Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)

This paper presents part of a research project that investigates the use of relational technology (RT) as a new methodology for technology development. The motivation for this work comes from the first author’s experience of being educated to be a worker for the industry, rather than for the Land and for Indigenous Sovereignty. This type of coloniality is common in engineering education throughou…

Student design and competition teams are a cornerstone of experiential learning in Canadian engineering education, yet the institutional structures to support these teams remain underexamined. As participation, operational complexity, and safety expectations increase, faculties are adopting varied approaches to administrative oversight. This exploratory qualitative study examines how eight Canadi…

This exploratory study addresses the gap in engineering education research regarding the complex interplay of psychological, contextual, and demographic factors influencing students' perceptions of failure. Analyzing survey data (n=232) from a Canadian university using mixed methods, we examined students' fears, framings, and associations to failure, and strategies for stigma reduction. Results i…

Robotics is increasingly expected to support productivity and quality of life. Robotics training will help the next generation of engineers keep up with this demand. One of the most challenging concepts in introductory robotics courses is understanding the motion of rigid bodies connected through articulated joints. While spatial skills and internal visualization abilities can be trained, natural…

Graduate Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) programs in Canada increasingly prepare Master’s and Doctor of Philosophy students for careers beyond academia, yet employability language is often too generic to support graduate-level assessment across coursework, thesis or dissertation milestones, and work‑integrated learning. This conceptual paper presents a focused narrative synthesis of…

Engineering challenges span social, economic, technological, and environmental domains, requiring graduates who can integrate and apply knowledge across disciplines. To address this need, many programs incorporate interdisciplinary elements, yet little is known about how engineering students perceive and experience interdisciplinary education in practice. This qualitative study explores how senio…

This study was motivated by qualitative interviews with First Nations drinking water operators, councillors, policy professionals, and engineers, which identified concerns regarding technically dominant federal decision-making approaches for on-reserve infrastructure. Building on this motivating context, a structured review of engineering programs at U15 universities was conducted to examine whet…

Concept inventories (CIs) are widely used to assess students’ understanding of fundamental course content. Although extensive research has focused on their design, validation, and use, the process to specify CI content remains underexplored. Student misconceptions and learning outcomes are commonly referenced sources of CI content; however, how they are integrated into CI development is not often…

In this conceptual paper, we explore the ways in which research on interdisciplinary engineering education (IEE) considers the epistemic and paradigmatic differences behind integrated fields of knowledge. We begin by introducing the concept of ‘epistemic games’ to illustrate the importance of making explicit philosophical and methodological assumptions behind disciplinary-specific ways of knowing…

This paper is a continuation of prior published research investigating whether there are barriers to the participation of students from diverse populations in extracurricular activities. The first phase of the research investigated STEM-based extracurriculars, such as student design teams. This work continues the investigation using previously collected survey data on student participation in oth…

Many foundational engineering courses heavily rely on high-stakes summative assessments to measure student performance. Besides limiting opportunities for authentic skill development, these assessments are traditionally perceived negatively by students, playing an antagonistic role in the learning process. This study investigates the effects of an alternative, competency-based assessment format o…

Generative AI is transforming how engineers conceptualize and evaluate design ideas, presenting both opportunities and risks for engineering education. This practice-based paper reviews current literature on AI integration into design courses, capturing best practices and proposals for AI scaffolding. It then describes practical experiences integrating conversational AI into undergraduate enginee…

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot responds to engineering design problems and then reflect on how the emergence of AI may impact design education. In our analysis approach, we first set three engineering design problems. Then, we feed the descriptions of these problems as input prompts to ChatGPT-4.0 and analyze the AI’s responses. As our prelimin…

Technical writing remains a core competency for engineering students, yet many course-based graduate students begin their programs without formal training in producing technical documents. This pilot study presents a technical writing intervention developed for a course-based graduate engineering context and examines student-reported stress and confidence. The intervention was a one-hour tutorial…

Role models are widely discussed in educational research as influential in students’ identity development and sense of belonging, yet less attention has been given to how role model visibility can be systematically embedded within everyday engineering instruction. This paper presents an analytic autoethnographic account of integrating historically grounded role models into routine software engine…

Engineering education in Canada is increasingly responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the duty to consult Indigenous Nations. This conceptual paper explores "Indigeneering," a transformational pedagogy that weaves Indigenous worldviews into a foundational undergraduate course, ENGG 481 - Tech…

Within team-based engineering courses, instructors frequently observe uneven student engagement, with some students contributing disproportionately while others participate minimally. In other cases, entire teams exhibit consistently low participation. Although these challenges are widely acknowledged, they are rarely quantified using real-time data and are typically addressed only after project …

If engineering can be defined as “solving problems to help people,” the description could be praised for being human-centred instead of focusing on devices or processes. However, from a deep sustainability perspective, the anthropocentric definition is too preferential to humans and could result in environmental harm. Because engineering is intrinsically linked to humans, sustainable engineering …

In this paper, the authors report on a project aimed at revising graduate attribute indicator rubrics for engineering programs at McGill University. The authors sought to develop detailed rubrics that incorporated descriptions for the three content levels of instruction (Introduce, Developing, and Advanced, or IDA). Given the complexity of the task and the recent proliferation of generative AI us…

Engineers are at the forefront of combating anthropogenic pressures on the natural environment through the design and development of technologies. What has been missed in design is the philosophy of ‘reverse adaptation’ where the values of technology, “rationality, profit, material comfort, and convenience” supersede the values of humanity (Winner, 1977). As a result, even as engineers try to inc…