A quantitative study of collaboration patterns of engineering education researchers

Abstract

Academic collaboration is vital to advancing rigorous scholarship in engineering education. Despite its significance recognition among scholars and the government, prior studies have revealed that engineering education researchers still work in isolation in their academic activities. However, the overall collaboration patterns and what factors contribute to the breadth of collaboration remain largely unknown. In this paper, we reveal the collaboration patterns among engineering education researchers based on bibliographic data analysis. We select 7,732 NSF awards related to engineering education from EHR-DGE, EHR-DRL, EHR-DUE, and ENG-EEC. We then develop a keyphrase extraction algorithm to determine the main research topics of an award and utilize a name disambiguation system to precisely identify co-authorship. Our findings show that EER awardees collaborate more than researchers in the general disciplines of engineering and education. Also, average number of awardees per award is highly correlated with the number of awards. We further identify three categories of research topics that show different patterns in terms of level of collaborative engagement. We believe that our research results will provide comprehensive and insightful understanding of collaboration patterns within the engineering education research community. It also benefits the research community by offering information perhaps necessary to promote collaboration in certain areas in engineering education. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.