Research Initiation: Exploring the Associations Between Personality Attributes and Transformative Learning of Engineering Study Abroad Program Participants

The dynamic and global nature of the marketplace make proficiency in key professional skills a major differentiator in the competition for engineering jobs and an important factor in career success in engineering. Across U.S. higher education, there is a strong focus on developing students’ professional skills through life-altering study abroad programs.

A life-altering study abroad program transforms participants’ reference frames and allows them to build professional competencies, such as analytical problem solving, planning and organizing, communication, teamwork and global understanding. An experientially designed short-term study abroad program (STSAP) has the potential to play a critical role in the values and behaviors that students take from global experiences, making it essential that STSAP programmers fully consider the potential holistic outcomes of their programs and how they are best achieved.

Unfortunately, experience shows that a given study abroad experience elicits vastly different responses among students; for some students, the experience is life-altering while for others, it is decidedly not. This research will pave the way to a methodology for improving students global engineering mindset development through mapping personality traits to study abroad outcomes.

The project will serve as a foundation for future work to guide the preparation and support of short-term study abroad participants for their life-altering experiences.

Transformative Learning Theory (TLT) focuses on the processes involved in changing an individual’s frames of reference, while Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) provides direction to how we can develop the type of action oriented STSAP experiences that are likely to induce transformation. Building on these two theories, the research hypothesizes that student experience in STSAP could be related to personality traits associated with ELT and TLT.

The overarching goal of this research is twofold: (a) to advance knowledge about the association of students’ personality traits and transformative learning from study abroad programs; and (b) to advance our understanding of the formation of engineering students by examining mechanisms that prepare and support them for rich study abroad experiences. The research questions are formulated as follows: (i) To what extent does transformative learning from experientially designed study abroad programs equally occur for different personality attributes and for different attitude toward other cultures? (ii) To what extent the association of transformative learning from experientially designed study abroad programs with different personality attributes and attitude toward other cultures differ by program structures (length, destination and nature -culturally-focused program and engineering-focused program)? (iii) To what extent does the association of transformative learning from experientially designed study abroad programs with different personality attributes differ among demographics?

This exploratory project will use a mixed methods approach to answer the research questions. In Year 1, we will conduct a pilot study using a survey and focus group interviews for engineering study abroad program participants at UC. The findings from the pilot study will inform the construction of a national survey, particularly open-ended questions and focus group interview questions, for engineering study abroad program participants at five other universities, for the main study in Year 2.

The findings will be structured to identify how to best structure STSAP along the Kolb’s experiential learning cycle in order to trigger transformative experience for all students.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.