engleski

Exploring Professional Interests Of Computer And Electrical Engineering Freshmen

The fields of electrical and computer engineering are subjected to constant change regarding their domain knowledge. Technologies, programming languages, environments, and development approaches change reflecting industry needs and formal education programs. But it is not just what needs to be known that influences this change. It is also the interest of electrical and computer engineering students. Some of the factors affecting students’ decisions about their profiling during their studies are their intrinsic motivation and interests, their career and pay prospects, but also hard limits like enrollment caps on a study program or availability of a potential mentor. This paper explores the interests of two consecutive generations of electrical and computer engineering freshmen regarding their future professional focus. Students' assignment was to choose and research a topic they would be interested to work on during their studies and find a potential mentor who could supervise their work. The answers collected from more than 600 students per generation regarding their chosen topic of interest were clustered to identify topics of most or least interest as well as changes in those topics between years. The interests that students have expressed are reflective of their perception of popular electrical and computer engineering topics like artificial intelligence or mobile app programming. Students’ reported interests are discussed as information that can be useful for faculty-level decision-making, either to try to affect students’ perceptions and interests for certain topics and study programs or to plan for restructuring.

engineering education, engineering freshmen, professional interests

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