This work-in-progress paper reports on pilot testing of instruments for an NSF-funded research project that aims to bridge the gap between professional engineering work and engineering graduate education, in accordance with a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM] policy document (2018). The project will apply, research, and develop communities of practice (CoP; Wenger, 1998) theory in three graduate classes from three different engineering departments. A community of practice is a group of people who share purposes and methods, which emerge from the needs of a context, with the negotiation of shared meaning and forms of participation. The project will investigate how CoPs form, how CoPs in different disciplines learn to interact and collaborate, and what conditions foster equitable participation by all members of a CoP. Prior research shows that highly diverse communities have optimal team performance and creativity, but only if members feel psychologically safe. Data sources contemplated include personal interviews, classroom observations, a psychological safety survey, survey on perceptions of class, and a CoP-specific instrument, the Community Assessment Toolkit (CAT). In this paper we report on our piloting of the instruments.

Introduction.