specific interactions, activities, and the languageof community engagement partnerships as transactional, cooperative or communal. In addition tothe theoretical grounding, the paper also provides a summary of the activities that we will befacilitating during the special session, including analyzing cases and design tools, reflecting oncurrent program structures, and creating an action plan to implement changes in the participants’current, anticipated, or imagined engagement programs. By the end of the special session,participants will be able to evaluate their past, current or future partnerships, observe howprogram structures can influence partnerships, and assess the differences that these partnershipscan make in the success or failures of
reflection component on personal development, social impact, academic enhancement,university mission, and ethics. A mixed-methods approach was used to examine differencesbetween first-year engineering students who participated in service-learning projects during thefall semester of 2014 and those who did not. Students participating in service-learning projectsshowed significantly higher gains in confidence in both technical and professional engineeringskills. Female students in particular showed the most dramatic gains, with an average increase of81.6% in technical engineering confidence as a result of their service-learning course. The highergains in confidence can be attributed to the students learning more about how to identify andunderstand
design decisions and project costs. Projectsrange a wide variety of engineering majors including civil, mechanical, electrical, bio andcomputer. Through the use of student reflections, this paper attempts to identify the influence ofworking with civic regulatory bodies on student learning and student perception of their chosencareer path. As one group noted, the regulations impacting their project resulted in unforeseencosts but the entities who established these regulations were both purposeful and necessary toprotect the environment.IntroductionSanta Clara University is committed to providing educational opportunities aimed to instill theknowledge, habits of thought and action, and orientation to society that the university believeswill best
. Inaddition, a subset of the students in the course present their own experiences with the course andhow their participation has affected their view of engineering and their future careers. Thesestudents first reflected on their own unique experiences with the course, specifically focusing onworking in a multidisciplinary and vertically-integrated team, the development of teamwork andtechnical skills, and the impact of the course on their view of engineering. After reflecting, eachstudent analyzed the reflections of the other participating students and the commonalities anddifferences in the experiences were identified and are presented, with implications for similarcourses/programs.Background:One of the significant issues facing engineering over the
serve community interests and to developcareer awareness. Lima1 describes key components of service-learning as: service for thecommon good, academic content, reciprocity, mutual learning, and reflection. Thus, effectivelearning can be accomplished through action, interaction, and reflection.Research has shown that well-designed service-learning experiences have a positive impact onlearning and developmental outcomes for students2,3,4. Astin et al (2000) provides acomprehensive study that shows participation in service positively impacts student academicperformance, self-efficacy, leadership, choice of career, and service participation aftergraduation3. Their report indicates that the positive effects of service-learning are strongly
technical and club advisors forthe EWB-USA. The local club already had professional mentors who travelled in-country theprevious summer on an assessment trip with a team of students. These mentors continued withthe class and supported the faculty for EPICS who was an added advisor and managed the courseand assessments along with a graduate teaching assistant. He was also added as an advisor for theclub to keep him informed about activities and also to make it easier on the student members toobtain required signatures within the university system. A second club advisor was kept from theprogram that had overseen EWB-USA previously and still had responsibility for the organization.This shared ownership has worked well.Student Reflections and
involved in the experience. 2. Reflective Observation: The student groups meet with the faculty advisor every other week to provide an update on what they have done so far. One of the topics during discussion is what topics that they learnt in class used and how that is impacting the social issue. 3. Abstract Conceptualization: The students are collecting data from the agency and also making templates to get already existing data. They are using this data to apply models that they have learnt in various classes. Coming up the right data to use in itself is a great learning experience. 4. Active Experimentation: The students are able to put two different methodologies together to come up with a solution to
solutions in a global, economic,environmental, and societal context,” the training of engineering students to think globally hasbeen traditionally left to the realm of humanities and social science coursework6. Accordingly, agrowing number of engineering departments and colleges are going beyond this baselinestandard to reflect their university’s goals and interests in innovative engineering curriculum.Classroom-based teaching, albeit foundational for an introduction to fundamental concepts, isnow being coupled with collaborative projects, experiential learning, multimedia assignments,independent research, international learning opportunities, cross-cultural competence, and open-ended problem solving to foster a deeper understanding, particularly
Executive Director of FUSP - The Foundation for Supporting the USPDr. Joachim Walther, University of Georgia Dr. Walther is an assistant professor of engineering education research at the University of Georgia (UGA). He is a director of the Collaborative Lounge for Understanding Society and Technology through Educational Research (CLUSTER), an interdisciplinary research group with members from engineering, art, educational psychology and social work. His research interests range from the role of empathy in engineering students’ professional formation, the role of reflection in engineering learning, and interpretive research methodologies in the emerging field of engineering education research. His teaching focuses on
system in order to provide the village of Vuelta Grande withpotable water. The two-week abroad experience in Guatemala, between the fall and springsemesters, consisted of working with the adult leaders of the village to design, procure material,build, and test the rainwater catchment-filter system. During the Spring 2014 semester followingthe experience weekly culmination meetings allowed the students to reflect and document theirexperience in a series of presentations to the college and the local professional community. Thestudent delegates conducted a self-assessment survey in which they rated their growth beforeand after the abroad experience in six relevant constructs related to their professional andpersonal growth. The instrument was based
learning/project-based learning experience. Thus, thedecision was made to focus assessment on utilizing a combination of attitudinal as well asreflective student pieces. In fact, many aspects of Problem Based Learning (PBL) are inherent inthis type of project. “While each PBL instructional environment is unique, and therefore merits itsown unique assessment strategy, several alternative assessment techniques seem particularlyappropriate for the PBL learning environment.” 2 Page 26.1758.4 The common assessment pieces of service-based learning and PBL (Problem Based Learning)are specifically structured around the personal reflection pieces
she was not sure that the influence was positive, telling the teamthat on her last visit to Llacamate she noted that now that the community had electricity, whichwas made available in part by the team’s assistance erecting solar panels, many communitymembers were preferring to watch television rather than play their daily games of soccer. Thosestudents who had not travelled on the latest trip were shocked in disbelief. As the discussioncontinued, the students reflected on their indirect influence on the community and wondered as ateam how they could avoid that kind of “damage,” as they called it. Throughout the session, thestudents became aware in instances like this one of their team’s role in the project. One student’scomment summarized the
evenanswering such questions at an HA event. The behavior that is being encouraged in HA is earlycareer ambassadorship, not the promotion of attendance at a particular university or career at aparticular employer. That being said, effective ambassadors reflect well on their institutions andemployers and there is likely some marketing or recruiting benefit to these institutions in theactivity. Page 26.611.4The HA program was piloted in 2013-14 with 28 participating schools (resulting in 24 visits) andrepeated in 2014-15 with 38 participating schools (21 visits completed at the time of thiswriting). The second year implementation was accompanied by one
: ❏ It involves the management of natural resources ❏ It directly impacts energy use ❏ It directly impacts land use ❏ It directly impacts water use ❏ It has social impacts ❏ It has economic impacts ❏ It is related to urban planning ❏ Other:Learning Reflections – First Response In order to understand participants’ first reactions to each of the learning activities theywere involved in, we asked them to complete a “quick and dirty” written response sheet whichasked them to rate the primary learning activity of the day (on a scale of 1 – 5 with 5 being thebest) and to record something they thought they had learned and would “take away” from theactivity. Respondents
required to maintain a log book recording the design process, as well as their thoughts and reflections. • At the end of the semester students a required to submit a portfolio of their work & meet with the professor for evaluation. • The design teams are formed from students with varying interests and D Team Work discipline choices. This combination of ideas contributes to the strength of the projects. • Teams are self-directed • Deliverables were intended to
questions are critical to understand if theavailability of LTS opportunities to engineering students are to continue to grow and flourish. Page 26.1078.16AcknowledgmentsThis material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under DUEGrant Nos. 1022927, 1022883, 1022738, 1023022, and 1022831. Any opinions, findings, andconclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do notnecessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.References1. Pew Research Center. 2010. Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next. http://www.pewresearch.org/millennials/ Accessed 1/23/2015.2
could examine other ways to view studentvolunteerism and the potential effects that those experiences have on the attitudes of personaland professional social responsibility in engineering students.AcknowledgementsThis material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant#1158863. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in thismaterial are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NationalScience Foundation.Bibliography1 A. W. Astin, L. J. Vogelgesang, E. K. Ikeda and J. A. Yee, How Service Learning Affects Students, Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, 2000.2 J. S. Eyler, D. E. Giles, C. M. Stenson and C. J. Gray, "At a Glace: What We
nature of the integration between the sophomore and senior students is slightly distinct, andis not as interactive as the one discussed above. The sophomore students are required to attendsome of the presentation sessions and group meetings of the senior students (working on theirCapstone projects). They are also required to attend the poster presentation session made by thesenior students at the culmination of their Capstone project. The sophomore students are requiredto write reflection papers to explain their experience and to explain their understanding of theproject. The main rationale behind this interaction is to introduce the sophomores to the open-ended, and often vague, project objectives of the Capstone projects. Furthermore, the
a lab-styleenvironment. Students were expected to learn the design process as part of their service/designexperience under the guidance of a faculty member and professionals.Assessment of the course was provided via open-ended written reflections. Students indicatedthat the documentation requirements were overwhelming the service and design aspects of thecourse. In spite of their frustration with the documentation, students indicated that they valuedthe service aspect of the course.The instructors’ assessment mirrored that of the students. The focus of the course was incorrect.In the pursuit of providing resources to help students not waste time, the instructors felt studentsspent an exorbitant amount of time documenting rather than
% 23% 26 *Central tendency (Mode) is highlightedThe participants’ beliefs about whether volunteerism can contribute to career advancement weremore mixed with most participants reporting neutral responses. While it is possible that thevolunteer engineers may be coming from a place of genuine altruism rather than self-interest asthey concentrated time and effort to volunteering with underserved students, it might also be thecase that corporate culture does not actively promote or demonstrate the value of volunteerism tothe workforce. These beliefs may be reflected in the results. Page 26.1508.16Table 3b. Agreement with statements related