About

Dr. Jennifer Case is a Professor and Head of the Department of Engineering Education in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech. She has been researching student learning in higher education for over two decades, with a focus on engineering education. Her work explores teaching approaches that foster good learning outcomes, engineering curriculum structures that build necessary knowledge and dispositions for the workplace, and education research methodologies, including the use of sociological perspectives alongside cognitive psychology. Prior to her current role, she was a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she also held an honorary appointment. She was a pioneer in the field of Engineering Education Research, beginning her scholarship in the mid-1990s amidst post-apartheid transformations in South Africa's engineering education system. Her research is grounded in practically-oriented curriculum reform, drawing on higher education studies to advance learning outcomes in engineering programs. She has developed a strong international reputation in engineering education, with extensive publications and leadership roles, including serving as a joint editor-in-chief for the top international journal Higher Education. Her career includes 21 years at the University of Cape Town, where she taught in the undergraduate Chemical Engineering program, led program administration, and contributed to curriculum reform. She was a founding member and Director of the Centre for Research in Engineering Education at UCT and served as the founding president of the South African Society for Engineering Education. In 2011, she was a Mandela Mellon fellow at Harvard University. Since joining Virginia Tech in 2017, she has continued to teach at both undergraduate and graduate levels, advise Ph.D. students, and lead a research group. Her contributions have been recognized through numerous awards, including the President’s Award from the National Research Foundation of South Africa, the Distinguished Teachers’ Award at UCT, and election to the Academy of Sciences of South Africa.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Engineering
• Social Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Natural Language Processing
• Anthropology
• Psychology
• Cartography
• Geography
• Mathematics education
• Engineering ethics
• Epistemology
• Law

Selected publications

• Realising the Educational Potential of Mass Higher Education

  OAPEN (The OAPEN Foundation) · 2026-01-01

  otherOpen access

  This open access book addresses the current disillusionment with mass higher education and argues that it is based on a profound misunderstanding of its educational potential. The authors analyse a seven-year longitudinal research project that tracked participants who studied chemistry or chemical engineering from their first year of university until up to three years after they graduated. Drawing on over 700 interviews with students/graduates from two English, two South African and two American universities, the book explores the educational intentions of their degree programmes, what participants wanted to get out of going to university and studying for a degree, how their views of knowledge and the world changed, and what they felt they had gained from going to university. The book argues that the educational potential of higher education lies, not in graduate salaries or employability, but in the ways in which engaging with structured bodies of knowledge changes students’ understanding of the world and what they can do in it. The authors consider the implications of this argument for how the educational role of higher education is understood by students, graduates, universities, and policymakers and how this understanding might be drawn upon to counter the damaging disillusionment with mass higher education that appears to be growing in many countries. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.

  PublisherDOI

• AI-Ready Control System for the Fermilab Accelerator Complex

  ArXiv.org · 2026-03-19

  articleOpen access

  Reliable, high-intensity operation of the Fermilab Accelerator Complex is critical to the success of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. We describe the requirements and infrastructure necessary to support routine use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in the accelerator control system. Three capabilities are identified: a machine learning operations (MLOps) framework standardizing the lifecycle of AI/ML automation from data management through deployment and monitoring; a data quality framework defining and enforcing standards required to build trustworthy AI/ML applications; and workflow integration with large language models to assist physicists, engineers, and operators with information retrieval, code development, and routine analysis. Use cases spanning beam diagnostics, beam control, and support system automation illustrate the technical requirements across the complex.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Realising the Educational Potential of Mass Higher Education

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc eBooks · 2026-01-01

  bookOpen access

  <JATS1:p>This open access book addresses the current disillusionment with mass higher education and argues that it is based on a profound misunderstanding of its educational potential.</JATS1:p> <JATS1:p>The authors analyse a seven-year longitudinal research project that tracked participants who studied chemistry or chemical engineering from their first year of university until up to three years after they graduated. Drawing on over 700 interviews with students/graduates from two English, two South African and two American universities, the book explores the educational intentions of their degree programmes, what participants wanted to get out of going to university and studying for a degree, how their views of knowledge and the world changed, and what they felt they had gained from going to university. The book argues that the educational potential of higher education lies, not in graduate salaries or employability, but in the ways in which engaging with structured bodies of knowledge changes students’ understanding of the world and what they can do in it. The authors consider the implications of this argument for how the educational role of higher education is understood by students, graduates, universities, and policymakers and how this understanding might be drawn upon to counter the damaging disillusionment with mass higher education that appears to be growing in many countries.</JATS1:p> <JATS1:p>The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.</JATS1:p>

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• AI-Ready Control System for the Fermilab Accelerator Complex

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-03-19

  preprintOpen access

  Reliable, high-intensity operation of the Fermilab Accelerator Complex is critical to the success of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. We describe the requirements and infrastructure necessary to support routine use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) in the accelerator control system. Three capabilities are identified: a machine learning operations (MLOps) framework standardizing the lifecycle of AI/ML automation from data management through deployment and monitoring; a data quality framework defining and enforcing standards required to build trustworthy AI/ML applications; and workflow integration with large language models to assist physicists, engineers, and operators with information retrieval, code development, and routine analysis. Use cases spanning beam diagnostics, beam control, and support system automation illustrate the technical requirements across the complex.

  PublisherDOI

• Investigating student and faculty perceptions of a new assessment system for Project-Based Learning

  2024-02-06

  articleOpen access

  Project-Based Learning (PjBL) is an approach to designing curricula through inductive learning methods and typically utilizes active learning pedagogies.This study investigates the experiences of students and faculty at a new engineering school in China that had adopted the PjBL approach and created a new assessment system, which it terms the Comprehensive Ability Assessment Radar Map.This assessment system focuses on students' weekly reflective submissions during the project and involves instructors' evaluation of students' knowledge and motivation, communication, practical skills, thinking skills, responsibility, and project execution.This paper reports a qualitative interview-based case study investigating student and faculty perceptions of the new assessment system.We interviewed ten students (out of a class of 33) and six faculty (all PjBL instructors) about their perceptions of the assessment system.The analysis of the student interviews showed their concerns about the turnaround time of weekly assessments and the quality and objectivity of the feedback.The study of the faculty interviews captured the debate about the weighting of the items in the assessment system.However, it also supported the model that progressively de-emphasizes knowledge acquisition compared to professional skills.Concerning the assessment itself, faculty were divided on whether objective or subjective evaluations are desirable and on the feedback interval.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Changing the Paradigm: Developing a Framework for Secondary Analysis of EER Qualitative Datasets

  2024-02-06 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The resulting archive of robust qualitative and quantitative data represents a vast untapped potential to exponentially increase the impact of EEC funding and transform engineering education.But tapping this potential has thus far been an intractable problem, despite ongoing calls for data sharing by public funders of research.Changing the paradigm of single-use data collection requires actionable, proven practices for effective, ethical data sharing, coupled with sufficient incentives to both share and use existing data.To that end, this project draws together a team of experts to overcome substantial obstacles in qualitative data sharing by building a framework to guide secondary analysis in engineering education research (EER), and to test this framework using pioneering data sets.Herein, we report on accomplishments within the first year of the project during which time we gathered a group of 13 expert qualitative researchers to engage in the first of a series of working meetings intended to meet our project goals.We came into this first workshop with a potentially limiting definition of secondary data analysis and the idea that people would want to share existing datasets if we could find ways around anticipated hurdles.However, the workshop yielded a broader definition of secondary data analysis and revealed a stronger interest in creating new datasets designed for sharing rather than sharing existing datasets.Thus, we have reconceived our second phase as one that is a cohesive effort based on an inclusive "open cohort model" to pilot projects related to secondary data analysis.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cultural aspects of teamwork in engineering education: comparing Chinese and international literatures

  European Journal of Engineering Education · 2024-12-24 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A Comparative Literature Review: Comparing Approaches to Teamwork Assessment in Engineering Education in the US and China

  2024-02-07 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Teamwork is considered a critical learning outcome for engineering graduates. Despite the increasingly globalized nature of the engineering workforce and engineering education, there has not been much work comparing approaches to teamwork assessment in different cultural contexts. This study aims to conduct an exploratory comparative literature review to develop a preliminary understanding of how teamwork has been assessed in engineering education and what approaches have been considered for teamwork assessment in different cultures, with a particular comparative focus on the U.S. and China. This article will compare these two contexts based on a preliminary analysis of six papers from two prominent journals in engineering education in the two cultures: Journal of Engineering Education (U.S.-based) and Gaodeng gongcheng jiaoyu yanjiu (高等工程教育研究, Research in higher engineering education) (China-based). First, we compare the motivations for teamwork assessment in the two cultural contexts. Second, we summarize how teamwork assessment is conceptualized and defined in these contexts. Third, we compare the methods and tools used to assess teamwork in engineering in the two cultures. Finally, we briefly discuss the implications of such a comparative literature review for constructing a more comprehensive, culturally responsive approach to defining, developing, and assessing teamwork.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Industry Members’ Perceptions About ABET-Based Accreditation: An Exploratory Study in a Developing Country

  IEEE Transactions on Education · 2024-07-04 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Contribution: This study explores industry members’ perceptions about the ABET-based accreditation in a developing country, using the case study of a program in a publicly funded polytechnic university in Ecuador. Background: Engineering programs often seek international accreditations to enhance the education quality, align with the global standards or gain academic reputation. ABET-based accreditation originates in United States, and thus presents some challenges for institutions in developing countries. Intended Outcomes: This study aimed to investigate the significance of international academic accreditation, as seen through the perspective of industry members. It focused on identifying fundamental competencies valued by employers and aimed to provide insights for institutions in similar contexts. Application Design: The research employed an approach informed by a qualitative methodology, involving in-depth interviews with five industry members who had served on the advisory committee board of an engineering program from a higher education institution in Ecuador. Findings: The findings identified three main areas of competencies that the industry members value: communication skills for teamwork, a problem-solving orientation, and an ability for effective task planning. The study also showed that these industry members value international accreditation as a means for enhancing education quality and ensuring graduates develop the necessary skills and competencies, yet the overall awareness with their peers remains relatively low.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Can standardized testing be used to promote equity in university admissions? A South African case study

  Higher Education · 2024-09-16

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Holly Matusovich

  Virginia Tech

  76 shared

• Rachel Kajfez

  The Ohio State University

  75 shared

• Marie Paretti

  George Washington University

  36 shared

• David Delaine

  33 shared

• Lisa Benson

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  33 shared

• Shawn Jordan

  Arizona State University

  33 shared

• Delia Marshall

  University of the Western Cape

  28 shared

• Nicole Pitterson

  Virginia Tech

  24 shared

Labs

• Engineering EducationPI

Awards & honors

• President’s Award from the National Research Foundation (NRF…
• Distinguished Teachers’ Award, UCT, 2007
• Elected Member of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa (A…
• Excellence in Teaching & Learning Award, Higher Education Le…
• Meritorious Book Award, UCT, 2015