An engineering economy concept inventory

Abstract

There has been considerable recent emphasis on valid assessment of learning in engineering education. When new teaching pedagogies are introduced, it can be very challenging to demonstrate increases in learning of course concepts. While there are a number of accepted concept inventories available for some engineering topics (statics and dynamics, heat and energy, signals and systems, and statistics), reliable and valid tools for assessing learning are not readily available for many curriculum areas, including engineering economy. This paper discusses the reliability and validity of the Engineering Economy Concept Inventory (EECI) that can be used to assess learning in any introductory engineering economy course. Development of the EECI began in 2009 for use in assessing the effectiveness of model-eliciting activities in the classroom and has since been revised and reformulated a number of times. In the fall of 2018, the EECI was administered at multiple institutions for further evaluation of its validity and results from these groups of students are presented. The paper concludes with remarks regarding the reliability and validity of the instrument and recommendations for its use as a tool to assess knowledge in engineering economy.     

The importance of risk and insurance teaching within the ARIA mission

The American Risk and Insurance Association (ARIA) is a scholarly association devoted to the study of and promotion of risk and insurance economics and has a history of innovative scholarship in fields that are vital to economic development and resiliency throughout the world. Association members have an equally important mission and history of passing along important knowledge to students and the risk professions. The Risk and Insurance Teaching Society (RITS) was established as part of the pedagogical and academic program roles of ARIA. This paper outlines the importance of pedagogy within business higher education and more specifically within the academic discipline of risk and insurance and the increasing role that RITS plays in pedagogical innovation and idea sharing among risk and insurance academics.     

The effect of parental leave duration on early-career wage growth

Work–family policies are meant to support labor force participants, but they often result in lower rewards for those who use them. Based on the ideal worker norm framework and signalling theory, we hypothesise that parental leave duration will result in lower wage growth, above and beyond that of having children. The 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data from 2000 to 2015 are used to test the hypotheses with a longitudinal sample (14 waves) of individuals in the United States who worked before and after taking parental leave (n = 6723). Discontinuous growth models are used to predict the penalty for parental leave duration for men and women. We find that both men and women suffer from a lower hourly wage growth for taking longer parental leave and that there are more severe penalties for taking paid parental leave than taking unpaid parental leave. Practitioner notes What is currently known?

• utilization of parental leave is significantly related to the wellbeing of employees and their families.
• However, employees are penalized for taking parental leave.

What this study adds?

• Paid parental leave, which is mostly available to skilled, professional employees carries a noticeable early-career wage penalty, but the use of unpaid leave, does not.
• Both men and women are penalized for taking parental leave, but the longer parental leaves women take increase the gender pay gap.

Implications for practitioners:

• HR practitioners should monitor whether employees are penalized for taking parental leave.
• HR practitioners should try incentivizing male employees to take parental leave that is comparable to the one taken by their female employees.