A systematic review is a specialized type of literature review used to collect and synthesize all the available evidence related to a research question. The methods for systematic reviews should be transparent and reproducible so that other researchers can use, replicate, and build upon the findings. Systematic reviews have been published for decades in medical literature where it is necessary to bring together all the studies related to a particular disease or condition for healthcare professionals to make evidence-based recommendations. Conducting systematic reviews has expanded to other disciplines, including education, business, and engineering. The authors of this study conducted a scoping review to investigate how prevalent systematic reviews are in engineering and to what extent engineering authors are following published reporting guidelines. To conduct this study, the authors searched the databases Compendex, Inspec, and ERIC and retrieved 11,588 records. After removing duplicates and applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 3,066 articles remained in the final data set. The authors then used a checklist of bibliographic and quality-related items to extract data from each of these studies. The findings show that systematic reviews are a popular and rapidly growing methodology in engineering, internationally, but the quality of the studies, in terms of how authors construct and report their methods, is often low, resulting in many studies that are irreproducible and may fall short of the goal of gathering all the available evidence on a topic. The authors include recommendations for engineering authors, higher education administrators, and publishers.

This study explores how libraries can enhance information literacy in online undergraduate courses at Purdue University, a large Midwestern research university. The article investigates undergraduate students’ perception of the importance and their awareness of libraries’ services for online learning, challenges of using information to complete course assignments, and the ability to gather and evaluate information to complete online coursework. The findings contribute to four aspects of the Libraries’ programmatic efforts to support undergraduate students taking online courses. These include showing a need for IL, helping students stay connected to resources and support, pedagogic strategies, and strategically targeting courses.

This study investigates undergraduates' news consumption and their perceptions of fake news in science while they took an online introductory geography course at a large Midwestern university. The authors collaborated with university science instructors to design and integrate a news literacy curriculum into a set of learning activities to promote critical thinking and research skills. A qualitative analysis of 108 students' written essays presents empirical evidence of their perceptions of fake news in terms of content (what), purpose (why), and source (who). The results show that students primarily sought news from traditional sources, such as CNN, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and the New York Times, while working on their research assignments. They spent, on average, about 7 hours per week reading, watching, or listening to news while taking the online course. More than half the students indicated that they used mobile devices to browse news most of the time. The strategies and tools the students used to manage multiple news sources are discussed.

This study investigates the impact of an elementary engineering education teacher professional development program on student learning. The results show a significant increase in students’ knowledge in science from pre- to post-test as well as in engineering design from grade two to grade four. Further, the study uses multilevel modeling to quantitatively analyze the impact of differences among teachers on the engineering design achievement of their students. Different predictive relationships between demographic and social capital factors at the teacher level and student achievement are identified and implications for educational policymaking and practices are discussed.

This paper investigated how libraries can support the transition of first-year international undergraduate students to a large research university. The research explored the students' use of libraries, their use of information to learn, and their academic and information literacy learning needs. The methods were a survey (with 135 responses) and three semi-structured interviews. Libraries should focus on basic information for these students, such as the locations of physical spaces; should develop teaching and learning rather than marketing strategies; and should work to integrate the library holistically into programs and courses for international students.