, students participate in a two-week tripwhere students interact with the community and implement the project, participate in culturalexperiences, and identify projects for the following year. Following the trip, additionaldocumentation similar to items noted above is required, as well as an executive summary, shortvideo, reflections paper, and survey.Previous publications related to the course have discussed training internationally responsibleengineers3, sustainability and impact4, integration of sociology and engineering using keyprinciples of human-centered design5, GEO course insights6, social connectivity betweenstudents and communities7, the documentation strategy2, and water filter implementation inSouthern Peru8. Some of these publications
value professional skills.Because there is somewhat limited research in chemical engineering education related to theformation of professional skills, we also incorporate research from engineering education andeducation research more broadly. Specifically, we sought to build on research showing thatdiverse teams tend to be more creative; this strengths-based view of diversity aligned to ourparticular context and our efforts—as part of an NSF REvolutionizing engineering and computerscience Departments (RED) project—to better support diverse student success. We thereforeconjectured that providing students with an opportunity to reflect on their own and theirteammates strengths, and then to critically assess their team’s collective gaps would
presented as a simulation. Both the computer simulations and physical experiments began with a description of aphysical situation and asked students to predict what would happen in that circumstance.Students then either used the computer simulations or engaged in physical experiments. Eachinvolved discrepant events, something participants holding certain misconceptions would nothave expected. Finally, learners were asked to answer a group of reflection questions that hadthem reconsider their original ideas and revise them based on what had occurred. Assessment Changes in conceptual understanding were assessed using the Heat and Energy ConceptInventory (HECI) [21], [22] and two of its sub-tests: Rate versus Amount (8 questions
were completed byeveryone in the group. During both years, the results were kept confidential. However, theinstructors intervened as necessary when significant differences and problems were observed.The discussion on these results is presented in the next section.4. Results and Survey DiscussionFirst, the results of the numerical peer evaluations are presented when the instructor assignedteams. As each team leader led a presentation, several disagreements and conflicts within thegroups were shared with the instructors, and these results were reflected in the numerical peerevaluation. Figure 2 shows the results of the numerical surveys provided to the students duringthe Fall 2016 semester when teams were assigned based on individual academic