Ideas Lab: Personalized Engineering Learning (PEL)

Overview

The goal of this Ideas Lab is to extend Engineering Education Research (EER) to enable advanced personalization in pedagogy and assessment in a K-12 or higher education context. Personalization could address traditional engineering skills, professional skills, psycho-social constructs, and/or other aspects of engineering education. Approaches may be informed by the study of engineers as individual learners or as members of engineering teams. Multimodal sensing could enable improved understanding of cognitive and learning processes to enhance teaching or learning. Personalization could also come in the form of changes to institutional structures or processes. Regardless of the specific focus, the results should advance engineering learning in a way that is personal to the individual and considers personalized learning in an ethical, responsible, and effective way. These studies will advance our understanding of how people learn to become engineers, explore diverse pathways to and through degree programs, and develop ethical solutions for learning in formal and informal settings to achieve desired learning outcomes. Projects are expected to focus on learning engineering in K-12 and/or higher education contexts. NSF strongly encourages proposals that will broaden and sustain participation in engineering education by diverse groups. 

The following broad areas have been identified as possible avenues to advance knowledge in personalized learning:

1. Personalized Engineering Education: EER has increased our knowledge about learning in engineering classrooms, co-curricular (informal) settings and at work. Much of that research has been focused on discipline-level outcomes. This theme provides an opportunity to explore how to take those discipline-level outcomes and integrate them into more personalized learning experiences across multiple learning contexts and to increase our understanding of the engineering education system. This theme will draw upon research in science, mathematics, computer science, and technology education and the learning sciences; but also requires an understanding of how engineering learning is distinct from non-engineering disciplines. Studies addressing this theme should represent a broad spectrum of stakeholders. Each project developed through the Ideas Lab will be expected to include a researcher with expertise in EER or educational systems.
2. Multimodal Sensing for Personalized Learning Systems (PLS): Much of the recent focus of PLS development has been on computing and AI systems for learning. This theme extends this work to develop and integrate multimodal sensors to better understand and model the physical and/or mental and cognitive cues and tasks that occur in engineering. Multimodal data collection could involve physiological sensors, facial and speech recognition, and computer vision, with consideration for hardware and software needs for real-time data collection and analysis at scale. Projects developed through the Ideas Lab should integrate consideration of societal impact and ethics.
3. Team-based Personalized Learning: Engineering is a team-based activity and the need for collaboration increases as projects become more complex. This theme provides an opportunity to investigate team-based design and the potential for human-machine co-design or co-learning. Expertise and developments in human factors, ergonomics, cognitive sciences, and learning sciences will enable the study of cognitive, social, and affective factors in design. Projects developed through the Ideas Lab should integrate consideration of societal impact and ethics.

Preliminary Proposals: Submission of Preliminary Proposals is required.
An individual may participate as PI or co-PI on only one proposal submitted to this solicitation.

• Preliminary Proposal Due Date (due by 5 p.m. submitter's local time): November 29, 2023
• Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p.m. submitter's local time): May 08, 2024
• Estimated Number of Awards: 3
• Award Amount: The budget for proposals is up to $1,000,000 for a duration of up to 2 years.