A Transdisciplinary Knowledge Approach Using a Holistic Design Thinking Methodology for Engineering Education

Mark J. Povinelli

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) - Research Investigations in the Context of Design Education
Tagged Division: Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/46503

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Mark J. Povinelli Syracuse University

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Dr. Mark Povinelli was the Kenneth A. and Mary Ann Shaw Professor of Practice in Entrepreneurial Leadership in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. He currently serves as an adjunct professor in the Renée Crown University Honors Program at Syracuse University. Additionally, Dr. Povinelli has taught Holistic Engineering using a Holistic Desing Thinking methodology at the secondary level in the New Vision Engineering college preparatory program and at the John Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth. He integrates his over thirty years of practical experience as a research, design, and systems engineer across academia, industry, and business into teaching methodologies.

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Abstract

A Transdisciplinary Knowledge Approach using a Holistic Design Thinking Methodology for Engineering Education

Given the abundance of design practices, it's notable that engineering design educators often lack methodologies for students that offer sufficiently broad perspectives and robust approaches to anticipate the dynamic complexity of 21st-century engineering design challenges. Many postsecondary engineering education programs face difficulties in developing pedagogies to assist students in learning and establishing complex and meaningful design relationships, especially since they may not provide four-year sequential design courses.

The challenges confronting engineering are multifaceted, including the need to stabilize existing infrastructure while fostering the creation of new infrastructure and addressing global crises exacerbated by technology. Evaluating technological impacts on quality-of-life and non-life issues aims to enhance the diversity of voices in design methodologies, encompassing human, organismal, environmental, and more-than-human perspectives. Educating the next generation of engineers in design theories and methodologies that transcend common paradigms is crucial for understanding the impacts of proposed innovative technologies and reducing unforeseen consequences. This necessitates broadening their knowledge base to grasp design in today’s era of expanding system complexities, transcending traditional interdisciplinary boundaries in engineering. While human-centered design thinking approaches and experiential learning practices found in Kolb’s Experiential Learning are beneficial, engineering design education can achieve more.

Providing students with deeper knowledge and holistic design methodologies that foster emotional and cognitive development, challenge beliefs, encourage different perspectives, and leverage curiosity, creativity, and interpersonal skills in advancing economic, social, and environmental justice remains a challenge. Despite various design teaching approaches existing, their focus typically lacks the comprehensive transdisciplinary knowledge necessary to address understanding nature, flexibility in thinking modes, psychology, the development of intellectual curiosity, effective communication, and leveraging knowledge from humanities, social sciences, neuroscience, and ecological sciences. Many engineering curricula limit student learning in these areas, potentially due to time constraints and an overemphasis on mathematical and analytical-based reasoning geared towards theoretical research, thereby neglecting the broader transdisciplinary knowledge essential for design.

What is missing is a way to make design education more encompassing of the in-depth knowledge and skills needed for a broader view of engineering design. The investigated pedagogical philosophy links design practice with its impacts on all life and the environment, encouraging students to consider humans and the environment beyond economic commodities. Envisioning alternative possibilities is fostered by an approach that expands knowledge beyond traditional engineering disciplines, integrating love, compassion, empathy, ethics, and abstract thinking. This enables students to pose and evaluate questions about future impacts, considering diverse needs. Moreover, understanding the interconnections among nature, empathy, ethics, reason, imagination, design, and technology in being human leads to a holistic engineering approach. Flexible thinking modes, particularly visual, critical, causal, associative, and abstract thinking skills, play a pivotal role in this methodology, alongside ethics establishing contemporary design methodologies prioritizing transparency and agency.

This paper examines pedagogical influences on an integrated transdisciplinary knowledge approach and a Holistic Design Thinking methodology, beginning with an understanding of love. It emphasizes flexible thinking to anticipate and access the impacts of proposed designs on ethical, economic, political, and health aspects. It argues for the dominant inclusion of design in engineering curricula and advocates for more transdisciplinary knowledge and an expansion of design methodologies beyond human-centered approaches. Students equipped with emotional and cognitive empathy skills, rooted in concepts like love and compassion, better uncover needs and collaborate in design practices, gaining a deeper understanding of themselves and cultivating profound purposes. Moreover, students instructed in transdisciplinary knowledge and flexible thinking demonstrate more creativity and cohesiveness in design teams. This paper presents nine years of qualitative results from teaching Holistic Design Thinking to secondary and postsecondary engineering students, with a focus on front-end transdisciplinary knowledge. Moreover, it continues the longitudinal study into its fifth year, tracking four cohorts of secondary students who graduated from the Holistic Engineering program. It incorporates qualitative interview data collected up to 2024 from thirty-nine of these former secondary students as they progress through their college education.

Citation
Format

Povinelli, M. J. (2024, June), A Transdisciplinary Knowledge Approach Using a Holistic Design Thinking Methodology for Engineering Education Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/46503

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - A Transdisciplinary Knowledge Approach using a Holistic Design Thinking Methodology for Engineering Education

Given the abundance of design practices, it&#39;s notable that engineering design educators often lack methodologies for students that offer sufficiently broad perspectives and robust approaches to anticipate the dynamic complexity of 21st-century engineering design challenges. Many postsecondary engineering education programs face difficulties in developing pedagogies to assist students in learning and establishing complex and meaningful design relationships, especially since they may not provide four-year sequential design courses.

The challenges confronting engineering are multifaceted, including the need to stabilize existing infrastructure while fostering the creation of new infrastructure and addressing global crises exacerbated by technology. Evaluating technological impacts on quality-of-life and non-life issues aims to enhance the diversity of voices in design methodologies, encompassing human, organismal, environmental, and more-than-human perspectives. Educating the next generation of engineers in design theories and methodologies that transcend common paradigms is crucial for understanding the impacts of proposed innovative technologies and reducing unforeseen consequences. This necessitates broadening their knowledge base to grasp design in today’s era of expanding system complexities, transcending traditional interdisciplinary boundaries in engineering. While human-centered design thinking approaches and experiential learning practices found in Kolb’s Experiential Learning are beneficial, engineering design education can achieve more.

Providing students with deeper knowledge and holistic design methodologies that foster emotional and cognitive development, challenge beliefs, encourage different perspectives, and leverage curiosity, creativity, and interpersonal skills in advancing economic, social, and environmental justice remains a challenge. Despite various design teaching approaches existing, their focus typically lacks the comprehensive transdisciplinary knowledge necessary to address understanding nature, flexibility in thinking modes, psychology, the development of intellectual curiosity, effective communication, and leveraging knowledge from humanities, social sciences, neuroscience, and ecological sciences. Many engineering curricula limit student learning in these areas, potentially due to time constraints and an overemphasis on mathematical and analytical-based reasoning geared towards theoretical research, thereby neglecting the broader transdisciplinary knowledge essential for design.

What is missing is a way to make design education more encompassing of the in-depth knowledge and skills needed for a broader view of engineering design. The investigated pedagogical philosophy links design practice with its impacts on all life and the environment, encouraging students to consider humans and the environment beyond economic commodities. Envisioning alternative possibilities is fostered by an approach that expands knowledge beyond traditional engineering disciplines, integrating love, compassion, empathy, ethics, and abstract thinking. This enables students to pose and evaluate questions about future impacts, considering diverse needs. Moreover, understanding the interconnections among nature, empathy, ethics, reason, imagination, design, and technology in being human leads to a holistic engineering approach. Flexible thinking modes, particularly visual, critical, causal, associative, and abstract thinking skills, play a pivotal role in this methodology, alongside ethics establishing contemporary design methodologies prioritizing transparency and agency.

This paper examines pedagogical influences on an integrated transdisciplinary knowledge approach and a Holistic Design Thinking methodology, beginning with an understanding of love. It emphasizes flexible thinking to anticipate and access the impacts of proposed designs on ethical, economic, political, and health aspects. It argues for the dominant inclusion of design in engineering curricula and advocates for more transdisciplinary knowledge and an expansion of design methodologies beyond human-centered approaches. Students equipped with emotional and cognitive empathy skills, rooted in concepts like love and compassion, better uncover needs and collaborate in design practices, gaining a deeper understanding of themselves and cultivating profound purposes. Moreover, students instructed in transdisciplinary knowledge and flexible thinking demonstrate more creativity and cohesiveness in design teams. This paper presents nine years of qualitative results from teaching Holistic Design Thinking to secondary and postsecondary engineering students, with a focus on front-end transdisciplinary knowledge. Moreover, it continues the longitudinal study into its fifth year, tracking four cohorts of secondary students who graduated from the Holistic Engineering program. It incorporates qualitative interview data collected up to 2024 from thirty-nine of these former secondary students as they progress through their college education.


AU  - Mark J. Povinelli
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - A Transdisciplinary Knowledge Approach Using a Holistic Design Thinking Methodology for Engineering Education 
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/46503
ER  -