Instructor and Graduate Student Perspectives: Is Empathy a Needed Design Skill for Future Engineers?
- Conference
- Location
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Portland, Oregon
- Publication Date
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June 23, 2024
- Start Date
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June 23, 2024
- End Date
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July 12, 2024
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED)
- Tagged Topic
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Diversity
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/47639
Paper Authors
Jennifer Howcroft University of Waterloo
Jennifer Howcroft is a Continuing Lecturer in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Her pedagogical research focuses on engineering design, holistic engineering education, stakeholder interactions, and empathy in engineering education.
Kate Mercer
University of Waterloo
orcid.org/0000-0001-6958-3396
Kate Mercer is an engineering liaison librarian, and is an adjunct and sessional instructor for Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Kate's main duties include designing and developing events and programs to better include stakeholders in engineering spaces, as well as providing instruction and research services to students, faculty and staff. Kate's research focuses are in how information gets shared amongst different populations, as well as engineering pedagogical research around stakeholder inclusion and empathy in engineering.
Abstract
Title options
Instructor and Graduate Student perspectives: Is Empathy a Needed Design Skill for Future Engineers?
Abstract
Empathy has been described as a core skill for the future of engineering [1]. Empathy is particularly important in engineering design where it has been shown to yield a deeper understanding of the problem space and users [2], [3], increase ideation creativity [4]–[6], and improve interpersonal collaborations [7]–[11]. However, there is limited awareness of key stakeholders’ perceptions of empathy as a core engineering skill, which is limited to three studies focusing on practicing engineers [7], [8] and faculty [7], [12]. One perspective that is currently missing is that of graduate students who often have a large amount of contact with undergraduate students in their roles as teaching assistants and sessional instructors. This paper presents graduate student (n = 36) perceptions on empathy as a professional skill and as a pedagogical area captured in a survey distributed to current graduate students (professional and research stream) within the Faculty of Engineering, [Anon]. These perceptions were compared to those of instructors (faculty and staff) first published in [12]. Statistical analyses were performed using a Mann Whitney U test for Likert Scale questions and Fisher’s exact test for binary questions. Graduate students identified empathy as a moderately to extremely important professional skill. However, the perceptions of the importance of teaching empathy ranged from not at all important to extremely important. This difference did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.080). These perceptions aligned with those of instructors (p > 0.803) and when combined the difference is significant (p = 0.0314). Graduate students older than 30 years placed greater importance on teaching empathy than their younger counterparts (p = 0.037). This could be due to industry experience that highlighted the importance of empathy and aligns with the perceptions of practicing engineers who identified empathy as an important intrapersonal and interpersonal skill that facilitated stronger engineering outcomes [7]. Future work will focus on a qualitative analysis of survey statements to better understand the broader context of graduate student perceptions and to further explore the differences between younger and older graduate students.
Word Count: 338
References
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[9] M. Alsager Alzayed, C. McComb, J. Menold, J. Huff, and S. R. Miller, “Are you feeling me? An exploration of empathy development in engineering design education,” Journal of Mechanical Design, pp. 1–57, Oct. 2020, doi: 10.1115/1.4048624.
[10] J. L. Hess and N. D. Fila, “The Development and Growth of Empathy Among Engineering Students,” in ASEE, New Orleans, Los Angeles: American Society for Engineering Education, 2016, p. 16281. Accessed: Feb. 18, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/12192
[11] X. Tang, “From 'Empathic Design’ to ’Empathic Engineering’: Toward a Genealogy of Empathy in Engineering Education,” presented at the 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2018, p. 22414.
[12] J. Howcroft and K. Mercer, “Where We Are: Understanding Instructor Perceptions of Empathy in Engineering Education,” Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), Nov. 2022, doi: 10.24908/pceea.vi.15913.
Howcroft, J., & Mercer, K. (2024, June), Instructor and Graduate Student Perspectives: Is Empathy a Needed Design Skill for Future Engineers? Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47639
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