ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1666839
This article is part of the Research TopicReimagining Higher Education: Responding Proactively to 21st Century Global ShiftsView all 19 articles
Synthesizing Personas and Scenarios through Participatory Design to Create Support Systems for Academic Success of Nontraditional Students in Engineering
Provisionally accepted
- 1Youngstown State University, Youngstown, United States
- 2George Mason University Fenwick Library, Fairfax, United States
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Increasingly, nontraditional students are becoming a larger proportion of students in engineering and to better support their academic success it is essential to understand their experiences and expectations. This research paper presents the outcomes of a participatory design process conducted with nontraditional students in engineering (NTSE) to synthesize and distill different aspects of NTSE through the development of personas and scenarios. These personas and scenarios will allow stakeholders, such as faculty, advisors, and administration, to better understand how they can support these students. Based on prior preliminary research, a participatory design session (PDS) was held with seven nontraditional engineering student participants who shared their experiences related to support systems in the university. Through this process personas and scenarios were created that provide critical insights into the needs and experiences of non-traditional engineering students. These findings highlight specific areas where existing educational practices can be improved and provide actionable recommendations for enhancing support structures. This work contributes to the development of more inclusive and effective educational environments for nontraditional students in engineering.
Keywords: Nontraditional Students in Engineering, Participatory Design, personas, scenarios, stem education
Received: 22 Jul 2025; Accepted: 17 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Brozina, Chew, Baka and Johri. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Cory Brozina, scbrozina@ysu.edu
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