Advances in Engineering Education - Fall 2020 Volume 8 Number 4 - How Implicit Assumptions About Engineering Impacted Teaching and Learning During COVID-19

Oct 15, 2026

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The COVID-19 crisis forced engineering educators into unplanned remote delivery, creating a timely lens for examining the implicit beliefs shaping engineering pedagogy. Using Godfrey’s framework for engineering education culture, the study identifies core beliefs about engineering as a way of doing, including fear of cheating, valuing of hardness, and conceptions of flexibility. The paper analyzes how concerns about cheating and hardness influence assessment and workload expectations, while flexibility-oriented practices such as lecture recordings, slides, and virtual office hours supported student participation and engagement.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages5

Reading Time13 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Framework

Methods

Results

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | FALL 2020 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 4 How Implicit Assumptions About Engineering Impacted Teaching and Learning During COVID-19 JESSICA R. DETERS MARIE C. PARETTI JENNIFER M. CASE Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA ABSTRACT The COVID-19 crisis has challenged engineering educators with unplanned moves to remote delivery, providing an opportunity to examine the implicit beliefs that drive pedagogical practices in engineering. Drawing on Godfrey’s (2015) framework for engineering education culture, core beliefs about engineering as a way of doing emerged, including fear of cheating, valuing of hardness, and views on flexibility. Concerns around cheating and hardness raise critical questions about the beliefs driving engineering pedagogy. In contrast, practices that prioritize flexibility such as providing recordings of lectures and slides and holding virtual office hours and review sessions allowed students more easily to participate. Key words: Diversity Concerns, Undergraduate, Engineering Curriculum INTRODUCTION COVID-19 challenged engineering educators with unplanned moves to remote delivery across programs globally, exacerbating difficulties around inclusion, engagement, and inequality. Instructors had to make rapid, high-stakes decisions and develop teaching practices that also mitigated concerns about equity and access. These decisions and practices provide a unique opportunity to examine implicit beliefs about engineering teaching. Examining teaching practices and underlying beliefs can drive a re-evaluation of our pedagogy as the pandemic endures and faculty continue to make high-stakes, time-sensitive decisions. Understanding underlying assumptions, we argue, is essential to developing inclusive, learning-centered pedagogies. FALL 2020 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 4 1 ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION How Implicit Assumptions About Engineering Impacted Teaching and Learning During COVID-19 FRAMEWORK We use Godfrey’s framework describing the culture of engineering education as a lens for examining implicit beliefs that drive pedagogical practices (Godfrey, 2015) . The framework’s key dimensions address engineering ways of thinking, doing, and being, as well as beliefs around difference, around the nature of student-faculty relationships, and around the relationship to the institutional environment. In this paper, drawing on interview data, we examine the “engineering way of doing”that impacted the students’ classroom experience. We note the ways in which our findings are and are not consistent with Godfrey’s findings. An engineering way of doing refers to shared beliefs and assumptions about how teaching and learning should be done within engineering (Godfrey, 2015; Godfrey & Parker, 2010) . One such belief that permeates the design of engineering curriculum is what Godfrey refers to as “hardness” – engineering education should be hard, and the workload should be heavy. This dimension also includes various beliefs about engineering curricula and teaching, including curriculum design, teaching methods, assessment methods, plagiarism, and time management (Godfrey, 2015) . METHODS This analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with eight mechanical engineering students and three mechanical engineering faculty at two U. S. institutions: a small technical university in the western mountains and a large land-grant university in the mid-Atlantic. Participants were invited to participate via email, screened for the level of difficulty (a four-point scale, ranging from “It wasn’t ideal, but I did fine” to “Honestly, it was pretty rough all around”) they perceived in the spring semester, and selected for variation across perceived difficulty levels. Hour-long interviews were conducted via Zoom in May and June 2020. Student and faculty participants were invited to discuss a course that wen

FAQs

What flexibility-oriented practices helped students participate more easily during remote learning?

Providing recordings of lectures and slides, along with holding virtual office hours and review sessions, helped students engage and participate more effectively.

Oct 15, 2026

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