Kenny Feister, M., & Zoltowski, C. B., & Buzzanell, P. M., & Torres, D., & Oakes, W. C. (2015, June), Exploring the Social Processes of Ethics in  Student Engineering Design Teams  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/p.24080

\bibitem{asee_peer_24080}
  Kenny Feister, M., \& Zoltowski, C. B., \& Buzzanell, P. M., \& Torres, D., \& Oakes, W. C. (2015, June), \emph{Exploring the Social Processes of Ethics in  Student Engineering Design Teams}
  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington.
  10.18260/p.24080

Megan Kenny Feister, Carla B. Zoltowski, Patrice Marie Buzzanell, David Torres, and William C. Oakes.  "Exploring the Social Processes of Ethics in  Student Engineering Design Teams".  2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2015.  https://peer.asee.org/24080 Internet.  21 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_24080}
  Megan Kenny Feister, Carla B. Zoltowski, Patrice Marie Buzzanell, David Torres, and William C. Oakes.
  "Exploring the Social Processes of Ethics in  Student Engineering Design Teams".
  \emph{2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2015.
  https://peer.asee.org/24080 Internet.  21 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_24080
author = "Megan Kenny Feister, Carla B. Zoltowski, Patrice Marie Buzzanell, David Torres, and William C. Oakes"
title = "Exploring the Social Processes of Ethics in  Student Engineering Design Teams"
booktitle = "2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2015"
month = "June"
address = "Seattle, Washington"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/24080}
number = {10.18260/p.24080}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -                    The social design of engineering design work:        Linking social networks to communicative constitution of organizing                          in engineering design team work        Engineering and engineering design are increasingly recognized as a social activity(Bucciarelli, 2010), and require interaction and collaboration with diverse groups of people. Thisstudy proposes an innovative method for examining the team-based work done in engineeringeducation, including the process of design and the development and handling of issues such asteamwork, leadership, and decision-making that arise in project-based teams. While such issueshave become central in engineering education research, we still have much room for learning andimprovement. For example, while the development and pedagogy surrounding ethics hasbecome a prominent concern, it is still contested, often being taught through the use of casestudies and dilemma scenarios that students often struggle to believe or relate to (Lloyd &Busby, 2003) and failing to be recognized as an everyday occurrence (van de Poel & Verbeek,2006). Similarly, design thinking has been described as “the complex processes of inquiry andlearning that designers perform in a systems context, making decisions as they proceed, oftenworking collaboratively on teams in a social process, and ‘speaking’ several languages with eachother (and to themselves)” (Dym, Agogino, Eris, Frey, and Leifer, 2005), reflecting the complexsocial and communicative processes that need to be unraveled to offer a complete understanding.        This paper argues that decision-making and problem solving in design teams can beelucidated by a rigorous examination of the interaction structures that emerge throughout thedesign process and the ethical, leadership, and teamwork issues that arise throughout the courseof the engineering design process. Successful integration of these issues for team-based projectsneeds to be a serious concern for engineering education and requires a naturalistic look at designin practice, rather than reliance on hypotheticals and disasters. To understand these issues, theauthors combine social network analysis with structuration theory to examine the structure ofproject teams while also examining the institutional and contextual factors that contribute toteam climate, and to the development of group norms that affect team interactions.        Social network analysis (SNA) is a type of analysis that enables researchers to examinethe relationships among members of a given system or group. The network analysis approachenables researchers to create and analyze the informal communicative patterns and networks thatunderlie the formal organizational structure (Monge & Eisenberg, 1987). In contrast to the“organizational chart” that might show how communication is supposed to flow within theorganization, network analysis shows the actual communication and relationships that emergewithin the organization or team. Structuration accounts for the influence of institutional factorssuch as rules or norms of what is “acceptable” or “appropriate” behavior within a specific socialcontext, while also affording the actors within that context agency to enact influence on thosestructural influences. This theory envisions a reflexive relationship in which institutionalinfluences constrain and enable individual activity, while individual activity reinforces thesestructures and shapes them over time. Network analysis provides a concrete visualization of thisrelationship, showing the relational patterns of individuals to both identify local structuralproperties and utilize these properties to help predict and explain changes in the networkstructure (Whitbred et al., 2011). This approach enables us to examine the structure of projectteams while also examining the institutional and contextual factors that contribute to teamclimate, and to the development of group norms that affect team interactions.        As part of a larger study, this paper examines one project team’s interactions andperceptions of the design process as it relates to design-related decision-making and ethics byexamining data from the social network survey and limited interviews. Through this mixed-methods approach, we specifically probe how the informal communicative patterns that emergein a team surrounding technical and programmatic knowledge, ethical concerns, trust, andfriendship, relate to effective decision-making and conceptualization of design work, as well asteam members’ understanding of teamwork and leadership. In addition to presenting the resultsfrom this project, this paper describes an innovative method to examine design in engineeringeducation, and to provide detailed insight into the social processes underlying engineeringdesign.
AU  - Megan Kenny Feister
AU  - Carla B. Zoltowski
AU  - Patrice Marie Buzzanell
AU  - David Torres
AU  - William C. Oakes
CY  - Seattle, Washington
DA  - 2015/06/14
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Exploring the Social Processes of Ethics in  Student Engineering Design Teams
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/24080
DO  - 10.18260/p.24080
ER  -