Informing the sharing and access of engineering education research data through comparative analysis

Abstract

The rapid growth of engineering education as a field of rigorous research has resulted in an explosion of available data and research results. There are numerous research efforts currently underway that gather data on a variety of topics that have the potential to help us better understand how students learn engineering. However, there are currently no easy methods to synthesize research results, share research data, and indeed validate research studies effectively. In general, topics related to data and data sharing are largely treated as taboos in the engineering education research space. Data sharing mechanisms to enable fundamental research in engineering education that has the potential to address systemic problems have not yet been clarified. The research goal of this paper is to identify and understand patterns for data sharing mechanisms in order to inform design requirements for data sharing practices and infrastructure in engineering education.