Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
Student stress and anxiety in engineering continues to be overwhelming, and students are asking f... more Student stress and anxiety in engineering continues to be overwhelming, and students are asking for more support for their mental wellness. At the University of Calgary, we developed and implemented a program to provide first-year students with regular modules and reflection on their mental wellness and personal learning. This work is important to foster resiliency in engineeringstudents. At CEEA 2020, we summarized the pilot year of\ the program [17], and we now have an update on the program implementation as well as preliminary research results. We provide an overview of the importance of this kind of programming, specifically in breaking down theemotional-rational dualism that exists within engineering to support the de-stigmatization of mental health topics. We then provide an overview of the modules presented in this academic year, as well as a high level of summary of the research results from last year’s data.
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
National interest in mental wellbeing in the Canadian population has trickled down to focusing on... more National interest in mental wellbeing in the Canadian population has trickled down to focusing on subsets of the population that are particularly vulnerable to poor mental wellbeing. One of these subsets is the engineering student population due to the high stress and anxiety associated with their course load and prospects. The current study carried out a secondary analysis of wellbeing surveys administered to engineering students (N = 141) during the Winter 2020 semester. The primary analysis sought to determine whether perceived peer support, instructor support, and staff support predicted engineering identity. Greater identification with one’s career path is shown to be related with greater wellbeing in students and employees in the form of greater satisfaction and likelihood to remain in the degree program. Further, the analysis explored whether gender and hometown acted as moderating variables, either intensifying or lessening the main relationship. The analysis uncovered a sta...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
First-year engineering can be an overwhelming experience for students, and it is important to hav... more First-year engineering can be an overwhelming experience for students, and it is important to have regular check-in points for students as they transition to post-secondary education. Beginning in 2019, the Schulich School of Engineering (SSE) at the University of Calgary implemented mental wellness and engineering attributes modules across the first-year engineering curriculum. These modules focused on students’ overall development to support their success in the diverse world of engineering. In this paper, we give an overview of the program implementation during 2021-2022 and recommendations for effective implementation of such series based on our experiences. We also briefly present a summary of the students’ self-reflections from the first two years of the program. At the end of each module, we ask students a few open-ended questions to reflect on their experiences based on the materials covered in the module. In addition to these responses from different modules, the final self...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
First year engineering students begin their degree with pre-conceived notions of how the year wil... more First year engineering students begin their degree with pre-conceived notions of how the year will go, with respect to their academics, in addition to their social and spiritual lives. This thereby gives way to a loss of self-efficacy, associated with both engineering itself and their own self-concept led by that initial disconnection. Thus, it is important to understand what factors influence the connections between engineering self-efficacy and their academic, social, and spiritual life-habits. Life habits can be defined as any set of factors encouraging the growth of an individual, affecting an individual’s life, ranging from learning strategies to self-perception of oneself and everything in between. Previous research has explored the stressors specific to students in first year engineering and how this affects students’ wellbeing overall [1] - although not specific to the motivational belief that is self-efficacy and the effect it has on their entire life. Using an inductive th...
Postsecondary students’ ability to learn is affected by their mental health and wellbeing. Resear... more Postsecondary students’ ability to learn is affected by their mental health and wellbeing. Research in the teaching and learning context, however, has predominantly focused on teaching practices that facilitate motivation, learning, and academic success while overlooking the importance of student mental health and wellbeing. The current study aimed to fill this gap by using qualitative interviews to explore student perspectives on current and possible future supports that can cultivate student mental health and wellbeing in the teaching and learning context. Through 14 one-on-one interviews with students, five major themes were developed: (1) prioritize mental health, (2) provide and guide to accessible supports, (3) increase mental health literacy, (4) foster connections and social support, and (5) strengthen best practices in teaching and learning. Students emphasized that the institution has a role to play in several of these areas and elaborated on what practices and policies we...
The project investigated how one's mental health literacy (ML) affected punitiveness toward a... more The project investigated how one's mental health literacy (ML) affected punitiveness toward a person convicted of a crime. We hypothesized that participants with higher ML scores would recommend more lenient sentences than those with lower ML scores. Additionally, we hypothesized that participants assigned to the physical illness condition (i.e., brain tumour) versus mental illness (i.e., Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)) would recommend more lenient sentences, regardless of ML. Participants were recruited from two samples: the general population, and an undergraduate psychology student sample. Individuals were randomly assigned to read a vignette scenario describing a criminal case of aggravated assault in an online study. The vignette scenarios differed in description of defendant's mitigating factors (high blood pressure, brain tumour, or PTSD). Based on the scenario, participants were instructed recommend a sentence. They then filled out two ML scales. Factorial ANOVAs were conducted to evaluate differences between recommended sentence length as a function of condition and mental health knowledge. A main effect was found between the sentence length and ML, wherein those with lower ML scores recommended harsher sentences overall compared to those with higher ML scores (p = .006). Though significance was found, further testing is needed to garner higher power. Implications include the potential to influence the current jury selection process. It may also educate about current biases amongst jury members.
The chapter reports on antecedents and outcomes of first-year management students’ educational en... more The chapter reports on antecedents and outcomes of first-year management students’ educational engagement. Specifically, the research focused on the role of (1) anticipatory stress (i.e., stress experienced by students prior to the start of term), (2) early social support for students by instructors (at the first week of the academic year), and (3) the effects of early socialization activities (organized by the university to improve student integration) on students’ academic engagement during their first term. Drawing on comparisons with workplace commitment (Solinger et al., Organization Science, 24(6): 1640–1661, 2013), the report describes different developmental paths of academic engagement: (1) increasing academic engagement over time (‘learning to love’), (2) decreasing academic engagement over time (‘honeymoon hangover’), and (3) high, moderate, or low stable academic engagement. These different paths or trajectories were found to correspond to differences in students’ grade ...
Particular biases influence jurors’ perceptions of a case and verdict decisions; for example, rac... more Particular biases influence jurors’ perceptions of a case and verdict decisions; for example, racial biases may interfere with jurors’ ability to make unbiased decisions (Devine et al., 2001). Sunnafrank and Fontes (1983) found that certain races are associated with particular crimes, and that jurors return harsher judgments for individuals accused of a crime that is perceived to match behaviours of their race than a crime that is perceived to be incongruent with behaviours associated with their race, creating a race-crime congruency effect. Adshead (1998) further argued that we seek explanation for inexplicable acts; he found that mental illness provides us with such an explanation, but also results in character derogation and potential misrepresentation of this population.
During this interactive panel session, participants will have the opportunity to hear from and en... more During this interactive panel session, participants will have the opportunity to hear from and engage with panelists who have implemented experiential based group projects in their university courses. The goal of this session is to generate practical strategies for designing, facilitating, and assessing group projects with experiential components.
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2020
To address an identified need for programming that helps Engineering students to develop skills i... more To address an identified need for programming that helps Engineering students to develop skills in coping, resilience, and lifelong learning, we designed, implemented, and reflected on the effectiveness of a curricular intervention on Engineering students’ mental wellbeing, academic engagement and achievement, and perceptions of support. This intervention has implications for the development of a model of the curricular components necessary to benefit undergraduate students’ academic engagement, success, and perceptions of student support. It may also be used to inform curriculum development across many university programs.
The use of team projects is common in higher education. Teamwork offers an avenue to help student... more The use of team projects is common in higher education. Teamwork offers an avenue to help students learn to collaborate and develop the interpersonal skills needed for career success. However, student teams are not always effective, which may undermine learning, growth, and development. In the current research, we integrate accountability, valence, motivation, and social loafing theories to advance an understanding of the role of peer evaluations conducted at the end of a team project. We use a state-of-the-art peer feedback system that allows students to assess and evaluate each other on five competencies critical to teamwork. We also used the system for the assessment of overall team functioning. Finally, grades on team projects were collected as a measure of team performance. Over three cohorts and using a total sample size of 162 teams and 873 students, we found that the use of peer evaluations for grading purposes, compared to a control group, promoted effective team member behavior, overall team health, and higher grades on team projects (i.e., team performance). Future research is needed to further investigate the optimal use of peer evaluations in a variety of contexts using a variety of methods.
Victim blaming attitudes are prevalent within the criminal justice system where survivor behavior... more Victim blaming attitudes are prevalent within the criminal justice system where survivor behavior before, during, and following an assault is heavily scrutinized. Although dispositional characteristics (e.g., strength of one’s justice motive) and characteristics of the assault (e.g., the type of relationship between a survivor and an offender) have been found to predict the degree of victim blaming, the effects of these variables on sexual assault myth endorsement are unclear. In addition, a variable that has not been examined in past literature is the degree of contact maintained between a survivor and offender after the assault. The purpose of the current study was to examine the extent to which the justice motive (strong vs. weak), the relationship between a fictional survivor and an offender (strangers vs. intimate partners), and contact between a survivor and offender postassault (contact vs. no contact) influenced endorsement of sexual assault myths. Undergraduate students rea...
Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne, 2017
An examination of sociology student satisfaction levels is performed and an attempt is made to ex... more An examination of sociology student satisfaction levels is performed and an attempt is made to explain variations in degree program satisfaction. A comparison is made between current student and alumni regarding the coursework and experiences they feel should be offered in the undergraduate degree program in sociology at Portland State University (PSU). The study population consists of all PSU students who have obtained an undergraduate degree in sociology since the program's inception and all students currently attending PSU and majoring in sociology.
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
Student stress and anxiety in engineering continues to be overwhelming, and students are asking f... more Student stress and anxiety in engineering continues to be overwhelming, and students are asking for more support for their mental wellness. At the University of Calgary, we developed and implemented a program to provide first-year students with regular modules and reflection on their mental wellness and personal learning. This work is important to foster resiliency in engineeringstudents. At CEEA 2020, we summarized the pilot year of\ the program [17], and we now have an update on the program implementation as well as preliminary research results. We provide an overview of the importance of this kind of programming, specifically in breaking down theemotional-rational dualism that exists within engineering to support the de-stigmatization of mental health topics. We then provide an overview of the modules presented in this academic year, as well as a high level of summary of the research results from last year’s data.
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
National interest in mental wellbeing in the Canadian population has trickled down to focusing on... more National interest in mental wellbeing in the Canadian population has trickled down to focusing on subsets of the population that are particularly vulnerable to poor mental wellbeing. One of these subsets is the engineering student population due to the high stress and anxiety associated with their course load and prospects. The current study carried out a secondary analysis of wellbeing surveys administered to engineering students (N = 141) during the Winter 2020 semester. The primary analysis sought to determine whether perceived peer support, instructor support, and staff support predicted engineering identity. Greater identification with one’s career path is shown to be related with greater wellbeing in students and employees in the form of greater satisfaction and likelihood to remain in the degree program. Further, the analysis explored whether gender and hometown acted as moderating variables, either intensifying or lessening the main relationship. The analysis uncovered a sta...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
First-year engineering can be an overwhelming experience for students, and it is important to hav... more First-year engineering can be an overwhelming experience for students, and it is important to have regular check-in points for students as they transition to post-secondary education. Beginning in 2019, the Schulich School of Engineering (SSE) at the University of Calgary implemented mental wellness and engineering attributes modules across the first-year engineering curriculum. These modules focused on students’ overall development to support their success in the diverse world of engineering. In this paper, we give an overview of the program implementation during 2021-2022 and recommendations for effective implementation of such series based on our experiences. We also briefly present a summary of the students’ self-reflections from the first two years of the program. At the end of each module, we ask students a few open-ended questions to reflect on their experiences based on the materials covered in the module. In addition to these responses from different modules, the final self...
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
First year engineering students begin their degree with pre-conceived notions of how the year wil... more First year engineering students begin their degree with pre-conceived notions of how the year will go, with respect to their academics, in addition to their social and spiritual lives. This thereby gives way to a loss of self-efficacy, associated with both engineering itself and their own self-concept led by that initial disconnection. Thus, it is important to understand what factors influence the connections between engineering self-efficacy and their academic, social, and spiritual life-habits. Life habits can be defined as any set of factors encouraging the growth of an individual, affecting an individual’s life, ranging from learning strategies to self-perception of oneself and everything in between. Previous research has explored the stressors specific to students in first year engineering and how this affects students’ wellbeing overall [1] - although not specific to the motivational belief that is self-efficacy and the effect it has on their entire life. Using an inductive th...
Postsecondary students’ ability to learn is affected by their mental health and wellbeing. Resear... more Postsecondary students’ ability to learn is affected by their mental health and wellbeing. Research in the teaching and learning context, however, has predominantly focused on teaching practices that facilitate motivation, learning, and academic success while overlooking the importance of student mental health and wellbeing. The current study aimed to fill this gap by using qualitative interviews to explore student perspectives on current and possible future supports that can cultivate student mental health and wellbeing in the teaching and learning context. Through 14 one-on-one interviews with students, five major themes were developed: (1) prioritize mental health, (2) provide and guide to accessible supports, (3) increase mental health literacy, (4) foster connections and social support, and (5) strengthen best practices in teaching and learning. Students emphasized that the institution has a role to play in several of these areas and elaborated on what practices and policies we...
The project investigated how one's mental health literacy (ML) affected punitiveness toward a... more The project investigated how one's mental health literacy (ML) affected punitiveness toward a person convicted of a crime. We hypothesized that participants with higher ML scores would recommend more lenient sentences than those with lower ML scores. Additionally, we hypothesized that participants assigned to the physical illness condition (i.e., brain tumour) versus mental illness (i.e., Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)) would recommend more lenient sentences, regardless of ML. Participants were recruited from two samples: the general population, and an undergraduate psychology student sample. Individuals were randomly assigned to read a vignette scenario describing a criminal case of aggravated assault in an online study. The vignette scenarios differed in description of defendant's mitigating factors (high blood pressure, brain tumour, or PTSD). Based on the scenario, participants were instructed recommend a sentence. They then filled out two ML scales. Factorial ANOVAs were conducted to evaluate differences between recommended sentence length as a function of condition and mental health knowledge. A main effect was found between the sentence length and ML, wherein those with lower ML scores recommended harsher sentences overall compared to those with higher ML scores (p = .006). Though significance was found, further testing is needed to garner higher power. Implications include the potential to influence the current jury selection process. It may also educate about current biases amongst jury members.
The chapter reports on antecedents and outcomes of first-year management students’ educational en... more The chapter reports on antecedents and outcomes of first-year management students’ educational engagement. Specifically, the research focused on the role of (1) anticipatory stress (i.e., stress experienced by students prior to the start of term), (2) early social support for students by instructors (at the first week of the academic year), and (3) the effects of early socialization activities (organized by the university to improve student integration) on students’ academic engagement during their first term. Drawing on comparisons with workplace commitment (Solinger et al., Organization Science, 24(6): 1640–1661, 2013), the report describes different developmental paths of academic engagement: (1) increasing academic engagement over time (‘learning to love’), (2) decreasing academic engagement over time (‘honeymoon hangover’), and (3) high, moderate, or low stable academic engagement. These different paths or trajectories were found to correspond to differences in students’ grade ...
Particular biases influence jurors’ perceptions of a case and verdict decisions; for example, rac... more Particular biases influence jurors’ perceptions of a case and verdict decisions; for example, racial biases may interfere with jurors’ ability to make unbiased decisions (Devine et al., 2001). Sunnafrank and Fontes (1983) found that certain races are associated with particular crimes, and that jurors return harsher judgments for individuals accused of a crime that is perceived to match behaviours of their race than a crime that is perceived to be incongruent with behaviours associated with their race, creating a race-crime congruency effect. Adshead (1998) further argued that we seek explanation for inexplicable acts; he found that mental illness provides us with such an explanation, but also results in character derogation and potential misrepresentation of this population.
During this interactive panel session, participants will have the opportunity to hear from and en... more During this interactive panel session, participants will have the opportunity to hear from and engage with panelists who have implemented experiential based group projects in their university courses. The goal of this session is to generate practical strategies for designing, facilitating, and assessing group projects with experiential components.
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), 2020
To address an identified need for programming that helps Engineering students to develop skills i... more To address an identified need for programming that helps Engineering students to develop skills in coping, resilience, and lifelong learning, we designed, implemented, and reflected on the effectiveness of a curricular intervention on Engineering students’ mental wellbeing, academic engagement and achievement, and perceptions of support. This intervention has implications for the development of a model of the curricular components necessary to benefit undergraduate students’ academic engagement, success, and perceptions of student support. It may also be used to inform curriculum development across many university programs.
The use of team projects is common in higher education. Teamwork offers an avenue to help student... more The use of team projects is common in higher education. Teamwork offers an avenue to help students learn to collaborate and develop the interpersonal skills needed for career success. However, student teams are not always effective, which may undermine learning, growth, and development. In the current research, we integrate accountability, valence, motivation, and social loafing theories to advance an understanding of the role of peer evaluations conducted at the end of a team project. We use a state-of-the-art peer feedback system that allows students to assess and evaluate each other on five competencies critical to teamwork. We also used the system for the assessment of overall team functioning. Finally, grades on team projects were collected as a measure of team performance. Over three cohorts and using a total sample size of 162 teams and 873 students, we found that the use of peer evaluations for grading purposes, compared to a control group, promoted effective team member behavior, overall team health, and higher grades on team projects (i.e., team performance). Future research is needed to further investigate the optimal use of peer evaluations in a variety of contexts using a variety of methods.
Victim blaming attitudes are prevalent within the criminal justice system where survivor behavior... more Victim blaming attitudes are prevalent within the criminal justice system where survivor behavior before, during, and following an assault is heavily scrutinized. Although dispositional characteristics (e.g., strength of one’s justice motive) and characteristics of the assault (e.g., the type of relationship between a survivor and an offender) have been found to predict the degree of victim blaming, the effects of these variables on sexual assault myth endorsement are unclear. In addition, a variable that has not been examined in past literature is the degree of contact maintained between a survivor and offender after the assault. The purpose of the current study was to examine the extent to which the justice motive (strong vs. weak), the relationship between a fictional survivor and an offender (strangers vs. intimate partners), and contact between a survivor and offender postassault (contact vs. no contact) influenced endorsement of sexual assault myths. Undergraduate students rea...
Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne, 2017
An examination of sociology student satisfaction levels is performed and an attempt is made to ex... more An examination of sociology student satisfaction levels is performed and an attempt is made to explain variations in degree program satisfaction. A comparison is made between current student and alumni regarding the coursework and experiences they feel should be offered in the undergraduate degree program in sociology at Portland State University (PSU). The study population consists of all PSU students who have obtained an undergraduate degree in sociology since the program's inception and all students currently attending PSU and majoring in sociology.
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Papers by Melissa Boyce