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Teaching the Global, Economic, Environmental, and Societal Foundations of Engineering Design through Product Archaeology

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Conference

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Vancouver, BC

Publication Date

June 26, 2011

Start Date

June 26, 2011

End Date

June 29, 2011

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topic

NSF Grantees

Page Count

22

Page Numbers

22.1405.1 - 22.1405.22

DOI

10.18260/1-2--18983

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/18983

Download Count

509

Paper Authors

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Kemper Lewis University at Buffalo - SUNY

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Deborah A. Moore-Russo University at Buffalo, SUNY

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Omar M. Ashour Pennsylvania State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3775-6445

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Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He received his M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology in 2007 and 2005, respectively. He received his M.Eng. in industrial Engineering/Human Factors-Ergonomics from Pennsylvania State University in 2010. His research interests include decision making, health care engineering, and human factors. He is a member of IIE and JEA (Jordan Engineering Association).

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Timothy W. Simpson Pennsylvania State University, University Park

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Professor of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

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Gül E. Okudan Kremer Pennsylvania State University, University Park

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Gul Kremer is an Associate Professor of Engineering Design and Industrial Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. from University of Missouri-Rolla in Engineering Management and Systems Engineering. Her research interests include multi-criteria decision analysis methods applied to improvement of products and systems and enhancing creativity in engineering design settings. Her published work appears in journals such as Journal of Mechanical Design, Journal of Engineering Design, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Journal of Engineering Education, European Journal of Engineering Education and Technovation. She is a member of IIE, ASME, and ASEE. She is also a National Research Council-US AFRL Summer Faculty Fellow for the Human Effectiveness Directorate (2002-2004), an invited participant of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Frontiers in Engineering Education Symposium (2009), and a Fulbright Scholar to Ireland (2010).

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Xaver Neumeyer Northwestern University

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Ann F. McKenna Arizona State University, Polytechnic

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Ann McKenna is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering in the College of Technology and Innovation at Arizona State University (ASU). Prior to joining ASU she served as a program officer at the National Science Foundation in the Division of Undergraduate Education and was on the faculty of the Segal Design Institute and Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. Dr. McKenna’s research focuses on understanding the cognitive and social processes of design, design teaching and learning, the role of adaptive expertise in design and innovation, the impact and diffusion of education innovations, and teaching approaches of engineering faculty. Dr. McKenna received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.

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Wei Chen Northwestern University

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Abstract

Teaching the Global, Economic, Environmental, and Societal Foundations of Engineering Design through Product ArchaeologyAbstractMany engineering departments often struggle with meeting “the broad education necessary tounderstand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, andsocietal context” (Outcome h) required by ABET [1]. The already packed curricula provide fewopportunities to offer meaningful experiences to address this outcome, and most departmentsrelegate this requirement to an early cornerstone or later capstone design experience as a result,making these courses an ineffective “catch all” for many ABET requirements. Another commonresponse to provide a more global, socially sensitive context is to engage students in studyabroad experiences. While the number of study abroad students historically was increasing,current economic conditions have impacted the ability for students and universities to fund suchexperiences. The challenge is therefore obvious – how to provide opportunities for students toexperience global, social, economic, and environmental issues in engineering?We address these issues in innovative ways using the paradigm of product archaeology, definedas the process of reconstructing the lifecycle of a product – the customer requirements, designspecifications, and manufacturing processes used to produce it – to understand the decisions thatled to its development. By considering products as designed artifacts with a history rooted intheir development, we synthesize concepts from archaeology with advances in cyber-enhancedproduct dissection to implement new educational innovations that integrate global, economic,environmental, and societal concerns into engineering design-related courses using productarchaeology.The concept of product archaeology is not new; it was first introduced by Ulrich and Pearson [2]as a way to measure the design attributes that drive cost through analysis of the physical productsthemselves. Our view is much broader in the sense that product archaeology provides anopportunity to study not only the manufacturing cost (i.e., economic issues) of a product, but alsothe global and societal context that influenced its development. It also provides a context forstudying the environmental impact of a product by considering, for example, the energy andmaterial usage throughout the life cycle of the product. When implemented in an engineeringclassroom, product archaeology allows students to place themselves in the minds of designersduring the time a specific product was developed to try to re-create the global and localconditions that led to its development.In this paper, we present scalable learning materials, strategies, and educational innovations thatwe are implementing to develop students’ understanding of the broader context of engineering.We build upon a product dissection framework in [3] and develop materials that span all fourdissection stages. These stages map to the four primary phases of an archaeological explorationand to the four leaning modes from Kolb [4]: Dissection Stage Archaeology Phase Kolb’s Learning Stage Expose Preparation Reflective observation Inspire Excavation Concrete experience Inquire Evaluation Active experimentation Explore Explanation Abstract conceptualizationWe also present the assessment of our implementation of these materials, including comparingthe outcomes to the national Prototype to Production (P2P) study. These learning materialsprovide representative cross-cultural study experiences to address global, economic,environmental, social issues in developing engineering solutions. Product Archaeology Framework: We build upon a product dissection framework [3], providing scalable educational materials that can be implemented across an engineering curriculum.[1] Engineering Accreditation Commission, 1999, Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs. Baltimore, MD, ABET, http://www.abet.org/eac/eac.htm.[2] Ulrich, K. T. and Pearson, S., 1998, "Assessing the Importance of Design through Product Archaeology," Management Science, 44(3), 352-369.[3] Ogot, M., Kremer, G., Lamancusa, J. and Simpson, T. W., 2008, "Developing a Framework for Disassemble/Analyze/Assemble (DAA) Activities in Engineering Education," Journal of Design Research, 7(2), 120-135.[4] Kolb, D., 1984, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall.

Lewis, K., & Moore-Russo, D. A., & Ashour, O. M., & Simpson, T. W., & Okudan Kremer, G. E., & Neumeyer, X., & McKenna, A. F., & Chen, W. (2011, June), Teaching the Global, Economic, Environmental, and Societal Foundations of Engineering Design through Product Archaeology Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2--18983

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