What Do We Know About Our First-Year Engineering Students' Backgrounds And Experiences?

Students entering university come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences, with differing levels of knowledge and exposure to professional skills. However, university entry criteria typically focus on academic ability in particular subject areas such as maths and physics, but little information is known about students’ attitudes and abilities in a variety of other, important domains such as attitude towards engineering, communication skills and level of interaction with peers. Self-concept, a cognitive evaluation that an individual makes and customarily maintains with respect to themselves concerning their ability in a general or a specific area of knowledge, can be used to evaluate students’ perception of their attitudes and abilities across these previously unmeasured domains for academics to better understand the composition of the first-year student cohort. In this paper, results of surveying approximately 350 first-year engineering students’ self-concept across several distinct domains are reported. Exploratory factor analysis was performed on the resulting data, yielding 8 composite factors comprising of a mix of the original domains. While students strongly associated academic ability with perceived skill in mathematics, there was a surprising pair of engineering factors that emerged – one that captures ‘engineering affect’ and one that captures students’ perceived relationship between engineering and creativity. It was also found that self-concept in peer interaction and communication skills were lowest out of the 8 identified factors. The results will be used to develop activities and programs to suit students’ needs, particularly in terms of improving peer interaction and communication skills.