Engagement in Practice: Socio-technical Project-based Learning Model in a Freshman Engineering Design Course
- Conference
- Location
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Salt Lake City, Utah
- Publication Date
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June 23, 2018
- Start Date
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June 23, 2018
- End Date
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July 27, 2018
- Conference Session
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Engagement in Practice: Creating a Robust Infrastructure for Community Engagement
- Tagged Division
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Community Engagement Division
- Page Count
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13
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--30390
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/30390
- Download Count
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390
Paper Authors
Raghu Pucha Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Raghu Pucha is a Senior Lecturer at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, in the area of CAD/CAE and Manufacturing. Dr. Pucha teaches computer graphics and design courses at Georgia Tech., and conducts research in the area of developing computational tools for the design, analysis and manufacturing of advanced materials and systems. Dr. Pucha has three provisional U.S. patents and co-authored over 60 research papers. He is honored with Undergraduate Educator Award in 2012 and Geoffrey G. Eichholz Faculty Teaching Award in 2015 from the Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Georgia Tech.
Carol J Thurman Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Carol Thurman serves as the Academic Assessment Manager for Georgia Tech’s Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain. She holds a doctorate in Educational Policy Studies with a concentration in Research, Measurement, and Statistics. Dr. Thurman's professional experience includes higher education academic and program assessment, program evaluation, project management, teaching K-12 both in the U.S. and internationally, teaching university research and statistics courses, and serving as a K-12 school district research specialist. Dr. Thurman’s research interests include transdisciplinary research approaches to understanding and addressing sustainability social issues that reside in the complex space.
Ruth Yow Georgia Institute of Technology
Ruthie Yow is the Service Learning and Partnerships Specialist at Georgia Tech's Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain.
Connor Rylan Meeds
Connor Meeds is a mechanical engineering and business student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Embarking his research under the guidance of Dr. Pucha within his first year at Tech, Connor has developed multiple case studies with a focus on bringing sustainable engineering methods into classrooms. He aims to develop an efficient method to transform student projects into applicable case studies for eventual real-world application. Outside of the normal engineering curriculum, Connor is an exceptionally motivated entrepreneur in the start-up circle. Bringing up two self-made businesses and working his off-hours at a web-design agency start-up, Connor has high ambitions to bring new ideas into the world.
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Jennifer Hirsch Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Jennifer Hirsch is an applied anthropologist specializing in sustainability, cultural diversity, collaborative governance, community development, networks, and experiential education. She is recognized nationally for fostering grassroots participation in sustainability and climate action, using methods from visual and environmental anthropology, popular education, asset-based community development, participatory facilitation, and museum education. Since August 2015, she has been the inaugural Director of the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Serve-Learn-Sustain is a campus-wide academic initiative launched in January, 2016 to prepare students to use their disciplinary expertise to address the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges in ways that advance community well-being and create thriving natural systems. Dr. Hirsch is Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech and serves on the faculty of The Asset-Based Community Development Institute hosted by DePaul University.
Abstract
Serve-Learn-Sustain (SLS) is an Institutional effort to equip our university students to learn and serve around the theme “creating sustainable communities” through engagement with content and context. This initiative was formally began in 2016 at our university as part of Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), as a key component to its reaffirmation of accreditation.This work is part of ongoing SLS efforts through classroom, co-curricular, and real-world learning- both on campus and off- enabling students to contribute to the task of "creating sustainable communities".
This paper presents ongoing activities that bring social justice and sustainability into the classroom through socio-technical project-based learning in a freshman engineering design course. Design based activities that incorporate social justice and sustainability are engaged by both individual and team projects in these courses. The content of the paper includes (i) a description of pedagogical approaches to socio-technical learning, (ii) a database of socio-technical projects for engineering courses, (iii) strategies and challenges for implementation and assessment of socio-technical project activities, (iv) data analysis on student reflection, pre and post-survey data analysis (v) end of semester student comments (open coding) analysis, (vi) learning outcomes and assessment tools, and (vii) lessons learned.
References: 1. Lucena, J., Engineering Education for Social Justice: Critical Explorations and Opportunities, ed. J. Lucena. Jun 5, 2013: Springer Netherlands. 2. Chandrasekharan, S. and M. Tovey, Sum, quorum, tether: Design principles underlying external representations that promote sustainability. Pragmatics & Cognition, 2012. 20(3): p. 447-482.
Pucha, R., & Thurman, C. J., & Yow, R., & Meeds, C. R., & Hirsch, J. (2018, June), Engagement in Practice: Socio-technical Project-based Learning Model in a Freshman Engineering Design Course Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30390
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