Welcome to the ASEE’s MIDFIELD Initiative: Expanding Educational Insights Beyond Engineering

Broadening the Scope of Educational Research

ASEE’s Commitment to Interdisciplinary Insights

The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) is proud to spearhead the MIDFIELD (Multi-Institutional Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development) project, initially funded by the National Science Foundation. This ambitious initiative extends the reach of groundbreaking educational research from the realm of engineering to encompass all academic disciplines.

Leveraging a Comprehensive Database

The core of this project is a detailed database, originally focused on engineering student records from multiple institutions. The database includes, however, all institutional records across disciplines for undergraduate enrollment. ASEE’s expanded vision is to harness the value of those records for understanding student pathways through undergraduate program.

Key Achievements and Future Goals

Through this database, significant discoveries have been made in engineering education, such as:

  • Understanding Graduation Rates: A multi-institutional perspective has revealed higher graduation rates in engineering, challenging previous perceptions based on individual program analyses.
  • Gender Parity in Engineering: Research has demonstrated comparable graduation rates between women and men in engineering, shedding light on the success of inclusivity efforts in this field.
  • Discipline-Specific Insights: The database has provided invaluable information for practitioners within engineering, which ASEE aims to replicate across other academic disciplines.

These findings, recognized through numerous awards, set the stage for ASEE’s expanded research vision.

ASEE’s Strategic Plan: Enhancing Access and Collaboration

Building a Cross-Disciplinary Platform

  • Technical Advancement: ASEE is developing a sophisticated technical infrastructure to manage and grow this diverse dataset.
  • Innovative Tools and Dashboards: New data schemas and user-friendly analytical tools are being created to facilitate easy access and interpretation of data across various academic disciplines.
  • Partnership Expansion: The initiative includes transferring legal agreements and fostering new institutional collaborations to enrich the database.

Education and Community Engagement

  • Workshops and Training: ASEE will offer workshops to help researchers and educators from all disciplines leverage the database effectively.
  • Ongoing Software Development: The continuous development of software tools will assist users in navigating and utilizing the database.

Vision for the Future: Influencing Educational Practices Across Disciplines

With the MIDFIELD dataset under ASEE’s guidance, we are committed to:

  • Preserving and Diversifying Data: Ensuring the longevity of the existing dataset while extending its scope to include a wider array of academic disciplines.
  • Enhancing Research Accessibility: Improving access to the dataset to spur diverse research and practical applications across various fields of study.
  • National and Interdisciplinary Impact: Utilizing ASEE’s platform to share insights and influence stakeholders in education, transcending the boundaries of engineering.

Join ASEE in this groundbreaking endeavor to reshape educational research and practice across all disciplines, fostering a more inclusive and insightful academic future.

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This project has been generously support by the National Science Foundation through Award EEC-2141903. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this website are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.