Educating Future Engineers: Student Perceptions of the Societal Linkages of Innovation Opportunities

Sine Celik; Senni Kirjavainen; Tua A. Björklund

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Conference: 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual On line
Publication Date: June 22, 2020
Start Date: June 22, 2020
End Date: June 26, 2021
Conference Session: ENT Division Technical Session: Creativity and Innovation
Tagged Division: Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation
Page Count: 26
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--34490
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/34490
Download Count: 693

Paper Authors

biography

Sine Celik Aalto University

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Sine Celik is a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University Design Factory. Currently working on innovation networks, creative ecosystems and community dynamics in relation to these. Holds a PhD in Industrial Design Engineering from TU Delft. Sine is also an architect.

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biography

Senni Kirjavainen Aalto University

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Senni Kirjavainen is a researcher Aalto University's Design Factory with a focus on creativity and design in the context or product development. Senni is also an industrial designer and is pursuing a PhD in product development.

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biography

Tua A. Björklund Aalto University Design Factory

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Tua Björklund is a professor of practice at Aalto University and one of the co-founders of Design Factory, an interdisciplinary co-creation platform. She is particularly interested in how to support translating ideas into action in engineering design in organisations, leading a multidisciplinary research group investigating proactive co-creation.

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Abstract

Engineering education traditionally emphasizes technological solutions that focus heavily on students’ technical skills. However, for innovations that create an impact, it is essential to link this technical knowledge to societal considerations. This paper describes a problem-centered approach towards introducing mechanical engineering students to sustainable, ethical and collaborative innovation, through an analysis of student work and feedback gathered from a ten-week long pilot conducted as part of a compulsory, Master’s level, academic year-long Mechanical Engineering course.

During the pilot, student groups worked on broadly phrased challenges derived from an ongoing EU project on developing societal applications for technology, choosing one of seven challenges ranging from changing rain patterns in cities to IoT technologies and data security. Teaching was divided into three interconnected sections on sustainable development, technology and ethics, and collaboration. Each of these sections combined theory with practice through panels with experts from academia and industry and hands-on workshops, encouraging the students to consider multidimensional aspects of their chosen challenge and its consequences for the entire system it links to. A variety of design thinking methods were introduced for exploring the challenges holistically to define and reframe the problem at hand, identify ethical dilemmas and understand the needs of stakeholders for successful collaboration.

At the end of each section, students were asked to reflect on their incorporation of societal considerations to the challenge they were working on in the form of group reports. At the end of the pilot, the students presented a project proposal of a direction for solving their challenge. This paper looks at how engineering students operationalize multilayered aspects of societal issues through these reports and project proposals for 19 teams that completed both the first and last group assignment.

The results of this study suggest that introducing creative, holistic, problem-solving skills into engineering education in a hands-on manner creates numerous advantages for supporting the understanding of systemic, innovative solutions that have a societal impact and go beyond solving the technological problem. Nine sub-themes to sustainability, ethics and collaboration were identified from the deliverables; environment, economy and culture, fairness, privacy and responsibility, stakeholders, diversity and co-creation. The students’ ability to identify and apply these nine measured sub-themes of sustainability, ethics, and collaboration improved statistically significantly in seven out of nine themes. The results of this study encourage linking engineering courses to societal issues through minor interventions, in order to encourage engineering students to apply a broader range of considerations in scoping innovation projects. Additionally, the coding scheme developed here can be used to gauge the level of consideration for societal issues given by students in their assignments, enabling more targeted interventions in a resource-light manner. Taken together, the results encourage iteratively developing evidence-based instruction for responsible engineering.

Citation
Format

Celik, S., & Kirjavainen, S., & Björklund, T. A. (2020, June), Educating Future Engineers: Student Perceptions of the Societal Linkages of Innovation Opportunities Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34490

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Engineering education traditionally emphasizes technological solutions that focus heavily on students’ technical skills. However, for innovations that create an impact, it is essential to link this technical knowledge to societal considerations. This paper describes a problem-centered approach towards introducing mechanical engineering students to sustainable, ethical and collaborative innovation, through an analysis of student work and feedback gathered from a ten-week long pilot conducted as part of  a compulsory, Master’s level, academic year-long Mechanical Engineering course.

During the pilot, student groups worked on broadly phrased challenges derived from an ongoing EU project on developing societal applications for technology, choosing one of seven challenges ranging from changing rain patterns in cities to IoT technologies and data security. Teaching was divided into three interconnected sections on sustainable development, technology and ethics, and collaboration. Each of these sections combined theory with practice through panels with experts from academia and industry and hands-on workshops, encouraging the students to consider multidimensional aspects of their chosen challenge and its consequences for the entire system it links to. A variety of design thinking methods were introduced for exploring the challenges holistically to define and reframe the problem at hand, identify ethical dilemmas and understand the needs of stakeholders for successful collaboration. 

At the end of each section, students were asked to reflect on their incorporation of societal considerations to the challenge they were working on in the form of group reports. At the end of the pilot, the students presented a project proposal of a direction for solving their challenge. This paper looks at how engineering students operationalize multilayered aspects of societal issues through these reports and project proposals for 19 teams that completed both the first and last group assignment.

The results of  this study suggest that introducing creative, holistic, problem-solving skills into engineering education in a hands-on manner creates numerous advantages for supporting the understanding of systemic, innovative solutions that have a societal impact and go beyond solving the technological problem. Nine sub-themes to sustainability, ethics and collaboration were identified from the deliverables; environment, economy and culture, fairness, privacy and responsibility, stakeholders, diversity and co-creation. The students’ ability to identify and apply these nine measured sub-themes of sustainability, ethics, and collaboration improved statistically significantly in seven out of nine themes. The results of this study encourage linking engineering courses to societal issues through minor interventions, in order to encourage engineering students to apply a broader range of considerations in scoping innovation projects. Additionally, the coding scheme developed here can be used to gauge the level of consideration for societal issues given by students in their assignments, enabling more targeted interventions in a resource-light manner. Taken together, the results encourage iteratively developing evidence-based instruction for responsible engineering.

AU  - Sine Celik
AU  - Senni Kirjavainen
AU  - Tua A. Björklund
CY  - Virtual On line 
DA  - 2020/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Educating Future Engineers: Student Perceptions of the Societal Linkages of Innovation Opportunities
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/34490
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--34490
ER  -