Identifying Curriculum Factors that Facilitate Lifelong Learning in Alumni Career Trajectories: Stage 3 of a Sequential Mixed-Methods Study

Abstract This research paper presents results from the third stage of a sequential mixed-methods study exploring the impacts of undergraduate curriculum on lifelong learning in the context of varying alumni career trajectories. Our early research uncovered the necessity of lifelong learning mindsets or attitudes to augment lifelong learning skills, so we focus on lifelong learning orientations covering both motivations and strategies. Researchers, educators, and policymakers often highlight the importance of lifelong learning for engineering program graduates to address complex sociotechnical challenges through their work and to navigate unpredictable career paths. Accordingly, various engineering accreditation frameworks include lifelong learning as an essential professional competency, but engineering programs are still trying to understand how to design curriculum to support lifelong learning. Existing studies seldom investigate the long-term effects of lifelong learning interventions on student and alumni orientations. Large-scale surveys of alumni career trajectories rarely investigate the learning that takes place across careers, or the lasting influences of different elements of the undergraduate experience on these outcomes. To begin to fill these gaps, we are performing an alumni study that aims to contribute to a better understanding of curriculum factors that facilitate lifelong learning in the career trajectories of engineering graduates. In the first stage of this research, we performed exploratory semi-structured interviews with 24 alumni of one program. In the second stage of this research, we developed and administered a broader alumni survey (n = 279) to investigate relationships between lifelong learning motivations and strategies, curriculum factors, and individual characteristics. In the present third stage of this research, we performed "learning journey" interviews with twelve engineering and physics alumni to build on the preliminary conceptual framework developed from stage 1 and to better understand some individual experiences behind the survey results from stage 2. The interviews were designed to address the following research questions supporting the full study: RQ3a What connections do alumni make between their undergraduate program experiences and later lifelong learning orientations? RQ3b How do prior experiences and incoming learning orientations influence experiences of undergraduate program curricula and subsequent lifelong learning outcomes? RQ3c How do learning-oriented students resist potentially negative effects of undergraduate curriculum and/or "unlearn" non-ideal motivations and strategies after graduation? RQ3d According to alumni narratives, how do lifelong learning orientations play a role in crossing disciplinary boundaries, changing mindsets/wordviews, and developing broader professional competencies? We selected interviewees through purposive sampling of stage 2 survey participants to identify recent graduates (<10 years) with more ideal lifelong learning orientations and/or more extensive career transitions. Within this shortlist, we attempted to diversify participants based on department, major, gender, sexual orientation, race, and disability status. The interviews followed life history narrative methods inspired by "learning career" studies and were designed as 60-90 minute virtual video interviews eliciting narratives of individuals' experiences with learning throughout their careers. Having transcribed and cleaned the recordings, the data is being coded in two cycles (Saldana). In the first cycle, we use provisional codes tied to the existing conceptual framework and survey variables and incorporate hypothesis and causation coding strategies to consider relationships between these variables. This paper may also report results of second cycle open/elaborative coding of emerging themes that were not aligned with the conceptual framework. From initial passes through the transcripts, we see that participants tend to highlight unique pre-university experiences and learning motivations; different responses to design, math/science, and humanities/social science categories of courses in the undergraduate program with associated periods of difficulty and demotivation; and career decisions and learning experiences that are shaped and informed by these prior experiences and dispositions to different extents. These findings will provide a rich description of STEM alumni "learning journeys" and insights for the design of undergraduate programs.