Paper Title
Amalgmation of Engineering Students’ Co-Curricular Activities
Abstract
As engineering educators prepare more high-quality engineers for the global workforce, more emphasis has been
placed on developing students’ professional skills, increasing student persistence, and improving diversity in the engineering
workforce. Co-curricular activities have been considered as a unique way to improve these outcomes. In order to better
understand the role of co-curricular activity in engineering education and to accurately identify future research areas, the
present study synthesized the findings on two domains: what factors are related to engineering students’ participation in cocurricular
activities and what are the outcomes of student participation. The results indicate that female and minority students
are more likely to engage in co-curricular activities. Some institutional characteristics influence student participation. In
general, co-curricular activities support engineering students’ cognitive development, affective development, persistence in
engineering, and career preparation. Different types of co-curricular activities are associated with different outcomes. These
findings suggest that educators should encourage and support students to participate in co-curricular activities and point to
the need for additional research.
Keywords – engineering educator, engineering students, co-curricular activity