Engineering Education

The Engineering Education program at Oregon State University is a center for research on cognition and related areas, including identity and motivation. Focus areas include the cognition and conceptual growth of practicing engineers and engineering students, personal epistemology, engagement in design activities, teacher adoption of evidence-based practices, and studies and improvements of engineering capstone efforts.

Engineering education research in these areas requires knowledge of the core principles of civil engineering, along with knowledge of theories of learning and knowing and of qualitative and quantitative research methods. For example, many previous studies have investigated conceptual change in individuals, a set of theories that assume how people organize and develop knowledge and how this development facilitates or hinders change. Personal epistemology, or beliefs about what it means to know or learn, is often incorporated to facilitate a deeper understanding of a phenomenon.