Taking Stock: An Analysis of the Publishing Record as Represented by the Journal of Engineering Education

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2004 by Whitin, Katherine, Sheppard, Sheri

The category that a paper was assigned to was not intended as an absolute, defining characteristic of a paper, but rather as an indicator of the primary emphasis or focus of the paper. A single researcher performed the coding of all the papers. Two additional researchers, working on a subset of the papers, verified the consistency of the coding. Once all of the papers had been grouped by categories, specific topics within each category were identified, as presented in Section III.

Within each category, outstanding scholarly papers (as defined below in Section IV) were identified to attempt to distinguish common characteristics. These characteristics were then compared across years to determine what kinds of changes, if any, have been made as the engineering education culture has evolved.

The analysis approach used here (i.e., coding a paper into a single category) is in contrast to the approach used by Wankat [40], where papers were assigned multiple keywords. These are different and complementary approaches. By grouping papers into single categories, specific topics and trends in topics over time within a category could be identified. In addition, subtle differences in how particularly compelling papers were presented could be extracted. In contrast, the key word count approach allows the analysis to retain the multiple themes of many papers. This results in a more inclusive picture of the topics published in the Journal.

III. RESULTS-PART 1

The first set of data (see first row, Table 2) is a six-year summary of the number of papers published each year and shows that the number of published papers doubled, from 47 in 1996 to 96 in 2001. There was a jump between 1997 and 1998, from 43 to 77 published papers, resulting from the introduction of Educational Briefs in October of 1997 and the publication of a supplementary issue in 1998. There was another large jump in 2001 due to the inclusion of 34 additional papers from three national conferences: 1999 and 2000 Frontiers In Education (FIE) and 2000 National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).

The cumulative numbers within each category are presented in the last two column of Table 2 as total numbers and as percentages of total numbers. A majority of the papers coded into Courses and Programs, Faculty, and Assessment and Evaluation. The data show an emphasis on papers focusing on Courses and Programs, with 34 percent of the papers coded to this category. The papers coded to Courses and Programs covered a wide range of topics from college-wide retention programs to specific course objectives and overall curriculum redesign. For example, in 2000, Walker discussed integrating writing instruction into engineering courses using a Writing Center [39]. In contrast, Wood, et al. described a new course designed to address the limitations of the current, high-level and compartmentalized manner of introducing design methods [42], Pendergrass, et al. reported on the creation of a first-year program [26], and Jones, et al. discussed an innovative musical instrument engineering program [14].