Abstract
Areas of microelectronics are crucial to U.S. and allies' security and economic growth. Thus, there is a high demand for engineers and technicians skilled in areas of microelectronics (MITRE Engenuity, 2021). One significant barrier to meeting the demand for a secure microelectronics workforce is the limited public awareness of microelectronics, i.e., one needs to know about a particular career if one is going to pursue that career path. While chip shortages have become public knowledge through the news media (Ezell, 2020) (Revitalizing the U.S. Semiconductor Ecosystem, 2022), specific fields of microelectronics, such as radiation hardening and advanced packaging, are topics the general public has little knowledge or awareness of their importance (del Alamo et al., 2021). Introductory-level engineering students are largely unaware of the broader role of microelectronics in the U.S. Defense's peacekeeping mission and protection of our society. Another significant barrier is that the specific areas of demand are topics that are not introduced until more advanced engineering coursework, long after many students have started having internships and cooperative education experiences. There is a need to expose engineering and technology students to areas of microelectronics early in their academic studies, so they are aware of specialized topics in microelectronics while making career and further educational decisions. One approach to increasing engineering students' exposure and motivation to pursue microelectronics topics is to embed specialized microelectronics topics as context in fundamental engineering courses. The course's learning objectives remain the same, but assignments and assessment problems have contexts within real-world microelectronics problems. This paper examines changes in engineering students' awareness of exposure and motivation to pursue microelectronics when microelectronics contexts were integrated into a fundamental first-year engineering course.
Methods This study focuses on using context in curricular assignments and tests to foster recognition and interest in microelectronics. Before students can become interested, they have to be exposed to a topic and then be able to recognize that topic later. 201 students were enrolled across two sections of a first-year introductory programming course. Participants were recruited from the first-year introductory course offered in the Fall 2021 term at a large Midwestern land grant institution. The curriculum included three assessment assignment questions based on real-world microelectronics contexts. We utilized the Knowledge Awareness and Motivation (KAM) survey to measure students' perceptions of their exposure to microelectronics and their motivation to learn more about microelectronics.
Results We found that by situating microelectronics problems into three assessment problems, student scores significantly increased in awareness of their exposure to the microelectronics field. The results of this study show promise for embedding small interventions of specialized topics in contexts of existing entry-level undergraduate classes to increase students' knowledge of specialty fields.