 Hi everybody, I'm Beth Holloway. I'm the assistant dean for diversity and engagement here in the College of Engineering and I'm really excited about this seminar that we have today in celebration of our first generation college student week. This is the second year that Purdue has participated in this national celebration and this is the first research seminar that we've done about first generation college students. So I'm really excited that we are able to do this with you all today and thanks for joining. I am going to turn things over to Professor Allison Godwin. Allison is an associate professor here in the School of Engineering Education and she is going to do the honors of introducing our speaker today. Allison. Thank you, Beth. I am so delighted and pleased to get to introduce our speaker. It's a real honor. Dina Verdeen is an assistant professor of engineering education system and design in the Polytechnic School of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on broadening participation engineering by focusing on the issues of access and persistence. She uses asset-based approaches to understand minor Thai students' lived experiences, particularly focused on first generation college students, Latinx students, and women of color. And she focuses on how these students author their identities as engineers and navigate through the current culture of engineering. I'm particularly pleased to welcome her back because she received her PhD in engineering education and her master's in industrial engineering here from Purdue University before she joined the faculty at ASU. And she's won several awards already in her career, including the 2018 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Frontiers in Education Conference Best Diversity Paper Award. And her dissertation was selected as one of the top three in the 2018 American Educational Research Association Division D, or the Measurement Division Research Gala. So with that, I'd like to give a warm welcome to Dina and turn it over to her. Thank you, Alison. I appreciate it. So Alison was my advisor. So thank you. Thank you so much for all of your mentorship that got me to this point. So thank you. So don't need to introduce myself again. I'm going to hop over to introducing the collaborators to where this particular data set that I'm going to talk about comes from. So the the the data set that I use is in this seminar is from Jessica Smith and Juan Lucena's Eager Grant from the National Science Foundation. So I did want to acknowledge that. And so now let's hop to it. Okay, so students were the first in their families to attend college, enroll in engineering programs with accumulated engineering relevant bodies of knowledge from their experiences at home or through their communities or through manual or skilled labor. And so the knowledge and skill sets of first-generation college students, you know, it may not be that of engineers or scientists, but of working class families. And so when these knowledge and skill sets are not valued in the engineering classroom, it requires that first-generation college students negotiate who they are, where they come from, with who they aspire to be. And so historical research has shown that over the past century engineering education shifted away from practical hands-on, hands-on practice in favor of a sequence of science and math curricula. And so the practical education was systematically pushed out of the four-year colleges or curricula and into the two-year community colleges as engineers start to establish the field of befitting the middle class. And so the question about what knowledge counts as engineer knowledge is an important is important for understanding and better supporting students who are the first in their families to attend college who do come from these working class families or backgrounds. And so when the knowledge and skill sets of first-generation college students, the knowledge and skill sets they bring with them to engineering are recognized as sources of knowledge. They can serve as capital towards learning, engineering, and ultimately contribute to their success. So in my research, my work, I use a funds of knowledge framework to help engineering educators support the crucial bodies of knowledge that first-generation college students hold. And the funds of knowledge framework can be understood as the bodies of knowledge experiences, resources, and skills that students accumulate in their household activities through their family interactions or through the community interactions that they have. And so the funds of knowledge framework rejects the notion that students' households can be reduced to being considered economically poor or poor in terms of quality of experiences. So this framework has been mostly used in the K-12 setting, but now a shift has been made to incorporate it into higher education. So in the higher education context, funds of knowledge go beyond simply recognizing students' household knowledge to acknowledging that their accumulated bodies of knowledge can serve as forms of social and cultural capital to help them navigate through engineering curriculum. And so my collaborators and I had a goal. And so our goal was to make first-generation college students funds of knowledge visible and valued in the engineering classroom. As well, we wanted to understand how first generation college students funds of knowledge supported their learning and engineering, supported their interest, and supported their persistence to degree completion. And so we developed a survey scale that captured only aspects of students' funds of knowledge using ethnographic interview data of first-generation college students' lived experiences. We hypothesized these 10 latent constructs that you see here. And so for the purpose of this seminar and the larger study that I'll be presenting, I'm only going to focus on these four particular funds of knowledge constructs. So I'll be going over how they were developed off of the students' shared lived experiences. And so the funds of knowledge constructs that I'll be talking about are tinkering knowledge from home, perspective taking, connecting experiences, and mediation of skills. As well, these four constructs will be presented in a bigger study halfway towards this seminar that talks about first-generation college students' persistence. So earlier, I said that we used ethnographic interviews to understand students' lived experiences and capture their funds of knowledge. And so we used the ethnographic interview data to understand how their experiences were sources of knowledge that supported their design process, that supported their problem-solving skills, and that ultimately helped them navigate through their engineering program. And so a little bit about ethnographic interview techniques. So the researcher is seeking to learn about the cultural ways of being of participants. And so participants are empowered to share their experiences. And in the interview process, we communicate to the participants that we want to know what they know in the ways that they know it. And so each student that we interviewed held various funds of knowledge that were obtained through their household experiences or through participating in the skilled labor force. And so the students that we interviewed demonstrated interpersonal skills as well, such as the perspective taking and mediation ability that I will be talking more about. And so these were instrumental in their lives growing up and as they navigated their environment as adults. And so the six participants that were selected for the development of these funds of knowledge constructs offered additional forms of diversity, including an even representation of women and men, different geographical regions, including rural versus urban, differences in parents' occupation, as well as their own educational trajectories. Some students were transfer students and some were not. And so for the purpose of this seminar, I'm going to be sharing the experiences of specifically Julie, Andres, Brian, and Brian, to illustrate how each of the funds of knowledge constructs were developed. So I'll be providing some vignettes of these students' experiences to really unpack where these four funds of knowledge constructs that came from or how they were developed. So after providing the vignettes, I will provide you with a definition of how we conceptualize the funds of knowledge construct and give you some example of survey items that were developed to coincide with these latent constructs. So here I'll be talking about how we went about developing the construct, tinkering knowledge from home. So in Andres, Julie and Brian's ethnographic interview, they spoke about how their parents fixed things around the house. And through their work, their parents had accumulated bodies of knowledge that afforded them various repair and building skills. And so Andres, a mechanical engineering student, spoke about how his family's business of recycling and upcycling unwanted item fostered an interest in inefficiency and waste. So if you recall from the previous slide, his parents would, they would go to either garage sales or really just try to find areas where material was being recycled and basically upcycle it and sell it back to the community. So Andres talks about how his family's background supported his interest, supported his desire to start to upcycle himself. So he states, I want to build like a big shop to be able to collect all the material that comes out of these construction work and that goes into the dump. And I want to recycle it. I can't let these things go to waste. I have to do something about it. So this within in response to one of his experiences working at a construction site, he would see how thousands and thousands of dollars would be spent building a certain frame, only to have it broken down because it didn't meet the design specifications. So he saw a lot of that go to waste. And so his parents' background of doing this like recycling upcycling really like triggered that that interest. And so as well, Julie, a mechanical engineering student recalls that her parents had this fix it yourself type of attitude. And so she counted, she recounts several such jobs that her parents did around the house. And she explains a lot of times it was something that could be if it was something that could be fixed safely, we would fix it ourselves. So she was saying that her parents and herself, they would do the fencing, do the landscaping and do the wiring and plumbing around their house. So they had this fix it yourself type of attitude. As well, Brian, who's an electrical engineering student, spoke about how at a young age, he learned how to fix things around the house, and would spend time watching his father tinker. So his father works as an electrician. And through his father's work, he learned how to handle wires, specifically, like recalling. So how to handle wires was more of watching with watching my dad work with wires, seeing techniques, how you clamp it on, twist it, move it, pull it, strip it, and good techniques for doing that. That definitely have not been taught. I think maybe one or two classes had, we had where we strip wires, but there wasn't much instruction given on how such techniques are done, or good techniques. So this, this he was able to leverage his, his father's experience and knowledge to really understand how to handle these wires in his own class environment. And so the the experiences of Andres, Julian and Brian serve as vivid examples of how first-generation college students' knowledge through their home experiences that are often not taught or recognized as formal engineering experience, that they're often not taught in recognized as, as formal engineering education settings. So with, with these examples in mind, we created a construct called tinkering knowledge from home to really try to capture this, this notion that students are learning a lot of like hands-on practical activities or practical knowledge rather from their, from their households. So we defined tinkering knowledge from home as activities, knowledge, such as repairing, assembling or building that students have engaged in their, in their home environments. And so some example of survey items that we created for this specific construct are at home, I learned to use tools to build things. At home, I work with machines and appliances. I learned to fix things around the house. At home, I learned to assemble and disassemble things. So there are also bodies of knowledge that are less manual and more cognitive. And so the construct that, that we developed called perspective taking emerged from all of the students narratives. However, Julie's experience experiences are emblematic of, of, and I'm going to share her experience only with you to in today's seminar. So Julie's experience as a, as an engineering intern in a construction company allowed her to draw on her perspective taking funds of knowledge during a project that involved waterproofing foundation. So Julie, Julie recounts her experience stating with waterproofing systems, you can't just excavate straight down because it's unsafe for the, for the person standing at the bottom of the hole. When I started looking at waterproofing, I was like, you know, we could do blindside waterproofing and put the waterproofing membrane down and then put the inside foam and pour the concrete, but it's unsafe. So I needed to bring to my manager's attention that for the foundation design, we needed to actually have space for people to get in there and put the drainage pipes around the foundation. And so Julie, thinking through the design of the waterproofing system, took the point of view of the technician who would be handling the physical labor of the project and advocated for a redesign that took into consideration their safety. Likewise, in her senior design project, Julie was tasked with designing homes for families in a Native American reservation. And Julie took, took on the perspective of the families that would be affected by her team's design project and took the time to get to know the community and took the time to get to know the community that she was serving and she recounts her experience by stating, I just kind of wanted to sit down with tribal members. I think it's very beneficial if you want to like kind of build trust with people to sit down with them, to share a meal with them. Small things like that are important. You can't just blast people with their technical details when you're doing something so sensitive as designing a home for people. You have to receive that feedback. You have to develop that relationship of trust. You have to listen if you actually want the project to be successful. So through Julie's experiences and the shared experiences of the participants that we interviewed, we developed a funds of knowledge construct called perspective taking. And so perspective taking is defined as the cognitive capacity to examine a situation or examine another person's experience. And so some of the survey items that we developed for this specific construct include, I am open to listen to the point of view of others. I consider other people's points of view and discussions. I like to ask people questions about their experiences. I like to view both, both sides of an issue. So our interviews also revealed students willingness and capability to help others navigate in navigate unfamiliar situations. So for example, in one of Andres's jobs, he talked about having to teach an apprentice how to drill an anchor in the concrete. And Andres recounts the experience by stating, he thought the tool was going to do everything. He said the tool and I told him, you have to be careful with the tool. It's powerful. And the tool spun around and it hit him in the face. And he tried again and the tool spun his whole body. And I told him, you know, we're about the same size. Watch me do it. So I drilled, I drilled the thing. And I was like, you have to engage your body and you have to hold it like you mean it. So likewise, the willingness to be a mediator or to bring people together was also captured through Brian's description of his relationship with his coworkers as Brian recounts. So coworkers jumped to conclusions on things very quickly. And I tried to kind of get into that conversation with them. Well, why do you think, why do you think it's that way? Why do you think that they might be saying that? Or, you know, do you know what they've done before? What leads you to think that that's the best solution? And if we can better understand where they're coming from, maybe we can discuss. Maybe there's something about it that isn't the best. Maybe we're missing something. So through these shared experiences and through Brian and Andres' experiences and the experiences of all of our participants, we developed this funds of knowledge construct called mediation of skills. So we defined it as students ability to help others sort things out in unfamiliar situations or circumstances. And so example of survey items that we created for this latent construct include help someone else adjust to an unfamiliar place, help someone else adjust to an unfamiliar social situation, help help different groups of people understand each other better. And so the last construct that I'll be talking about, and that's pertinent to the larger study I'll be presenting is the construct, the funds of knowledge construct called connecting experience, connecting experiences. So one of our goals was to understand if students explicitly leverage their accumulated bodies of knowledge in their engineering coursework, or recognize that their bodies of knowledge are scaffolds in engineering related coursework. And while our participants made the connection explicitly, it's possible that other first generation college students in engineering don't see or act upon the relevance themselves. And so we targeted two types of experiences. So experiences happening in the home or experiences that are that are sort of hobby like, which can occur both in and out of the home. And while we know that the experiences at home, or through their various hobbies don't really capture like every micro experience students have had in their lives, we sought to obtain a general understanding of the connection between students lived experiences and their current engineering coursework. So we hypothesized the construct of connecting experiences to serve as a bridge towards capturing the transmission from funds of knowledge to forms of capital. And I need water. One second. And so we define this construct of connecting experiences as students ability to draw from hobbies or home activities to scaffold what they're currently learning in engineering. And two example of serve of survey items that we developed were I see connection between experiences at home and what I'm learning in my engineering coursework. I draw my previous experiences at home with little instructions given on how to solve an engineering task. So now that I showed you all how the the four how four specific funds of knowledge constructs were derived, I can now show you how these funds of knowledge can help can help us understand first generation college students persistence. So to answer this research question, we administered the funds of knowledge survey survey instrument to 10 institutions across the United States. So the data for this study was collected in the fall of 2018 at 10 four year institutions across the United States, West, South and Mountain regions. And the institutions were chosen because they were chosen based on purposeful sampling. So five of the participating institutions were purposefully selected because they had support programs for engineering students who are the first in their families to attend college and or are considered low income. And that metric is based on receiving a pale grant. So of the 819 participants that we collected, 46% identified as first generation college students. So about 378 of the 378 first generation college students, you can see here that the the largest majority so 48% identify as being part of the Latinx community. As well, 40% identify being being female and 60% identify being male. 65% of our first gen students identified as being as receiving a pale grant. And well, 71% indicate indicated that they were not transfer students. So a different demographic. So when so the purpose of this study was to really recognize first generation college students knowledge and skill sets as capital towards learning engineering. Because when first generation college students knowledge and skill sets are recognized as legitimate sources of knowledge, they can serve as as capital for learning and ultimately contribute to their persistence in engineering. So the study so this study that I'll be presenting to you next incrementally examines how funds of knowledge supports identity development, as well, how funds of knowledge and their developed engineering identity informs persistence. So to answer those research questions, I use the instruction equation modeling technique. And so this this method models a relationship between observed measures and and latent measures or latent constructs rather. So this method allowed me to model multiple interrelated relationships. And so you can to orient you a latent construct was, for example, tinkering knowledge from home or perspective taking or mediation ability and they would be represented as like ovals and observed measures would be single indicators. For example, how we measure persistence was students response to a question, I feel certain about graduating with an engineering degree. And so that's one single indicator. And so we we model the relationship between these variables. And the relationship is depicted through this arrow. So because I had a rich sample of first generation college students, so about 378, I parsed out the sample to focus individually on women and then individually on men, because I wanted to understand how funds of knowledge were supporting their identity development and we're supporting their persistence based on gender. And so what I'm going to show you first is the model of women first generation college students. And so so first I want to present a like a well known mediation model. So this is well known in the engineering education community. A prior work and and this current model showed that students when students see themselves as engineers, or students see themselves as engineers, when they when their confidence and their ability is supported, supports both their interest and their receiving external recognition. And so this is this is a mediation relationship that is well known in our field, but a notable distinction that I found with my sample of women first generation college students that's that's different from from published work is that continuously developing and sustaining interest in engineering was almost two times more important for their self identification as engineers. And so for women first generation college students, only two of the funds of knowledge constructs were supportive of their engineering identity development. So perspective taking supported interest in engineering, as well as it supported their performance confidence beliefs, which means that women's ability to leverage their experiences or see their experiences connected to engineering coursework supports their their performance confidence beliefs, as well as bids for recognition. So that's this this recognition piece down here. And I want to add that the capacity to to take other people's situation or circumstance into account. So conceptualized here as perspective taking has been linked to innovative behavioral tendencies of like question observing and experimenting. And this is based on like published work in other fields. And as well the the leadership event and management scholarship has also confirmed the importance of this particular funds of knowledge of perspective taking specifically individuals with this capacity with the capacity to consider others point of view is essential for effective leadership as it supports leaders when working with others and as well as a problem solving and being able to implement change. And I also want to I also want to say that to bring educators to bring attention to to educators that this funds of knowledge not only supports identity developments but it is also essential for leadership roles that students take on either in their coursework or as future practicing engineers. So something to consider leveraging in the classroom or continuing to strengthen and refine the classroom. So I did find a negative relationship between the construct connecting experiences onto women's self identification as as engineers. So recall that the construct of connecting experience is defined as students ability to draw from hobbies or home activities to scaffold what they're currently learning and engineering. And so why this is the case that the more women see connections between their hobbies and home activities the less they see themselves as engineers. Well when possible rationale could be that women could be receiving messages that the types of activities that that that the type of the types of activities that are legitimate engineering like quote legitimate engineering activities may not may not be the activities that they're engaging in. So there's there could be a disconnect between what is being valued in our community versus what they're actually bringing in with them or or the experiences that they're having. And so while there is a negative direct relationship between connecting experiences and women's identification as engineers there is a positive indirect effect when considering this this factor right here of receiving external recognition which means that women's experiences so this pathway here down here and over here which means that women's experiences need to be basically legitimized by influential others in order to to positively support their identification as engineers. And I think this is an unfortunate finding to to be honest and but it is a wake up call to change the messaging around what counts as as legitimate engineering experiences or legitimate engineering knowledge one second. Okay so next I want to I want to understand how women first generation college students developed an engineering identity and the development of an engineering identity supported persistence and so persistence beliefs in this study represents is represented by a single indicator and the single indicator was I feel certain about graduating with an engineering degree. So if it wasn't clear already this is cross-sectional data so just collect it at one point in time so persistence it's not measured longitudinally rather it's measured as a student's you know certainty to to graduate. So I'll incrementally unpack one second that's not supposed to be there. Did I go backwards? No okay so I'll incrementally unpack the construct that supported women's persistence. So developed a developed and sustained interest in engineering had the largest effect onto their onto women's persistence beliefs. So when you see here as well women's performance competence beliefs so their ability to understand engineering coursework and their confidence in themselves as of doing well in engineering also positively supported their certainty to graduate in engineering. However most notably I want to point out that interest in engineering was almost two times more influential in their persistent or their their beliefs about being certain to graduate in engineering. So I did find a negative relationship between women's funds of knowledge construct of connecting experiences onto their persistence beliefs. However there is a positive mediational relationship here so if you see this pathway that's connecting connecting experience onto performance competence beliefs onto certainty to graduate. So which means that women's ability to draw from their hobbies or home activities to scaffold what they're what they're currently learning in engineering when mediated with the well-established like confidence beliefs supports their certainty to graduate. Okay so I've shown you the the model of women for generation college students and now I'm going to answer basically the same research question but only using the sample of men for generation college students. So again here is the non-mediational model that we saw from the the previous the sample of women as well as what's been published in in the literature and so now this sample of men we can see that the that the construct of being externally recognized as an engineer is slightly more important for their self-identification as as engineers. So then I also want I wanted to understand how the funds of knowledge supported men's process of developing an engineering identity and so what I found was that four funds of knowledge constructs supported men's identity development process. So men's tinkering knowledge from home supported their interest in engineering and recall that tinkering knowledge from home was defined as activities and knowledge such as repairing, assembling, and building that students engaged in in their home environments. So the construct of connecting experience as well the construct of connecting experience and perspective taking supported men's performance competence beliefs so these two here. So if you if you recall from the the model of women these two constructs connecting experience and perspective taking also supported performance competence beliefs and lastly the funds of knowledge construct of mediation skills supported men's bid for recognition so and so mediation skill was conceptualized as a student's ability to help others sort things out in unfamiliar situations or so our circumstances and so in a way this performative act is helping others such as like peers or professors recognize first generation college students as engineers. I wanted to point out that the funds of knowledge construct of connecting experience negatively supported men's interest in engineering which is honestly a bit strange to me especially considering that there was a large correlation between the funds of knowledge construct of tinkering knowledge from home and connecting experience so these two are highly correlated yet they have a different effect on two interests so there's a lot that could be teased out that my data can't help me tease out but you know future work can so how do how do I explain this phenomenon to you all one possible rationale could be that the notion of of what counts as legitimate and valued engineering knowledge or experiences could could play a factor and so perhaps men are not seeing that they're home or hobbies are legitimate sources of engineering knowledge to leverage and so there there is an area of opportunity that there is an area of opportunity for engineering educators to help bridge this divide or or ship perhaps ship the messaging about what what knowledge is valuable engineering and and in how we teach our students but I did want to point out that there while there is a negative direct effect there is a there is a positive indirect effect so when when this connection happens so students are using their knowledge and their knowledge is is subsequently building confidence in their ability to perform then it's also supporting their interest in engineering and so while the funds of knowledge construct of connecting experience negatively influenced men's interest it positively influenced their self-identification as engineers so at this point I hope you recall the previous model how there's a lot of complete polar opposite results that I'm finding and the difference being that one sample is only women and the other sample is only men so ultimately I wanted to understand how men's first generation for how men first generation classrooms funds of knowledge and their developed engineering identity supported their certainty to graduate with an engineering degree so I found that the developed and a well-sustained interest in engineering was four times more important for men's certainty to graduate with an engineering degree as you can see here while being recognized as an engineer by others such as peers or professors only had a smaller role in their in informing persistence and so what what surprises me here is interest well it doesn't surprise me but what is perhaps a bit could be a bit alarming is that interest is four times more important for persistent yet this funds of knowledge construct here is negatively supporting interest so you need to for for these groups of students for this group of students they need to have this build confidence or they need their their experiences to then subsequently support their confidence in doing well in engineering in order for interest to then continue continue to be developed so I think that there's a lot that could be done with this particular idea of students leveraging their experiences at home to scaffold their learning and perhaps it it's up to us as as educators to to start to bridge that divide between the knowledge that comes from the household and the knowledge being taught in the classroom setting so key takeaways that that I want you all to get out of this I know it was a long it was a long conversation but what I want you to take out of this is that interest in engineering is a powerful influencer towards informing first-generation college students persistence and this is true for both of our models of women and men and so I think that the concept of interest is overlooked but in my study I found that I found that interest in engineering was sustained through the funds of knowledge through the fund of knowledge of perspective taking that women brought in with them as well for men interest was was sustained was fostered through their their funds of knowledge of of tinkering knowledge from home so that that experience of having you know repaired build or assembled from home but interest was contested so the the if you recall the construct of connecting experience negatively informed of interest in engineering so if if interest is serving as such a powerful tool to inform persistence we I think we can do a lot more to continue to to foster or nurture this interest in engineering and and really start to bridge that divide between the the knowledge that they bring with them in their households to the knowledge that is being taught in in engineering classes and so another key takeaway is that the funds of knowledge construct perspective taking and connecting experiences support first-generation college students confidence in their abilities to do well in their engineering course works and so perspective taking if you recall has been linked to leadership and and innovative capabilities as well in the classroom setting we can support first-generation college students by providing opportunities for them to connect and leverage their funds of knowledge to scaffold their learning and engineering so first-generation college students funds of knowledge are differentially informed their identity development and persistent in engineering and this was based on their their gender so it's important to continuously examine the the male dominated messages or ways of knowing that are continuously circulating in our fields and so to conclude efforts to diversify engineering education have remained well in large part have remained outside of the engineering curricula and so efforts focused outside the curricula leave the actual content of engineering knowledge mostly unexplored or or untouched at the site of analysis and so my study emphasized the importance of leveraging students funds of knowledge in order to solidify their their confidence in being able to perform well in engineering as and which in turn solidifies their certainty to graduates and so using the funds of knowledge framework we can I can this this work can help educators acknowledge and build upon the crucial eyes of knowledge first-generation college students hold and and are bringing with them to the classroom setting so providing opportunities for first-gen students to view their knowledge as legitimate knowledge is an important like next step towards equity and inclusion and ultimately contributing to persistent in engineering so with that I would like to thank you all for taking your time to listen to the seminar and I'm just acknowledged my collaborators whom wrote the grant where this data came from and that's it thank you great thank you very much this is very interesting I hope all of you out there are furiously typing as we speak right now your questions either into the Q&A or into the chat box feel free to use either of those and I will relay those to Dina and she can answer but until some of those start coming in I have I have a question to get us started so your the constructive help or the the framework about funds of knowledge seems to me very very related to an asset-based approach of thinking about diversity and inclusion and different minoritized and marginalized groups um can you talk a little bit more about how we might continue to work on shifting our thinking from groups of students who maybe have more challenges or more barriers to overcome to thinking about those students as coming with some very unique strengths and assets that could make all of us in the profession better yeah yeah so it's this framework was essentially that a response to deficit theorizing of students who are minoritized not only in engineering because this was developed completely outside of engineering but it was essentially a response to how do we get the educators that are educating these groups of students who are not part of this majority group to see that their that their households have all of these rich experiences that they bring with them to the to the household setting and so that that concept in and of itself really speaks back to to the engineering field. Students especially first generation college students have a plethora of experiences not only from their own households where they have to be more um more intentional about how they do work around their house or even having to enter the workforce earlier than others um all of that is build experiences build knowledge that could and and should be leveraged and like celebrated in our coursework so what I what I always find interesting is and slightly disappointing to be quite honest that we always focus and praise students that come in with these robotic type of experiences well to be honest robotics are expensive they're expensive items to have and not all students grow up with these items and so why not start to shift our conversation out of who you did Lego robotics or you you had mindstorms or you you had all of these gadgets that are not always available to all people um why not shift it to to a different a different frame that really starts to include like every day every every day ways of knowing or every day household items that we can start to incorporate as as relevant relevant knowledge that comes that that our students are bringing in great thank you we have a couple questions um what do you see as future work in this area yeah what do I see as future work I think the next step is so I've I've helped identify so this this model here is only of of men and the other one for women I've helped identify that these funds of knowledge are important and and how they're important is that they inform these various important constructs such as being um confidence in their ability to do well um it's supports their interest and all of these constructs are also supporting their persistence so now I've told the engineering education community like here are their funds of knowledge and it's important in these ways so how can we bring that to the classroom because that's where the engineering you know is happening it's happening in the classroom so what are ways that we can um we can pull out students tinkering knowledge from home or pull out their perspective taking their mediation all abilities uh with with with a lot of care and caution to not um to not privilege like elite type of knowledge like uh for example like I've just said these these uh robotics uh activities that most students in the majority group have experienced well let's let's stop focusing on those in the classroom and find other types of like households um ways of of you know knowledge that we brought with that student brought with them and so incorporating that into into the curriculum or into activities um perhaps as like reflective mechanisms at least to get students like wheels churning and to for them to even believe that like this value this knowledge is valued in engineering so that's um I mean that's a baby step but but it's it's the next step that I think it is where we should head towards like how how can we now start to use this in the classroom or or allow students to be the opportunity to see them and recognize them and so not just these four that I have here even more that that I didn't capture in my in my um instrument um so and there there are a number is just uh you know I can only capture so much with the public with the participants that I have but students are coming in with all sorts of funds of knowledge so what are ways that we can use them in the classroom or like bring them out in the classroom setting yeah that actually is um another question that we got what are some of those strategies so thank you for starting to address that um and I think it would be interesting to think about that not only in the classroom but also maybe from an advising sense from a mentoring sense do you have any thoughts about what strategies you might use with uh first generation students in an advising or a mentoring mode that could bring those funds of knowledge to the forefront you know to support interest identity yeah see beliefs that's a that's a good point so I was I was completely just focused on the classroom but you're right there there's also a lot of mentoring advising that goes on with students and I mean I think the best way to be to find ways to represent and and like highlight these stories so like the vignettes that I was sharing of students and how um how how these constructs were born out of their lived experiences like how can we start to plaster these on the walls or or create um I don't know like some sort of like not promotional material but like celebratory material where students can see like you know here are here are other first gen students that had these lived experiences and and and how these experiences supported their learning in the classroom so like I think that's a that's not something that I thought about I like that question thank you great uh we have another question um what is your perspective on whether different funds of knowledge like mediation skills perspective taking etc are engaged differently depending on the type of coursework like a lecture based course versus a project course kind of a thing so what's my perspective on how I think they're they're really conducive to like project based courses where you're really starting to work with your team and you're like I said the the perspective taking a construct I found a lot of literature in the leadership space that spoke about this very notion of perspective taking and so leadership is incredibly important when you're leading a design team when you're you know often to the engineering uh profession uh being a project manager like those skills that are incredibly important so um perhaps when um in these sort of uh of project based classes I I think there there is a great area of opportunity where you can ask probing questions to students about in in a way that gets them to to start to reflect about their you know perspective taking tendencies or their ability to be mediators between um whatever design challenge that they're working on say they're they are um you know mediators between technicians and and other practicing engineers or mediators between community members and the engineering um design that that will affect the community members so really just a set of a scenario that that allows for these students to to exercise this these types of funds of knowledge I hope that answers a question I feel like I forgot yeah I think yeah I think it does and I think um maybe summarizing what you said is that students have maybe more of an opportunity to use their funds of knowledge that they've generated in project based team based courses maybe a little bit less so in some of the lecture based lots of problem set kind of courses yeah I yeah and so I do I do think that even in the lecture based courses where like it's just not conducive to a lot of like teamwork I think there is still opportunity for uh for um instructors to ask students to think about whatever they're learning slowly to either some sort of a static or dynamic or even a circuit's concept and and think back to your household like where did you see this come into play and really it's it's it's all about reflecting on on how these connections like how their household knowledge experience is not separate from the classroom and so I mean the the best way that I can think of at the moment is really to to uh allow for these reflective activities um and so and make that a part of a part of a grade so don't just like you know on the side whenever you have time reflect on this like no allow students to give them the the currency that this this reflection will will come of something um it valued in the classroom and it will be valuable for them when they start to think about their households as as um as rich with with knowledge so I have another question and I'm not quite sure if this might fall under future work or work outside the short scope of this presentation so when you talked about your survey you had a pretty significant um number about half who were first gen and half who were kind of not first gen yeah did you see um were you able to do any of your modeling for the not first gen group and look at what the differences might be I I do remember so my the modeling work that I did uh it was it was more uh smaller scale so it was just regression whereas this is like a bunch of nested regressions on top of each other like you know linking to each other and what I found was that the construct connecting experience was more salient for continuing generation college student which which means that they saw their knowledge connected to engineering and that that was uh that was kind of um I mean I don't want to see an unfortunate but that's really what I want to say it was kind of sad to see that like here are these groups of students that are you know part of the majority group and um they already see their their their their knowledge connected and they leverage that knowledge that household knowledge in the classroom but our first gen students um there's there's a lot of like negative relationships happening that that I was showing you throughout the models that don't exist with the continuing gen student so that was kind of like uh that that comes back to us as a you know researchers educators like how can we flip that script like we know our continuing gen students are not uh they're not struggling to see their knowledge connected or they're not um questioning whether it is or whether it's legitimate so it's it's our first gen students that are constantly like um thinking like is this even engineering or is this even relevant and it probably is it's just a matter of us sending them the right messages so that they can see that great okay it looks like we are right at the top of the hour um I want to say once more thank you so much for joining us this afternoon and or morning or noonish actually where you are it's not quite afternoon um thank you for joining us today and presenting your work and first gen students um I'm super excited to continue to follow your work over time as you build on this and um thanks to everyone out there who is listening um hope you found this interesting and could pull out a few nuggets that might um help you think about what you do both in the classroom and outside of the classroom and for the students that are um part of this I hope you remember to think about your funds of knowledge the things that you know based on your background and think of them as assets to what you bring to the field of engineering um rather than challenges that you have to get past so thanks everyone um hope you have a great rest of your day and um we will talk to you soon