Improving students' ability to generate solutions to engineering problems through observing nature

John Carrell; Tirhas Hailu

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Conference: 2024 ASEE-GSW
Location: Canyon, Texas
Publication Date: March 10, 2024
Start Date: March 10, 2024
End Date: March 12, 2024
Page Count: 8
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--45386
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/45386
Download Count: 11

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Paper Authors

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John Carrell Texas Tech University

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John Carrell is Assistant Professor of Engineering at the Texas Tech University Honors College. He received his doctorate in industrial engineering from Texas Tech University and his research focuses on enriching engineering education through the humanities.

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biography

Tirhas Hailu Texas Tech University

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Dr. Hailu currently is a Lecturer in the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering at Texas Tech University. Her research interests include Environmental Microbiology, Microbial Ecology, Bioinspired/ Biomimicry and Engineering Education. She has a huge interest in Engineering Education with a focus on mindset intervention and critical thinking development in undergraduate Engineering students.

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Abstract

Engineers are increasingly looking for inspiration in the design of structures, processes, and systems to solve problems. Bioinspired design uses nature as the influence and inspiration for creating and improving designs. Through its application, bioinspired design has a long and expanding influence on human technology. As a reflection of this impact, more and more engineering colleges are incorporating bioinspired design into their curricula. Starting in the fall of 2020, the Texas Tech University (TTU) Whitacre College of Engineering revamped its first-year engineering curriculum by including ENGR 1320-Bioinspired Design. ENGR 1320 is taught by a biology professor and designed to help students better understand the natural systems and processes that lead to adaptive solutions and give them a foundation for applying biomimicry across engineering disciplines. Within this understanding, students learn to evaluate, problem-solve, and create in an interdisciplinary setting that integrates biology with engineering. Interdisciplinary courses within engineering and STEM curricula have often been boons to increasing students' critical thinking skills and creativity. From this standpoint, an honors section of ENGR 1320 was analyzed during the fall of 2023. This analysis will discuss class observations made by the instructor and an in-class observer, student reflections following the course, and linguistic analysis of student work assignments. Per observations and student reflections, at the beginning of the semester, most students were unaware of the concept of bringing Biology and Engineering together, but later in the semester, their attitude toward nature for potential design solutions changed. This change lends itself to more nature-based, sustainable, and creative solutions. Linguistic analysis of student work assignments is a work in progress. Linguistic, Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-22) will be used to show the changes in summary measures of analytical thinking, clique, authenticity, and emotional tone for student work assignments. Along with these summary measures, LIWC-22 and Creativity Keyword Dictionaries will be used to baseline the creativity of the student work assignments. Based on the analytical thinking framework developed in ENGR 1320 that promotes logical, engineering-based thinking and biological thinking, we believe results for the linguistic analysis will show gains in analytical thinking and creativity based on summary factors. These anticipated results would align with the observations seen in class and student reflections.

Citation
Format

Carrell, J., & Hailu, T. (2024, March), Improving students' ability to generate solutions to engineering problems through observing nature Paper presented at 2024 ASEE-GSW, Canyon, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--45386

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Engineers are increasingly looking for inspiration in the design of structures, processes, and systems to solve problems. Bioinspired design uses nature as the influence and inspiration for creating and improving designs. Through its application, bioinspired design has a long and expanding influence on human technology. As a reflection of this impact, more and more engineering colleges are incorporating bioinspired design into their curricula. Starting in the fall of 2020, the Texas Tech University (TTU) Whitacre College of Engineering revamped its first-year engineering curriculum by including ENGR 1320-Bioinspired Design. ENGR 1320 is taught by a biology professor and designed to help students better understand the natural systems and processes that lead to adaptive solutions and give them a foundation for applying biomimicry across engineering disciplines. Within this understanding, students learn to evaluate, problem-solve, and create in an interdisciplinary setting that integrates biology with engineering. Interdisciplinary courses within engineering and STEM curricula have often been boons to increasing students&#39; critical thinking skills and creativity. From this standpoint, an honors section of ENGR 1320 was analyzed during the fall of 2023. This analysis will discuss class observations made by the instructor and an in-class observer, student reflections following the course, and linguistic analysis of student work assignments. Per observations and student reflections, at the beginning of the semester, most students were unaware of the concept of bringing Biology and Engineering together, but later in the semester, their attitude toward nature for potential design solutions changed. This change lends itself to more nature-based, sustainable, and creative solutions. Linguistic analysis of student work assignments is a work in progress. Linguistic, Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-22) will be used to show the changes in summary measures of analytical thinking, clique, authenticity, and emotional tone for student work assignments. Along with these summary measures, LIWC-22 and Creativity Keyword Dictionaries will be used to baseline the creativity of the student work assignments. Based on the analytical thinking framework developed in ENGR 1320 that promotes logical, engineering-based thinking and biological thinking, we believe results for the linguistic analysis will show gains in analytical thinking and creativity based on summary factors. These anticipated results would align with the observations seen in class and student reflections.
AU  - John Carrell
AU  - Tirhas Hailu
CY  - Canyon, Texas
DA  - 2024/03/10
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Improving students' ability to generate solutions to engineering problems through observing nature
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/45386
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--45386
ER  -