IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 62, NO. 3, AUGUST 2019
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Design Experiences, Engineering Identity, and
Belongingness in Early Career Electrical and
Computer Engineering Students
Jacqueline Rohde , Lisa Musselman, Brianna Benedict, Dina Verdín , Allison Godwin ,
Adam Kirn , Lisa Benson, and Geoff Potvin
Abstract—Contribution: This paper found that design
experiences can foster engineering identity and belongingness
for early career electrical and computer engineering students.
Students had different interpretations of what it meant to be an
engineer (identity) and their belongingness in engineering. This
paper provides novel insights into how students may be developing identities and belongingness in engineering, both critical for
student retention and success.
Background: Design experiences are crucial for engineering
students, both for developing academic competencies and allowing students to see how they can become engineers. Existing
literature has mixed results with respect to the influence of
team-based design experiences on engineering identity and
belongingness.
Research Questions: 1) How do design experiences influence
early career electrical and computer engineering students’ identification and belongingness in engineering? and 2) How do these
students describe what it means to identify as an engineer and
belong in engineering?
Methodology: The beliefs of electrical and computer engineering students were examined using mixed methods to understand
the intersection of design experiences, engineering identity, and
belongingness.
Findings: Students interpreted their engineering identity and
belongingness differently, particularly, with respect to how design
experiences can shape these attitudes. Whereas students interpreted engineering identity through their performance and
interest in authentic engineering tasks, they interpreted belongingness as a means of comparing themselves to their peers. The
findings have implications for engineering education researchers,
and design instructors, to foster ways of being and belonging in
engineering.
Manuscript received August 15, 2018; revised January 4, 2019
and March 20, 2019; accepted April 9, 2019. Date of publication
May 13, 2019; date of current version August 2, 2019. This work was
supported by the National Science Foundation under Award EEC-1428523,
Award EEC-1428689, and Award EEC-1554057. (Corresponding author:
Jacqueline Rohde.)
J. Rohde, B. Benedict, D. Verdín, and A. Godwin are with the School of
Engineering Education, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA
(e-mail: jrohde@purdue.edu).
L. Musselman is with the Department of Civil Engineering, University of
Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469 USA.
A. Kirn is with the College of Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno,
NV, USA, and also with the College of Education, University of Nevada,
Reno, NV 89557 USA.
L. Benson is with the Department of Engineering and Science Education,
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634 USA.
G. Potvin is with the Department of Physics, Florida International
University, Miami, FL 33199 USA, and also with the STEM Transformation
Institute, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199 USA.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2019.2913356
Index Terms—Belongingness, design, engineering identity, electrical engineering, identity, mixed methods research.
I. I NTRODUCTION
NGINEERING education must prepare students to
address complex socio-technical issues, due to technological advancements and an increasingly global economy [1].
ABET requires programs to incorporate experiences that
enable students to design within reasonable constraints
as a primary competency for engineering [2]. Students
often achieve this competency in their first-year and/or
senior capstone design experience. Studies have suggested
that these design experiences improve student retention
and engagement [3], [4]. However, these bookended experiences may not be sufficient for students to gain a complete understanding of the broader impacts of engineering
work [5].
In addition to not understanding the broader implications
of their work, students can experience frustration with senior
design experiences. In part, this frustration may be due to
a disconnect between the complex nature of their capstone
projects and their previous technical content coursework,
where they may have been primarily concerned with identifying the “right” answer [6]. This disconnect can be problematic,
considering that design experiences have the power to shape
how students view themselves in relation to engineering.
Some design experiences have been shown to increase students’ identification with engineering [7], [8], while others
have caused disidentification [9]. Students also believe the
ability to design is a crucial characteristic of an engineer [10].
In addition to identity, team-based design experiences can
influence students’ belongingness in engineering [8], but teambased design experiences where students feel marginalized by
their peers may send messages to those students that they do
not belong [11], [12].
The current study focuses on understanding how early
career undergraduate electrical and computer (ECE) engineering students describe what it means to be an engineer and
belong in engineering. Prior studies have shown that students who leave engineering are more likely to cite issues
of fit and lack of engineering identity, rather than ability or
self-efficacy [13], [14]. As design experiences become more
E
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common in engineering curricula, it is imperative to better
understand the student outcomes of these experiences. To do
so, this analysis posed questions of “what works?” and “for
whom does it work?” for a sample of early career ECE students (i.e., first-year students or first-semester second-year
students) who experienced a design-based first-year engineering course. This paper explores students’ beliefs about
engineering identity and belongingness, to inform strategies
educators can employ in their design courses to create opportunities for both identity development and belongingness in
engineering.
the boundaries between engineering identity and belongingness are currently ill-defined, mixed methods research
was used to develop a more comprehensive understanding
from multiple perspectives. The study addressed the research
questions:
1) How do design experiences influence early career electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students’ identification
and belongingness in engineering?
2) How do these students describe what it means to identify
as an engineer and belong in engineering?
IV. M ETHODS
II. R ELEVANT L ITERATURE
Prior work in science, mathematics, and engineering education [15]–[17] operationalizes engineering identity through the
constructs of 1) interest, 2) performance/competence beliefs,
and 3) recognition beliefs [18], [19]. That is, students form
engineering identities when they are interested in the subject/field, see themselves as competent and capable of performing engineering tasks, and feel recognized by themselves
and others as an engineer. Design experiences can offer students an opportunity to develop a passion for engineering,
gain competence in their engineering performances, and feel
recognized by their peers and instructors.
Belongingness in engineering education has been framed
around inclusivity, from which powerful stories have emerged
about students’ lack of belonging [20]–[22]. Work on belongingness in engineering has pulled from a diffuse literature
space, leveraging identity [23], [24], motivation [25], [26],
and critical theories [27]. With such broad understandings of
belongingness, the relationship between belongingness and
engineering identity development is unclear. Thus, it is imperative to better understand the nature of engineering identity
and belongingness, as experienced by engineering students, to
understand how these beliefs can be supported in the context
of engineering design experiences.
In addition to theories related to engineering identity and
belongingness, the theory of communities of practice has been
instrumental in understanding processes that shape students’
beliefs [28]. Lave and Wenger articulated a process by which
newcomers become recognized members of a community [29].
In applying this conceptualization to an engineering education context, the process of learning engineering content
also involves learning about oneself and “who belongs” in
engineering [30], [31]. Students become recognized members as they engage in legitimate peripheral participation,
which sends them on a trajectory towards becoming core
members [29]. In the context of communities of practice,
design experiences offer students a mode of participation
that students interpret as more authentic than lecture-based
classroom pedagogy [32].
This study used a mixed sequential dominant status
design [33] to understand how ECE undergraduate students
describe engineering identity and belongingness. This study
involved a correlational analysis of survey data from students at four U.S. institutions and a thematic analysis of
interview data from five students at one of the four institutions. The sequential design involved collecting the quantitative data prior to qualitative data collection. The data were
mixed in three ways: first, the interview participants were
selected from participants in the quantitative dataset; second, the quantitative findings for each interview participant
informed the questions asked in each interview, primarily to
avoid overly lengthy interviews; finally, mixing occurred at the
level of interpretation, with the dominant status on the qualitative data strand because of its power to explore nuances
within students’ discussion of design experiences, engineering
identity, and belongingness. The quantitative strand supplemented this exploration by quantifying the extent to which
students believed belongingness and engineering identity to be
related concepts. This design facilitated multiple perspectives
to develop a rich and meaningful description of engineering identity and belongingness in the context of engineering
design.
In the quantitative strand, responses were analyzed from
first-year engineering students who participated in a large
multi-institution survey. The survey investigated students’
beliefs about engineering, physics, and math identities; belongingness; personality traits; motivation; and other relevant
factors to understand how different student attitudes can influence experiences in engineering [34]. Major findings from
this survey, including the creation of attitudinal profiles,
have previously been reported [35]–[37]. In this study, the
correlation between two constructs of interest (identity and
belongingness) were used to understand the extent to which
perceptions of engineering identity and belongingness overlap
for first-year engineering students. Next, interview data from
five early career ECE students who had participated in the
survey were analyzed to identify emergent themes related to
identity and belongingness in engineering.
A. Survey Data Collection and Analysis
III. R ESEARCH Q UESTIONS
This study examined how design experiences might shape
students’ connection to engineering through developing an
engineering identity and/or through belongingness. Because
Responses from survey measures with validity
evidence [34] were analyzed to examine how first-year
engineering students interested in ECE reported their beliefs
about their engineering identity and belongingness. The
ROHDE et al.: DESIGN EXPERIENCES, ENGINEERING IDENTITY, AND BELONGINGNESS
data were collected in the Fall of 2015 at four public
institutions in different regions (Midwest, South, Southeast,
and West) of the United States. Students were asked to
complete a survey in their first two weeks of class, consisting
of measures of attitudinal constructs (belongingness in
engineering; engineering, physics, and math identities; “Big
5” personality traits; motivation; and career interest, career
goals, and choice of engineering major) and demographic
information.
Engineering identity and belongingness items were measured on a seven-point anchored numeric scale, where
0 = “Strongly disagree” and 6 = “Strongly agree.”
Although the engineering identity constructs of interest,
performance/competence, and recognition beliefs were
included in the survey [19], a single item measuring overall
engineering identity (I see myself as an engineer) was used
in this analysis to develop a more concise understanding
of the extent of overlap between engineering identity and
belongingness. Engineering belongingness was measured
through six items (I feel comfortable in engineering, I feel I
belong in engineering, I enjoy being in engineering, I feel
comfortable in my engineering class, I feel supported in my
engineering class, and I feel that I am part of my engineering
class) to which students rated their agreement. Choice of
engineering major was measured by asking students to rate
on a seven-point scale their interest in sixteen different
engineering majors offered at the four institutions.
Of the student participants (n = 2, 916), 579 indicated being
highly interested in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and information technology, above all other engineering
disciplines. In this study, six items measuring belongingness
in engineering were compared against a measure of overall
engineering identity. A correlation analysis was conducted to
evaluate the strength of the relationship between students’ selfreported measures of belongingness in engineering and seeing
themselves as an engineer.
B. Participant Interviews and Thematic Analysis
The qualitative strand informed how students with design
experiences in their first-year engineering program interpreted engineering identity and belongingness. For this study,
data from students from a single institution with plans to
major in——electrical engineering, computer engineering, or
information technology were selected for analysis, to limit
the extent that different environments might shape responses.
The institution was a large, public Midwestern university
with a design-based first-year engineering program. Due to
the timing of the interviews, the participants were either
second-semester first-year students or first-semester secondyear students. As early career undergraduate students either
interested in, or majoring in, ECE, the first-year design-based
curriculum was either concurrent or in the recent past. The students self-identified the pseudonyms and demographics shown
in Table I. The five participants represent a purposeful subsample of participants from the larger quantitative sampling,
selected so that a variety of attitudes, beliefs, and experiences within a specific context (ECE) could be examined and
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TABLE I
PARTICIPANT I NFORMATION
connected to the quantitative findings. The distribution of students in Table I is not representative of electrical or computer
engineering programs; rather, the sample represents students
who responded to emails soliciting interview participation.
Participants were recruited from survey responses to cultivate a group with a variety of attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. Other findings from this group of participants have been
previously reported [38]. As with most qualitative research,
the goal of this line of inquiry was to develop a rich understanding of a topic from individuals’ subjective realities [39]
and to interpret meaning across participants’ perspectives [40].
This approach does not search for an absolute “truth,” but
rather focuses on how students interpret their experiences
within engineering. The goal of this qualitative research is
not to generalize findings to all students. Instead, this analysis offers a view through the lens of students who have
recently experienced a design-based first-year engineering
course. Through the stories of five participants, this study
presents the complicated and nuanced ways that engineering
identity and belongingness intersect in design experiences.
A semi-structured protocol guided interviews to focus on
students’ pathways to engineering, their previous engineering
experiences, and their engineering identity and belongingness.
Each interview lasted approximately 40 minutes, was conducted by two of the coauthors, and was audio recorded and
transcribed verbatim. Responses from the engineering identity and belongingness sections were studied using thematic
analysis, which focuses on uncovering common responses or
experiences among participants [41]. Themes emerged inductively, and were confirmed deductively, to examine what
students believed to be important to their engineering identity and belongingness in engineering. The inductive analysis
involved multiple instances of reading and listening to the
data to create in vivo codes (i.e., words or phrases taken
directly from the interview transcript) [42]. The inductive
codes were then reduced to emergent themes, which united
multiple codes across participants. The deductive analytic process involved reapplying the inductively developed themes
to the data to check for alignment and comprehensiveness.
Multiple researchers were involved in this process [43], which
facilitated multiple analytic perspectives and alternative explanations. The development and confirmation of themes occurred
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TABLE II
P EARSON C ORRELATION C OEFFICIENTS FOR B ELONGINGNESS
VARIABLES AND THE E NGINEERING I DENTITY S INGLE I NDICATOR I See
Myself as an Engineer FOR S TUDENTS H IGHLY I NTERESTED IN
E LECTRICAL E NGINEERING , C OMPUTER E NGINEERING , AND
I NFORMATION T ECHNOLOGY (n = 579)
items to one another, the values ranged from 0.53 to 0.78.
All correlation values were statistically significant at the
p < .001 level. Thus the belongingness items have a moderate
to strong correlation to each other.
When examining the strength of association between the
single indicator measuring engineering identity and the six
belongingness items, the correlation values ranged from
0.27 to 0.46. Although all values were statistically significant
at the p < .001 level, the analysis reveals that the engineering
identity and belongingness items have correlation coefficient
values that are weak to very weak.
Prior work has found belongingness in engineering to be
a critical path towards identifying as an engineer [10]. Given
the results of the correlation analysis, in which engineering
identity had weak to very weak correlation with belongingness,
the qualitative investigation was necessary to explore nuances
of how students conceptualized seeing themselves as engineers
versus belonging in engineering.
B. Design Experiences
during group meetings where researchers discussed and refined
their findings until agreement was reached.
V. R ESULTS
The mixed methods study revealed new knowledge relating to 1) the quantitative relationship between engineering
identity and belongingness for ECE students and 2) students’
qualitatively expressed attitudes and beliefs about engineering
identity and belongingness. A correlational analysis revealed
that engineering belongingness items, while highly related
to one another, were not strongly correlated to engineering
identity. The qualitative analytic process also revealed that
although students discussed engineering identity and belongingness in similar terms, students’ discussions of belongingness provided additional insights. Students believed design
experiences strongly influenced both their engineering identity
and belongingness. Students also responded to both engineering identity and belongingness interview questions in terms
of performance, competence, and interest. However, students’
responses about belongingness included more pronounced discussions of reflection and empathy for their peers, indicating
belongingness may serve as a pathway to increase inclusion
in engineering.
A. Correlation Analysis
Table II shows the Pearson correlation coefficients for student beliefs about belongingness in engineering and the single
measure of an engineering identity (i.e., I see myself as an
engineer). The six items used to measure belongingness in
engineering indicate moderate to strong, positive linear relationships among each other. Pearson correlation coefficient
values of 0.7-1.0 are considered strong, 0.5-0.7 are considered
moderate, 0.3-0.5 are considered weak, and less than 0.3 is
considered very weak [44]. When correlating belongingness
Students described the importance of design experiences
in engineering as the experiences related to both engineering
identity and belongingness. Students identified these design
experiences as representative of authentic engineering tasks,
where participation meant engaging in what engineers “really
do.” Shey discussed that design projects make him feel like
an engineer because it feels more like the “real world.”
However, the interpretation of design experiences manifested differently in engineering identity and belongingness
responses. Participation in design experiences prior to college was a key source of recognition and identity development
for Aaron, Mr. Rhee, and Shey. Their design experiences in
student clubs, classes, and at home contributed to their engineering identity as they were recognized as people who could
do engineering.
“...with friends and stuff we were doing, those sessions we were just building various things. I was recognized by them for just having the most, generally
the most powerful and/or well, just most something.
Usually powerful or most efficient.” (Aaron)
“When I graduated from high school and I felt I
had achieved something. I had my senior design
project in high school and I got an A on that, so
I felt recognized as someone who did something.”
(Mr. Rhee)
“I guess, the things that I do for my past times...
one summer, I was working... on a sprinkler. [...]
I thought, why not give it, like, a modern reboot,
sort of. . . I took a raspberry pi, like, a small minicomputer kind of thing ..And made it smartphone
app controllable, sort of.” (Shey)
Aaron felt recognized by his peers in a high school club for
having designs that were usually the most powerful or the most
efficient. In direct response asking about any experiences of
recognition in engineering, Mr. Rhee discussed earning an “A”
in his high school design engineering course. Shey responded
to the same question about being recognized as an engineer by
ROHDE et al.: DESIGN EXPERIENCES, ENGINEERING IDENTITY, AND BELONGINGNESS
talking about his experience taking the initiative to modernize
his family’s sprinkler system. Participation in design projects
opened avenues for recognition for Aaron, Mr. Rhee, and Shey,
allowing them to see themselves as engineers.
For Aaron, Mr. Rhee, and Shey, participation in design
experiences led to an increased sense of recognition and
engineering identity, while a lack of design experience led
to decreased perceptions of belongingness for Anika and
Matt. Anika and Matt were less confident in their belongingness because of their lack of experiences in engineering.
Anika expressed, “I don’t know if I belong in engineering
right now, I guess. It’s just my sophomore year, so it’s my
first time being exposed to actual engineering.” When asked
about her previous engineering experiences, she replied that
her only experiences have “just mostly been math-y stuff,
not engineering related. I didn’t even play with Legos or
anything...I didn’t do a lot of engineering or computer or electrical engineering related stuff before this university.” Here,
she distinguished between experiences focusing on math and
engineering experiences such as playing with Legos that incorporated an element of design. Matt, when asked to consider
how people with different backgrounds from his own might
have different experiences in engineering, positioned himself
as having less experience because he did not have engineering
classes in high school. Matt said, “I know a lot of people who
had engineering classes in high school and had all of those
experiences that I didn’t have at all. In fact, out of my friend
group, I feel like I didn’t do nearly as much as they did in
high school as far as engineering goes. I’m kind of a newbie.”
Both Anika and Matt acknowledged that they had limited
engineering experiences before college, and Matt called himself a “newbie,” setting himself apart from his peers who
took engineering classes in high school. While Anika and
Matt noted that they had been recognized as engineers since
coming to college through clubs or classrooms, their few and
only recent experiences made them more uncertain about their
belongingness compared to Aaron, Mr. Rhee, and Shey.
C. Grades and Interest
In addition to design experiences, students also frequently
discussed the importance of course performance and interest
when answering questions about engineering identity and
belongingness. Grades and interest were often discussed simultaneously, and found across both engineering identity and
belongingness questions. Shey, when asked about any experiences being recognized as an engineer, replied that his grades
in his STEM classes were forms of recognition from his
teachers. Mr. Rhee, on the other hand, felt excluded from
engineering when his grades were low, which caused him
to be overlooked for engineering internships. He said, “I
felt excluded because my grades aren’t exactly the best, and
because of that, no one wanted to put me into the internships.”
When discussing his engineering identity, Matt identified
interest as important, “I’m excited for these things. Makes
me feel like I’m an engineer.” Likewise, when discussing her
belongingness among her engineering peers, Anika touched
on both grades and interest saying, “If you’re succeeding and
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doing well, and you really like your major, and then all the
people, you connect with them in that aspect, then you belong
there.” This overlap of engineering identity and belongingness
responses, in the context of performance and interest, indicates
that in some cases students do not distinguish between what it
means to be an engineer and what it means to belong in engineering. Developing an identity as an engineer contributes to
their feelings of belongingness within engineering.
D. Affect, Comparisons, and Reflections
While students displayed some similarities with respect to
how they discussed identity and belongingness, their discussions of belongingness prompted greater self-reflection and
empathy for their peers than their discussions of their potential identity as an engineer. The identity questions asked in
the interviews (“Do you see yourself as an engineer?” and
“Have you been recognized as an engineer?”) elicited participant responses related to experiences, performance, and
interest in engineering. The belongingness interview questions addressed fit and similarity of the participants and their
other peers in engineering. At times, these belongingness
questions led to student responses that were similar to engineering identity responses (i.e., about experiences as sources
of recognition, performances, and interest in engineering). At
other times when discussing belongingness, however, students
included reflective, emotional, and empathetic responses that
were absent when talking about engineering identity. Although
students were explicitly prompted to consider their belongingness and that of their peers, the emotional statements
and concern for others were present across all belongingness
responses, not just those specific prompts. These differences
underscore the extent to which students perceived belongingness and engineering identity as distinct, albeit related,
constructs.
Four of the five interview participants mentioned affective elements in their belongingness responses. For example,
Mr. Rhee said, “...Sometimes I overthink things, not realizing the solution is so easy and obvious. . . if I can overcome
that then I’ll feel more at home.” Mr. Rhee expressed a desire
to feel more “at home,” or comfortable, in engineering. Two
other students described how relationships with their peers or
experiences in engineering made them question whether they
belonged:
“There’s this, she’s an upperclassman in electrical engineering, and she’s, I don’t know, she really,
really loves it. She’s the one who’s super passionate
about it. On her snap stories, it’s always like, oh
my gosh, love my major. So far, I haven’t felt that
yet, so it’s like, wow, I want to feel that way too”.
(Anika)
“There’s this one thing that we do in [first-year
engineering design class], also. It’s coming up with
a whole bunch of ideas for solving a particular
problem. Like, just dumping down as many ideas as
you can think of. . . That would be a big blow to my
confidence if I was in their place. Like, if I couldn’t
come up with those kinds of ideas.” (Shey)
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Finally, in explaining why he felt that belongingness in engineering was important, Aaron shared that “you start to get
these feelings of just emptiness and darkness even if you enjoy
what you’re doing, it just doesn’t feel right if you are alone.”
For Aaron, being interested or enjoying engineering could not
mitigate a lack of belongingness.
Four of the participants brought in reflective, affective statements to their belongingness responses that were not present
when discussing engineering identity. Mr. Rhee believed
that if he were able to stop overthinking things, then he
would feel more “at home” and comfortable in engineering.
Anika expressed an intense desire to be “super passionate”
about her major. Aaron believed that belongingness is crucial for success in engineering because feelings of aloneness
cannot make up for interest and enjoyment. Finally, Shey
empathized with students who might not be able to come up
with many ideas during an ideation phase in a design-based
engineering class. Students used the topic of belongingness in engineering to reflect on their current experiences
in their major, connect emotionally with engineering, and
empathize with students who might not have the same sense
of belongingness that the participants felt.
VI. D ISCUSSION
This research was motivated by a need to understand how
design experiences impact engineering identity and belongingness, while being sensitive to how students might interpret
these concepts differentially. The focus of both the quantitative
and qualitative strands were the responses of early career (firstand second-year) undergraduate students highly interested in
ECE. Focusing on ECE students provides clarity on the influence of design experiences on students’ identity development
and belongingness within a specific engineering disciplinary
context, and highlights how design experiences can support
students’ development as engineers.
A. Influence of Design Experiences on Identity and
Belongingness
To answer the first research question, this analysis qualitatively examined how five students at one institution in ECE
discussed design when answering questions about engineering
identity and belongingness. Although these students experienced the same design-based first-year engineering course,
many described design experiences from high school or their
home life as important, and more authentic. They saw design
experiences as more “real world” than lecture-based coursework. Students saw themselves as engineers through their
participation in design, either in class, at home, or in high
school. However, some students expressed a lack of belongingness in engineering because they did not have extensive
design experiences before coming to college.
The design program at this institution was developed
to explicitly support design thinking and students’ inclusivity towards classmates who may be different from
themselves [45]. However, students gave equal weight to other
design experiences outside their first-year engineering course,
such as high school or at-home projects. This result suggests
that engineering educators can support the development of an
engineering identity and sense of belongingness in their students by valuing both the engineering and non-engineering
experiences that students bring to the classroom. Although
a tension remains between valuing previous design experiences
and acknowledging that these experiences are not required
to succeed in engineering, this tension may be ameliorated
by recognizing the utility of non-engineering experiences.
Further, Hazari and Cass [46], in a study in a high school
physics context. noted that recognition is multifaceted, with
multiple avenues for students to feel recognized and welcome.
In this way, instructors can foster all students’ connections
with engineering through multiple avenues, including creating
a class community, fostering student-centered learning, and
offering direct affirmation [46]. Future work should attend to
ways that educators can support students who enter engineering with limited previous design experience.
B. Nuances Between Engineering Identity and Belongingness
To answer the second research question, students’ responses
to engineering identity and belongingness questions were
examined, from a multi-institution survey and in interviews.
For students highly interested in electrical and computer engineering, a general measure of engineering identity was only
weakly correlated with six items measuring belongingness in
engineering. This finding motivated a deeper exploration of
how interview participants discussed these concepts.
Students’ interview responses about engineering identity
exhibited both similarities and differences to their responses
about belongingness. Students felt like engineers and felt
they belonged in engineering because they were performing well and were highly interested in engineering. Although
performance, competence, and interest have been formally
established in STEM role identity literature [16], [47], [48],
they also play a significant role in students’ interpretations of
their belongingness.
Students’ interpretations of engineering identity and belongingness differed in that responses about belongingness exhibited greater reflection by the students and empathy for
their peers. Students used emotive language, such as being
“at home,” to describe belongingness in engineering. The
responses about belongingness also exhibited greater selfreflection, in which participants compared themselves to
their classmates. Although belongingness has previously been
described in affective terms (i.e., being comfortable or feeling welcomed), the data revealed that students also brought
in an element of comparing themselves to peers to gauge
their own belongingness. The use of comparison and reflection in student responses may be a result of the composition
of the responding participants, many of whom belonged to
demographic categories over-represented in engineering [49].
Students may implicitly feel welcomed if they look and act like
their peers. Alternatively, students’ portrayal of belongingness
as beyond just feeling welcomed could be an artifact of students’ hesitancy to discuss ideas of inclusion unless explicitly
prompted. Despite interviewers’ efforts to facilitate open dialog, students may have felt more comfortable focusing on their
ROHDE et al.: DESIGN EXPERIENCES, ENGINEERING IDENTITY, AND BELONGINGNESS
engineering interests and experiences, instead of being candid
about times when they were made to feel like they did not
belong.
C. Connecting to Communities of Practice Theory
Design experiences provide ways for a student to engage in
legitimate peripheral participation and become a core member
in an engineering community of practice [28]. Prior work has
discussed identity development as movement into a community of practice, where individuals see themselves as members
as they learn about the domain the community of practice
addresses [29]. When considering how belongingness relates
to engineering identity development, the results of this study
suggest that belongingness can also be framed in reference
to communities of practice. As a student develops an engineering identity, moving from a peripheral membership to
a core one, they evaluate their belongingness by comparing
their position to their peers. A student who enters with fewer
design experiences, and who is thus a more peripheral member,
may describe a lack of belongingness, perceiving that many
of their peers are further ahead of them. This way of comparing engineering identity and belongingness has implications
for engineering education researchers to further conceptualize
the similarities and differences between these constructs.
D. Limitations and Future Work
Although the quantitative analysis used data from over five
hundred students at four institutions across the U.S., the findings are primarily based on the responses of five students
highly interested in ECE at one of the four institutions. While
the qualitative data allowed the authors to perform an in-depth
investigation, the transferability of the findings is limited until
more research can be completed with other engineering majors
and types of design experiences. Additionally, to better understand “what works and for whom does it work?,” additional
explorations of the experiences of a more diverse group of
students are necessary, especially with regards to socially constructed demographics and other identity characteristics. These
identity characteristics may be more or less salient in different
institutional and disciplinary context. Future work will conduct more nuanced cross comparisons of the dataset beyond
ECE students at one institution to understand how engineering experiences shape students’ perceptions of themselves as
engineers and their belongingness in engineering.
VII. C ONCLUSION
This study used mixed methods to explore how design experiences influenced students’ perceptions of their engineering
identity and belongingness. Participation in design experiences
caused students to see themselves as engineers, while a lack
of participation led some students to feel like they might not
belong in engineering. These slightly different interpretations
of engineering identity and belongingness can be explained
through the theory of communities of practice. Design experiences can offer students a way to participate in engineering in
ways that feel “real,” allowing them to move closer to becoming core members of the community. However, as students’
171
trajectories lead them into an engineering community of practice, students also compare their position and trajectory to
their peers. This comparison informs their overall perception
of engineering belongingness.
Based on this work, the recommendation to educators is to
strike a balance between recognizing design experiences both
in and out of the classroom, and to value students who do
not enter with prior design experience. Additionally, instructors can be aware of how their grading practices might affect
students’ budding engineering identities and belongingness.
This analysis also prompts engineering educator researchers
to further study how students might discriminate between different affective beliefs about engineering, such as identity and
belongingness.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank all of the participants for
their time. The authors would also like to thank M. Ross,
J. Doyle, B. Ma, D. Satterfield, and M. Rodriguez for their
contributions to the project. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National
Science Foundation.
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Jacqueline (Jacki) Rohde is currently pursing the doctoral degree in engineering education at Purdue University and is a 2017 NSF Graduate Research
Fellow.
Lisa Musselman is currently pursing the undergraduate degree in civil
engineering at the University of Dayton.
Brianna Benedict is a doctoral student in engineering education at Purdue
University.
Dina Verdín is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in engineering education
with Purdue University and a 2016 NSF Graduate Research Fellow.
Allison Godwin is an Assistant Professor of engineering education with
Purdue University. Her research focuses on factors that influence diverse students to choose engineering and stay in engineering through their careers and
how different experiences within the practice and culture of engineering foster
or hinder belongingness and identity development.
Adam Kirn is an Assistant Professor of engineering education with the
University of Nevada, Reno. His work focuses on innovative approaches to
diversity in engineering education.
Lisa Benson is a Professor of engineering and science education with
Clemson University. Her research focuses on the interactions between student
motivation and their learning experiences. She is the Editor of the Journal of
Engineering Education.
Geoff Potvin is an Associate Professor with the Department of Physics and the
STEM Transformation Institute, Florida International University. His research
focuses on understanding student identities in physics and engineering as well
as broadening participation in these fields.