Browsing by Author "Baier, Jorge"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Lacking time: A case study of student and faculty perceptions of academic workload in the COVID-19 pandemic
    (2023) Hilliger Carrasco, Isabel; Astudillo, Gabriel; Baier, Jorge
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    Social ties, mental well-being and academic self-regulation. Exploring effects through Structural Equation Modeling
    (American Society for Engineering Education, 2023) Astudillo, Gabriel; Hilliger, Isabel; Baier, Jorge; Olmedo Saavedra, Sofía Helena María
    © American Society for Engineering Education, 2023.A long tradition of studies in both psychology and sociology has shown that social ties have positive effects on mental well-being of both the population in general and in educational contexts in particular. Specifically, researchers argue that mental well-being is systematically related to students' academic self-regulation. However, it is not clear how these three constructs are related, and what direct and indirect effects may exist from social ties to academic self-regulation. In the context of engineering education, this question is especially relevant because the literature has documented gaps in the formation of ties of minority social groups -such as women or ethnic groups- which could have effects on their mental well-being and their academic self-regulation. This work proposes a theoretical model in which the sense of belonging and sense of mattering have effects on mental well-being, while mental well-being has effects on students' academic self-regulation. This theoretical model was tested by using structural equation modeling, with data from an online survey applied to 1,872 engineering undergraduate students during the first semester of 2022. The main fit indicators of the model with the empirical data satisfactorily meet the cut-off criteria established (RMSEA=0.041; SRMR=0.038; CFI=0.998; TLI=0.998). The central effects proposed in the resulting theoretical model are statistically significant, both from the sense of belonging and mattering towards mental well-being, and from it towards academic self-regulation. This implies that there is an indirect effect from the sense of belonging towards academic self-regulation.
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    Towards Effective Blended Learning Through the Eyes of Students: A Survey Study in Transition into Face-to-Face Education
    (2022) Astudillo, Gabriel; Hilliger Carrasco, Isabel; Rodriguez, Fernanda; Baier, Jorge
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    Unpacking Student Workload through Elicitation Techniques: Perspectives from Engineering Faculty and Students
    (American Society for Engineering Education, 2024) Hilliger Carrasco, Isabel; Castro, Marietta; Torres, Ema Huerta; Svec Parra, Erick Vaclav; Baier, Jorge
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    Using Automated Planning to Provide Feedback during Collaborative Problem-Solving
    (2023) Rojas, Matias; Saez, Cristian; Baier, Jorge; Nussbaum, Miguel; Guerrero, Orlando; Rodriguez, Maria Fernanda
    Collaborative Problem-Solving Skills (CPS) have become increasingly important. Research into the development of CPS is still scarce, but there are several approaches that may be useful for its development. Specifically, providing feedback in collaborative contexts is key. In this paper, we study and develop a feedback system that uses Automated Planning techniques to promote communication among students. Our system is designed to be used in a real-world educational setting, considering the underpinning theory of when and how to give feedback. The system's frontend is a video game, which presents tasks that can only be solved when students collaborate. In the backend, the system computes the solution to the task in a partial-order plan using an automated planning engine. While it monitors the plan and provides feedback to students. We describe an experimental study involving 42 students aged between 10 and 13, in which we explore the effectiveness of the feedback that was given. We show that the feedback allowed the students to perform better in the game, improve their communication, and develop their collaborative problem-solving skills. We also describe a novel approach to monitoring multi-agent partial-order plans, specifically designed for plans with so-called independent chains, that is more efficient than previous approaches and therefore requires fewer computational resources in the classroom. This paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, we propose a novel monitoring algorithm for partial-order plans that is better suited to educational settings. Second, we show that feedback extracted from a plan can promote reflection about collaborative problem-solving during a multi-agent activity.
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    What is care in engineering teaching?
    (2020) Baier, Jorge; Hilliger, Isabel; Hidalgo, Ximena; Melian, Constanza
    The concept of care in teaching has been associated with the development of supportive, personalized relationships between teachers and students, and with the development of an emotionally safe environment inside and outside the classroom. Care in teaching has been found to have an impact on the emotional health and on the intrinsic motivation of students. Thus, arguably it also has a positive impact on learning experience. Existing literature does not identify what attitudes and practices can be implemented in schools of engineering to promote effective care in teaching. This paper describes the progress of an ongoing research currently carried out at a large engineering school in Chile. The investigation has two main objectives. First, to understand what does it mean to care in teaching; second, to understand what is the influence that caring teaching has on the students' learning experience. © American Society for Engineering Education 2020
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    Work in Progress: A Cross-sectional Survey Study for Understanding and Addressing the Needs of Engineering Students during COVID-19
    (American Society for Engineering Education, 2021) Hilliger Carrasco, Isabel; Melian Torres, Constanza Loreto; Meza Ledezma, Javiera Francisca; Cortés, Gonzalo; Baier, Jorge
    In order to reduce the spread of COVID-19, many universities and colleges have closed their campus and implemented what researchers call ‘emergency online education’. This means that many faculty members are teaching in front of computer screens while students are staying at home and taking their courses remotely. Unfortunately, this leaves students without some advantages of residential education  such as study spaces, face-to-face counseling, and recreational facilities. In the case of engineering students, this has also left them without access to maker spaces, laboratories, and field trips (among other activities that enrich their learning experience). For understanding how the consequences of this pandemic have affected students’ well-being, some researchers have implemented cross-sectional survey studies. These types of studies frequently used to measure stakeholders’ needs of support services as they relate to courses, programs or involvement in institutional planning. So far, there is a growing body of knowledge regarding factors that have affected students’ mental health, along with scales to measure students’ anxiety levels. However, the pandemic has come with confusing and changing information, making it more difficult for educational institutions to implement timely support strategies to maintaining some sense of well-being among their students. Given the close relationship between student well-being and learning outcomes, more studies are needed to not only understand factors that might negatively affect students’ learning experiences, but also examine interventions that might positively impact students’ resilience. This paper presents a Work-In-Progress (WIP) that was carried out in a large engineering school in Latin America. As many schools in many countries, this school shifted to online education during 2020. In order to monitor students’ needs in this remote learning context, a cross-sectional survey study was conducted to evaluate their use of different types of support interventions that have been implemented since the pandemic started. Specifically, this paper presents the perceived benefits of having implemented a mid-semester break of one week to reduce stress during the first academic period. During the week after the break, we applied an online anonymous survey to a convenience sample of 994 engineering students from different admission cohorts and majors. Findings not only reveal how many hours students declare that they spent studying, resting, and doing recreational activities during that break, but also the percentage of students that perceived that this break was beneficial to their overall well-being. Future work will focus on assessing other type of support interventions that were implemented throughout that year, besides providing recommendations to monitor and support engineering students in different educational settings.