towhat they see as an instrumental logic, which is part of what Riley refers to as the particular“mindsets” commonly found in engineering.8 In light of Seron and Silbey’s study, it becomesimportant to reflect on what is considered “common sense” within the engineering community,and how this gets agreed upon in the context of engineering. As discussed here, “common sense”is tied to the (often unspoken) social relations that constitute and govern much of humanexistence.9 Of course, the common sense that a group of people share and understand is certainlynot “common” to everyone. Engineering education accreditation documentation and theirrequirements can both be seen as a reflection of the dominant common sense in engineeringwithin their national
serve as a bridge between theoretical and practicalknowledge. 4 It is practical research that addresses an immediate, local need while providing Page 24.1130.2opportunities for deep reflection leading to individual professional growth. 5Although there are similarities, action research should not be confused with case study research.Typically, case study research involves an independent, outside observer studying a phenomenonin a naturally occurring environment, whereas an action research study includes a researcher whoactively participates in his or her own environment. For educators, this is often a classroom inwhich they teach. Action research
conditions and more restrictedmobility than their white, male, Canadian educated counterparts.23, 24 Her study providesimportant evidence to support the claim that engineers’ career mobility and workingconditions reflect existing socio-political disparities in the province.Our literature review highlights three critical dimensions of engineering career pathresearch. First, administrative decisions do not reflect the full range of human experience.In more concrete terms, we cannot assume that engineers’ lived realities will conform tothe dual track model proposed by human resource managers. Second, not all career pathsare made equal. It behooves us, as critical engineering education researchers, to examinethe full range of mobility patterns, working
wherein students engaged in a group of three to four members in anill-structured design project. We address one research question in this study: (1) “In what waysdoes empathy manifest with/for team members in a junior-level biomedical engineering designcourse based on post-course interview reflections?” We hope that this investigation will facilitatefuture work that can help instructors promote empathy in teams, help researchers identify how to“see” empathy’s manifestation in teaming contexts through qualitative data, and to help theengineering education community better understand the design outcomes that empathic teamstend to produce.Literature ReviewIn this literature review section, we address the question, “What is empathy?” We approach
transformation of engineering education.Dr. Ryan C. Campbell, Texas Tech University Having completed his Ph.D. through the University of Washington’s interdisciplinary Individual Ph.D. Program (see bit.ly/uwiphd), Ryan is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Texas Tech University. He currently facilitates an interdisciplinary project entitled ”Developing Reflective Engineers through Artful Methods.” His scholarly interests include both teaching and research in engineering education, art in engineering, social justice in engineering, care ethics in engineering, humanitarian engineering, engineering ethics, and computer modeling of electric power and renewable energy systems.Dr. Roman Taraban, Texas Tech University
. Creating new courses and adding modules toexisting ones can be extremely valuable interventions. However, making socio-technical thinkingan integral part of existing technical courses is also a necessary approach to reduce theperception that “social” issues are not equally valued in the engineering 1,2. The efficacy of suchefforts has not been widely tested. This paper builds on our analysis of an effort to incorporate socio-technical systemsthinking into a required civil and environmental engineering sophomore level course to testwhether such interventions effectively bridge the socio-technical divide in engineeringcurriculum 3. Our previous study found that class activities spurred more reflection on socialfactors that influence
undergraduate engineering students perform in an ambassador role. From this point, ourprimary strategy was to conduct an online search of university websites of ABET accreditedengineering programs. This search yielded information about 102 ambassador-type outreachprograms2. The points of contact for all of the programs were then sent an invitation to completea short survey describing the focus, composition, and core features of their program (AppendixA). Thirty programs reflecting universities in the north, mid-Atlantic, south, mid-west, south-west and north-west of the United States responded to this survey. From this group,representatives of 18 programs attended either one of two in-person workshops or an online1 Please contact Dr. Joanna K
grammar, punctuation, and usage. Adownside is that the assignments do not reflect well what the students experience asprofessionals because not only is the scope of the documents defined by the students (rather thanby a manager) but also the students receive little feedback on the technical accuracy of thecontent. Another common model, often used sequentially with the first, is that engineeringstudents learn technical writing through a writing-intensive design or laboratory course. In thismodel, while the students experience writing assignments more closely aligned with what theyexperience as professionals, the instruction on writing in larger such courses is often limited toonly a few class periods [5]. Moreover, students in larger courses often
, statics and stress, filtration and chemical precipitation, and soon). These engineering concepts are not abstracted from social, political, and economicconsiderations. Rather, engineering is imbued with social context. The RPG offers studentsopportunities to reflect on economic, geographical, economic, and philosophical issues whilelearning the technical skills they need to make informed decisions to address the needs of arapidly expanding population.Introduction and Statement of the ProblemIn 1945, when the French mathematician Jacques Hadamard sought to uncover the thoughtprocesses of mathematicians, he approached Albert Einstein, who suggested that “combinatoryplay seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”1 For many years
survey results, and written responses to reflection questions posed tostudents as routine course assignments. All data collection instruments and methods have beenapproved by the local Institutional Review Board (IRB). Each student in the pilot course (Y1 andY2) had the option of having their data included or excluded from the dataset analyzed by theresearch team.The types of institutional data collected include student demographics, course outcome,performance and persistence metrics. The institutional dataset is pulled from campus sourcesafter each subsequent academic term so that longitudinal student performance and persistencecan be tracked [10].All students in the pilot course take a pre-survey administered the first week of class and
explained, …everyone in the community is invested in our future. So, it's all hands on deck. So, hopefully that encompasses, you know, participation is soliciting the involvement of, you know, whoever and whatever is needed to move our children to a place where they can be positive contributors to our future society. They're our future, so it's…everybody needs to delve in and do what they can to support them. 8The urgency in which Deborah speaks may reflect a crisis in the underrepresentation of studentsof color (e.g. African-Americans, Latinx, and Native Americans) in STEM fields.The economically advantaged and
principlespreviously identified. Finally, my experience directing an interdisciplinary design program, Iconclude the analysis by reflecting on the extent to which the tensions identified are trulyincommensurable and, where they are not, describe opportunities for meeting in the middle.Background:5 Easy Steps to Design Creativity and Other Myths of Engineering Education ReformAs Director of Rensselaer’s Programs in Design and Innovation (PDI), I frequently receiveinvitations by course instructors and program administrators to present one or another form of a“Design Creativity” session to engineering students, faculty, and researchers. I elaborate brieflyon the structure and culture of PDI toward the end of the paper, but at this point it is important toshare
many individuals with different values and motivational orientations, what are some promising evidence-supported avenues to increase students’ motivations through intrinsic and extrinsic modes?About this workThis work is part of a broader study that examines student motivations in engineering writingclasses. At present, the body of actionable research on student motivation in engineering writingcourses is limited. In absence of such research, teaching designs are likely to be based oncommon assumptions about our students, some of which no longer reflect today’s engineeringstudents and most of which approximate diverse classrooms to a single homogenousmotivational profile. Thus the purpose of this work is to begin to provide
about the company’s expectations for the project.In a simulated “revise and resubmit” process, teams revised their proposals and submitted a finalversion to course instructors. All teams made extensive revisions. Table 1 shows the number andtypes of revisions made by each team. The increase in word count reflects the level of detailadded to the proposal, in response to feedback from reviewers. The least number of revisionswere “moves” (reorganization), possibly because the Proposal Design Guidelines outlined anddescribed the content of each section in detail. The number of insertions and deletions reflect themanner in which teams tended to work. Most teams revised section by section, deletingunnecessary or inappropriate information and
which the student design team’s memo presents design deliverables that are viable, elegant, and robust. Submitted work should be technically correct, yet also reflect a degree of down-selection and optimization that results from quantitative design tradeoffs (e.g., square versus round sections, hollow versus solid, best material selection, weight minimization). Velocity: A measure of the memo's communication efficiency and effectiveness at the paragraph- level. An efficient and effective writing style allows the reader to decode a document's message smoothly and at a speed in sync with the reader's ability to uptake information. On the contrary, poorly written streams of English
. All of these rubrics are in a stateof flux and I use Engineering Studies here for convenience.underrepresented groups into existing institutions and practices necessarily constitutes anemancipatory gesture. If engineering as a profession reflects social and cultural privilege (as thefield is currently populated in university, corporate and state settings), ES asks, how can theexpertise that constitutes engineering, and the field’s resulting projects, not also embody socialoppressions? A crucial point with which to begin this conversation involves old culturalpresumptions that physical disability is necessarily associated with intellectual impairment;visible and audible bodily differences are still readily assumed in U.S. culture to be
the 1956 Burdell-Gullette Report and the 1944 “Conference on the Humanities,” organized by WilliamWickenden, whose efforts were instrumental in the founding of the Liberal Education Division‟sprecursor, the Humanistic-Social Division of ASEE.This paper revisits the history of our own society‟s efforts to “broaden” engineering education,and does so in a way that allows us to reflect on the changes associated with ABET‟s EC 2000.A careful study of the past unveils the long history of our own attempts to bring liberal educationto engineers and how these efforts fit within and contribute to the distinct professionalconfiguration of engineering. It also reveals how engineering educators possess a distinct body ofpractice for adapting their
workQualitative Interviews Fifteen students at a large, public institution were interviewed in the spring of their senioryear (2007). Interviews were semi-structured and open-ended. Questions were designed to elicitstudents’ reflections on their college experience. Students spoke about their motivation to studyengineering primarily in response to one question: Are there any aspects of engineering that youparticularly like? Follow-up prompts elicited detail about the qualities or specific activities ofengineering that students cited. Students spoke about gender and their experience as engineeringstudents in response to three related questions: (1) How has gender played a role in yourexperience here at the UW? (2) Can you tell me of a particular
goldmining (ASGM); b) collaborative activities among students; c) sessions of a creative capacitybuilding (CCB) workshop; and d) group and individual reflections on what was learned everyday. The faculty and graduate students presentations included definitions on how to view ASGMas a socio-technical system, problem definition as the core pillar of global socio-technicalcompetency, mercury use in ASGM, risk communication in ASGM, interactions between largescale mining and ASGM, listening and trust building, and environmental and public healthdimensions of ASGM. The collaborative activities included re-evaluating design proposals ofsolutions that the 2020 cohort inherited from the 2019 cohort to three ASGM problem areas:back health of miners carrying
reflect on their mentoring practices to be a rewarding experience. We suggest thatpotential and current RIEF grantees should consider these themes and their personal preferencesas a mentor or as a mentee in order to improve and deepen their experience with RIEFmentorship.Limitations. The primary limitation of the study is the specific set of circumstances regardingthe population interviewed. The power dynamics at play between the mentors and mentees andthe expert-to-expert style of mentorship is potentially not generalizable to the training of otherengineering education researchers, such as graduate students. While a relatively large sample ofRIEF grantees was interviewed, potentially offering a strong profile of RIEF grantees, most ofthe
instructor hadnever taught a course in “Cognition and language,” which was ranked fourth in terms ofusefulness be respondents. While far from definitive, such factors might support the idea that theperceived usefulness of a workshop reflects its connection to the focus of the related REUprogram vs. instructor familiarity with teaching the related topic.Prospects for Future ResearchWhile the ideas noted here are interesting in terms of a pilot study, more work needs to be doneto determine how effective such workshops are within the context of an REU program. 9Similarly, collecting and analyzing more data over longer periods of time is essential
instructors to talk about their students, focusing their attentionparticularly on challenges in short (10-20 minutes long) semi-structured and open endedinterviews. In these interviews, faculty responded to prompts such as “what parts of workingwith stakeholders do you think your students struggle with?” by describing their ways ofthinking about students and teaching. These responses were diverse, and reflected on their ownlearning experiences, and on the different capabilities of students who came through theirclassroom and their roles supporting students taking on challenges that might be more difficultfor some than for others. Faculty showed commitment to helping students, and did so with theunderstanding that some students experienced more
very inspirational in the sense that they’re not at all selectively admitting. But, if you see what their graduates can do-- well, even what their students can do after a year or two, it’s pretty amazing. I mean, it’s just astounding. And so we thought, “Hey, we can do that.”Reflecting on this from the post-forced department merge perspective, that same facultymember noted that the social influence of their new department colleagues limited theprogram’s ability to maintain the fundamental norms necessary for the Alverno approach. But the reason they’re able to do that is their culture is to spend every Friday afternoon looking at classes, looking at what they’re doing, assessing themselves, figuring out how
factory workers in Hutchinson’sErr project described above, our students’ impulse was to use their making skills to conceive anddesign an object that: 1) identified a problem; 2) solved that problem; and 3) did so in a way thatwas easy and enjoyable for the user. In contrast, the critical design project forced the students: 1)to identify a problem; 2) to design an artifact that made that problem more evident; and 3) todesign the artifact in a way that forced its users to reflect about the process of using the design,rather than having the use be intuitive and, hence, transparent. Furthermore, instead of having theSenior Project students write up either a thesis or a traditional professional design report, studentteams were required to write a
Demonstrate appropriate syntax and correct usage of grammar and spelling Highlight or identify critical information Present, discuss, and summarize data accurately and persuasively Write thoughtful and persuasive conclusions and recommendations*Scale: The five-column rubric has become a standard practice in PITCH courses as well, with two blank columns to allow for flexibility in applying specific descriptors. 1. Poor: Shows little or no progress in achieving PITCH outcomes. Little or no progress in mastery of products or habits. 3. Average: Shows evidence of progress in achieving PITCH outcomes that reflect a merely acceptable level of mastery of both products and habits. 5. Outstanding: Shows evidence of progress in
Bloom’s Taxonomy Krupczak Proposed Remembering Survey Familiarity (knowing Understanding Focus content and context, understanding methods used) Applying Create/Apply Facility (applying, becoming comfortable) Analyzing Critique/Assess Fluency (critiquing, Evaluating Reflect appreciating
technical writing through the use of laboratoryreports or term papers. These types of writing are able to highlight the technical writing style butoften lack the context of the professional work environment and its most common reasons forcommunication. Many employers within the co-op program at Grand Valley State Universityhave indicated that students could benefit from additional experience communicating their ideasin writing when proposing or justifying a project or change.In this case study, several members of a small curriculum development team reflect on theaffordances and constraints imposed by the decision to develop the academic component of onerequired co-op employment term (specifically the second of three) into a writing-intensive
instructors from industry, who brought a truly multi-disciplinary character to these courses. Finally, we gave students numerous opportunities topractice their critical thinking skills by answering non-trivial questions, formulating decisions,and reflecting on their actions.Motivation for the sequence of technology commercialization coursesA recent survey of engineering students showed that 41% of them wanted to start their ownbusinesses, and 66% thought that entrepreneurship education would strengthen their careerprospects and improve their learning experiences8,9. Another survey showed that 50% of facultyand administrators believed that access to entrepreneurship programs would improve engineeringeducation10. These statistics show that many people
help them to obtain a good Page 23.362.7basis for the computer science topics. Following the computerscience component, the political science lesson takes a philosophical approach to the course andchallenges the students to reflect on what the word cyberspace really means. The instructorprompts the students to create a list of cyber related words. Students are then tasked to pick oneof the words, research it using credible sources, and then present their results using MS Word.To complete the assignment, on Thursday, students are introduced to MS Word where they learnbasic MS Word tools as well as the different formatting capabilities of the
and an undergraduate degree in politicalscience. We are in the business of helping students develop their methodological toolkits through the liberal arts practices of reflection, insight, and synthesis. Using thesepractices, innovation and entrepreneurship have been integrated into an engineeringcurriculum through a year-long liberal arts seminar at Milwaukee School of Engineering.This three-course freshman-level honors sequence has “The City” as its topical focus.Although we did not set out to create a course in entrepreneurship, the relationshipbetween our intended goals and the tenets of entrepreneurial education became clearwhen we examined the content of our classes in connection with a grant application webecame involved with that