
sessions on Design Heuristic use, teaching them as a concept generation technique and as a concept transformation technique. Our results show that both approaches yielded design improvements, though the variation between concepts tends to be larger when using a generative approach. Also, Design Heuristics in both approaches helped students elaborate their concepts, generate new ideas, and encouraged them to push forward with previous ideas. These findings contribute to our knowledge about how to best teach Design Heuristics in the classroom.
The present study focuses on the exploration and identification of types and frequency of design heuristics used in the ideation process in both the industrial design and engineering design domains. Design heuristics are cognitive strategies that, when applied to a design problem, help the designer explore novel design solutions. These heuristics may differ based on the design problem, the context defined, and the designers’ preferences.
In a think-aloud protocol, five engineers and five industrial designers with varying levels of experience were asked to develop product concepts for a novel problem. We analyzed these protocols to document and com-pare industrial designers’ and engineers’ concept generation approaches and what evidence existed of heuristics in their proposed solutions. The results show evidence of heuristic use and effectiveness of heuristics in generating diverse, creative, and practical concepts, suggesting that heuristics stimulate higher-quality designs. Also, some differences were ob-served between the designers from the two domains, in terms of their approach to the design problem, how they utilized each heuristic in generating alternatives, and the strategies they used to reduce design fixation.