Evaluation

How does I’m an Engineer affect students understanding of engineering?

We know that I’m an Engineer gets students interested in engineering and inspired to become engineers themselves. However, one of the key objectives of the project is to smash engineering stereotypes; that the students learn that engineering is not just about car mechanism, spanners and hard hats. Measuring the students’ change in understanding of engineering has been difficult: closed questions tend not to work when assessing this, as they can be very leading. We decided to ask students to evaluate their own learning. Of course, this has its own limitations, but so far it is the best method we have found. We asked students for their degree of agreement on whether since taking part in I’m an Engineer, they know more about different aspects of being an engineer. Responses from 131 students told us that taking part in I’m an Engineer helps them to improve their understanding of what engineering is and what … Continue reading →

Posted on July 27, 2015 by in Evaluation, Evaluation News, News | Comments Off

Evaluating I’m a Engineer

In March 2012 we ran I’m an Engineer for the first time. We’ve had engineers take part in the sister I’m a Scientist event so running a version specifically for engineers was an obvious move. Before the event started we had some unknowns, despite considering ourselves well versed in running online engagement events. Would engineers want to take part? Would we be able to recruit Maths and D&T teachers? What questions would students ask? When it came to evaluation time these were some of the key questions to answer. We’ve collected feedback from teachers, students and engineers. We’ve used their responses and data from the site to evaluate the event, and have written up our findings in the report below. I’m an Engineer evaluation report Here’s a summary of what we found: Did engineers want to take part? Yes. By the end of the first three months we had over … Continue reading →

Posted on November 16, 2012 by in Evaluation, News | Leave a comment

Mid term report

As we approach the Christmas break we have stepped up the activity on I’m an Engineer significantly. We’ve decided on the initial 4 zone themes for March based on a long-list we drafted and feedback provided by teachers, engineers and students: https://imanengineer.org.uk/2011/09/zone-selection High Performance Energy Health Measurement – sponsored by STFC 2 more will be decided in early January based on the sign-ups from engineers We’ve added an engineering motif to the banner on the website. This was developed by the team based on input from teachers and will be revised based on comments received from students who have taken part previously in I’m a Scientist. We emailed the keenest students who had taken part in IAS over the last couple of years and asked them to comment. We’ve had 24 comments on the design and a host more on other posts back from them. The general gist is very … Continue reading →

Posted on December 14, 2011 by ModShane in Evaluation | Leave a comment