Faber, C. J., & Treffert, L. (2023, July), Making Patterns, Breaking Patterns – Applying ethnographic system mapping and analysis to support your group's culture  Paper presented at 14th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience (FYEE) Conference, University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--44845

\bibitem{asee_peer_44845}
  Faber, C. J., \& Treffert, L. (2023, July), \emph{Making Patterns, Breaking Patterns – Applying ethnographic system mapping and analysis to support your group's culture}
  Paper presented at 14th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience (FYEE) Conference, University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee.
  10.18260/1-2--44845

Courtney June Faber and Lorna Treffert.  "Making Patterns, Breaking Patterns – Applying ethnographic system mapping and analysis to support your group's culture".  14th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience (FYEE) Conference, University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, 2023, July.  ASEE Conferences, 2023.  https://peer.asee.org/44845 Internet.  12 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_44845}
  Courtney June Faber and Lorna Treffert.
  "Making Patterns, Breaking Patterns – Applying ethnographic system mapping and analysis to support your group's culture".
  \emph{14th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience (FYEE) Conference, University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, 2023, July}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2023.
  https://peer.asee.org/44845 Internet.  12 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_44845
author = "Courtney June Faber and Lorna Treffert"
title = "Making Patterns, Breaking Patterns – Applying ethnographic system mapping and analysis to support your group's culture"
booktitle = "14th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience (FYEE) Conference"
year = "2023"
month = "July"
address = "University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/44845}
number = {10.18260/1-2--44845}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Systems thinking is an essential skill for engineers in an increasingly complex world. Engineers must be able to see beyond applied science and mathematics to the social, political, economic, ethical, environmental, and even interpersonal forces acting on any problem in order to arrive at optimal solutions. As we endeavor to “expand student success” by helping them develop these skills, it seems only natural that engineering educators use the same paradigm to evaluate their own group, classroom, and departmental cultures. A system, as defined by renowned environmental scientist and systems scholar Donella H. Meadows is, “A set of things: people, cells, molecules, or whatever – interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time”. If we treat a group’s culture as a complex system, it becomes simple and effective to use tools from systems thinking (system maps and causal loops) and ethnography (descriptive observations, language identification, and domain analysis) to identify helpful and harmful patterns in a group’s function.  

In this workshop, we combine approaches from systems thinking and ethnography, namely Spradley’s Developmental Research Sequence for participant observation, to guide participants through the development of a culture map. Participants will select a group or social situation they are a part of to construct their own culture maps. These maps could represent a team, a classroom, a student society, a department, or a number of other scenarios relevant to educators of first-year engineering students. To construct these maps, participants will take into account the functions, goals, values, languages, activities, actors, and their interactions which constitute their group culture. Then participants will use these culture maps as a tool to identify areas of strength, weakness, and risk within their groups.  This workshop is applicable to any researcher or faculty member looking to reflect on and improve the culture of their team, classroom, department, or other chosen scenario. 
AU  - Courtney June Faber
AU  - Lorna Treffert
CY  - University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee
DA  - 2023/07/30
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Making Patterns, Breaking Patterns – Applying ethnographic system mapping and analysis to support your group's culture
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/44845
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--44845
ER  -