Board 231: Contextualizing Engineering Science Courses by Teaching History and Judgement

Martell Cartiaire Bell; Aaron W. Johnson; Rachel Vitali

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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: June 26, 2024
Conference Session: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Tagged Topic: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Page Count: 4
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--46801
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/46801
Download Count: 60

Paper Authors

biography

Martell Cartiaire Bell The University of Iowa

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I'm am a second year Ph.D student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Iowa with a dual focus in engineering education and automation/artificial intelligence in manufacturing.

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Aaron W. Johnson University of Michigan

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Aaron W. Johnson (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department and a Core Faculty member of the Engineering Education Research Program at the University of Michigan. His lab’s design-based research focuses on how to re-contextualize engineering science engineering courses to better reflect and prepare students for the reality of ill-defined, sociotechnical engineering practice. Their current projects include studying and designing classroom interventions around macroethical issues in aerospace engineering and the productive beginnings of engineering judgment as students create and use mathematical models. Aaron holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from U-M, and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to re-joining U-M, he was an instructor in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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Rachel Vitali The University of Iowa orcid.org/0000-0002-1436-6148

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Dr. Rachel Vitali is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Iowa. Prior to her appointment, she was a NASA-funded TRISH postdoctoral fellow in the Industrial & Operations Engineering Department at the University of Michigan, where she also received her B.S.E. in 2015, M.S.E in 2017, and Ph.D. in 2019 from the Mechanical Engineering Department. As director of the Human Instrumentation and Robotics (HIR) lab, she
leads multiple lines of research in engineering dynamics with applications to wearable technology for analysis of human motion in a variety of contexts ranging from warfighters to astronauts. In addition to her engineering work, she also has an interest in engineering education research, which most recently has focused on incorporating authentic engineering educational experiences through engineering history education and open-ended modeling problems designed to initiate the productive beginnings of engineering judgement and engineering identity.

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Abstract

Engineering programs have long struggled with balancing curricula that are rigorous enough to prepare graduates to be capable practitioners and educational experiences that are engaging enough to retain undergraduate students. Data show a little more than half of students who start in a program leave after the first or second year, and that many of those students came to dislike engineering or lost interest in the profession. These findings suggest a mismatch between what incoming students think engineering practice is and what message they receive during their first two years of a program. This work will aim to understand how contextualization of what it means to practice engineering can improve the intentions of students, particularly those identifying as underrepresented minorities and women, to persist in a discipline that historically struggles to retain them. With this understanding, changes can be made to undergraduate engineering education to better retain students. In addition, this work will contribute new knowledge about students’ understanding of what it means to practice engineering and how that understanding changes with exposure to different types of contextualization (e.g., historical or technical). It will also contribute new knowledge about how undergraduate students associate engineering science and judgement with engineering practice, particularly with respect to how these facets of engineering practice are directly in service to design.

Engineering science courses that occupy the middle two years of a program most often utilize traditional lecture-based pedagogy and simplified close-ended textbook problems, which do not typically allow students to engage in the kind of decision-making that is essential to developing engineering judgement. This work proposes a teaching pedagogy intended to provide students with context for how engineering science concepts are implemented in authentic engineering practice and how engineering judgement is essential in that implementation. Moreover, this work will aim to employ another teaching pedagogy to provide a more holistic contextualization of engineering practice by introducing students to the history of the profession. This pedagogy was implemented during the Fall 2023 semester in a required seminar course for mechanical engineering sophomores at [name of university]. This work will advance the field of engineering education research by studying how students’ perceptions of engineering practice develop as they progress through a program, and how these educational activities can shape that progress and/or reframe their beliefs about their education and training. Semi-structured interviews will reveal how students’ perceptions of engineering practice change longitudinally and whether the aforementioned educational activities influence that trajectory. In addition, a larger group of students will be invited to participate in surveys, which will enable drawing inferences from a broader sample about intention to persist as well as baseline levels of familiarity with engineering in general.

Citation
Format

Bell, M. C., & Johnson, A. W., & Vitali, R. (2024, June), Board 231: Contextualizing Engineering Science Courses by Teaching History and Judgement Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--46801

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Engineering programs have long struggled with balancing curricula that are rigorous enough to prepare graduates to be capable practitioners and educational experiences that are engaging enough to retain undergraduate students. Data show a little more than half of students who start in a program leave after the first or second year, and that many of those students came to dislike engineering or lost interest in the profession. These findings suggest a mismatch between what incoming students think engineering practice is and what message they receive during their first two years of a program. This work will aim to understand how contextualization of what it means to practice engineering can improve the intentions of students, particularly those identifying as underrepresented minorities and women, to persist in a discipline that historically struggles to retain them. With this understanding, changes can be made to undergraduate engineering education to better retain students. In addition, this work will contribute new knowledge about students’ understanding of what it means to practice engineering and how that understanding changes with exposure to different types of contextualization (e.g., historical or technical). It will also contribute new knowledge about how undergraduate students associate engineering science and judgement with engineering practice, particularly with respect to how these facets of engineering practice are directly in service to design.

Engineering science courses that occupy the middle two years of a program most often utilize traditional lecture-based pedagogy and simplified close-ended textbook problems, which do not typically allow students to engage in the kind of decision-making that is essential to developing engineering judgement. This work proposes a teaching pedagogy intended to provide students with context for how engineering science concepts are implemented in authentic engineering practice and how engineering judgement is essential in that implementation. Moreover, this work will aim to employ another teaching pedagogy to provide a more holistic contextualization of engineering practice by introducing students to the history of the profession. This pedagogy was implemented during the Fall 2023 semester in a required seminar course for mechanical engineering sophomores at [name of university]. This work will advance the field of engineering education research by studying how students’ perceptions of engineering practice develop as they progress through a program, and how these educational activities can shape that progress and/or reframe their beliefs about their education and training. Semi-structured interviews will reveal how students’ perceptions of engineering practice change longitudinally and whether the aforementioned educational activities influence that trajectory. In addition, a larger group of students will be invited to participate in surveys, which will enable drawing inferences from a broader sample about intention to persist as well as baseline levels of familiarity with engineering in general.
AU  - Martell Cartiaire Bell
AU  - Aaron W. Johnson
AU  - Rachel Vitali
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 231: Contextualizing Engineering Science Courses by Teaching History and Judgement
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/46801
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--46801
ER  -