Co-offering Engineering and Non-Engineering Courses on Faculty-led Trips to Foster Global Competence via Interdisciplinary Learning

Yanjun Yan; Gael Graham; Russell Sarwar Kabir

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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: Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI) Technical Session 2
Tagged Division: Multidisciplinary Engineering Division (MULTI)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 20
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--48468
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48468
Download Count: 47

Paper Authors

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Yanjun Yan Western Carolina University orcid.org/0000-0002-5152-6614

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Yanjun Yan is an Associate Professor in Engineering and Technology at Western Carolina University. Her research interests include engineering education, artificial intelligence, swarm robotics, and statistical signal processing.

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Gael Graham Western Carolina University

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Gael Graham has been a professor of history at Western Carolina University for over thirty years. Her teaching and research interests include education, Asian history, and global history. The joint ENGR 365-HIST 308 faculty-led travel course was her first experience with such classes and her first trip to Japan.

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Russell Sarwar Kabir Hiroshima University

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Russell Sarwar Kabir is Assistant Professor in the School of Education and Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University. Emphasizing student interactions, his educational research interests center on the development of materials, courses, and workshops that apply intercultural learning approaches to interdisciplinary science education.

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Abstract

ABET accreditation for engineering and technology programs expects that students consider and take professional responsibility for the impact of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors in engineering decisions. To address these objectives, the engineering professor, Dr. Yanjun Yan, taught three types of courses in the past: (1) an on-campus, first-year seminar course in project-based learning for engineering and technology students; (2) a faculty-led trip offering a single engineering course in 2018; and (3) multidisciplinary co-led faculty trips with a sports management professor in 2019 and a history professor, Dr. Gael Graham, in 2023 featuring one engineering and one humanities-based course on the same trip. During the 2023 trip, the students from Western Carolina University visited Hiroshima University and teamed up with a class of English-speaking Japanese students, led by Dr. Russell Kabir, to engage in group activities that culminated in an engineering design exercise. The entire workshop was a highlight for both groups. Research literature suggests a gap in the reporting of multidisciplinary trips and their pedagogical components. Therefore, we present a process evaluation of trip implementations to examine transferable best practices for researchers and faculty-led student practitioners. Students submitted journals and responded to an IRB-approved follow-up survey about their learning experiences. Reflective student feedback from both multidisciplinary trips indicated that engineering students deepened their understanding of chosen topics in consideration of global, cultural, and societal factors, and that the non-engineering students enjoyed the visits more than they expected and overcame initial fears about engineering-related coursework, discovering engineering practices in many aspects of their social lives. Overall, the students gave positive feedback about the multidisciplinary trips and demonstrated achievement of the learning outcomes. In the future, the authors plan to continue collaborations to further integrate the course modules and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of interdisciplinary instructional design practices.

Citation
Format

Yan, Y., & Graham, G., & Kabir, R. S. (2024, June), Co-offering Engineering and Non-Engineering Courses on Faculty-led Trips to Foster Global Competence via Interdisciplinary Learning Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--48468

TY - CPAPER
AB - ABET accreditation for engineering and technology programs expects that students consider and take professional responsibility for the impact of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors in engineering decisions. To address these objectives, the engineering professor, Dr. Yanjun Yan, taught three types of courses in the past: (1) an on-campus, first-year seminar course in project-based learning for engineering and technology students; (2) a faculty-led trip offering a single engineering course in 2018; and (3) multidisciplinary co-led faculty trips with a sports management professor in 2019 and a history professor, Dr. Gael Graham, in 2023 featuring one engineering and one humanities-based course on the same trip. During the 2023 trip, the students from Western Carolina University visited Hiroshima University and teamed up with a class of English-speaking Japanese students, led by Dr. Russell Kabir, to engage in group activities that culminated in an engineering design exercise. The entire workshop was a highlight for both groups. Research literature suggests a gap in the reporting of multidisciplinary trips and their pedagogical components. Therefore, we present a process evaluation of trip implementations to examine transferable best practices for researchers and faculty-led student practitioners. Students submitted journals and responded to an IRB-approved follow-up survey about their learning experiences. Reflective student feedback from both multidisciplinary trips indicated that engineering students deepened their understanding of chosen topics in consideration of global, cultural, and societal factors, and that the non-engineering students enjoyed the visits more than they expected and overcame initial fears about engineering-related coursework, discovering engineering practices in many aspects of their social lives. Overall, the students gave positive feedback about the multidisciplinary trips and demonstrated achievement of the learning outcomes. In the future, the authors plan to continue collaborations to further integrate the course modules and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of interdisciplinary instructional design practices.
AU - Yanjun Yan
AU - Gael Graham
AU - Russell Sarwar Kabir
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Co-offering Engineering and Non-Engineering Courses on Faculty-led Trips to Foster Global Competence via Interdisciplinary Learning
UR - https://peer.asee.org/48468
DO - 10.18260/1-2--48468
ER -