Work in Progress: Teaching Engineering Students to Self-Transform: Parallelisms between Product Innovation and Student Career Path Planning

Noe Vargas Hernandez; Javier Ortega; Arturo A. Fuentes; Eleazar Marquez

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: First-Year Programs Division WIPS 2: Students and Peer Mentors
Tagged Division: First-Year Programs Division (FYP)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48515

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Paper Authors

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Noe Vargas Hernandez The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley

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Noe Vargas Hernandez researches creativity and innovation in engineering design. He studies ideation methods, journaling, smartpens, and other methods and technology to aid designers improve their creativity levels. He also applies his research to the des

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Javier Ortega The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

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Dr. Javier A. Ortega is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). His research interests include Tribology, Lubrication, Biomaterials, Additive Manufacturing, and Engineering Education. Dr. Ortega has been involved in different research projects, including tribological and corrosion studies of surface-engineered biomaterials intended for hip joint replacements and developing vegetable-oil-based lubricants modified with nanoparticles as lubricant additives.

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Arturo A. Fuentes The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley

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Dr. Fuentes is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley where he has worked since 2001. He obtained his MS and Ph.D. degrees from the Rice University in 1997 and 1999, respectively. He currently serves as the Associate Chair for the Mechanical Engineering department at UTRGV. Among his research interests are engineering education, materials, stress and thermal finite element analysis, dynamic response analysis.

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Eleazar Marquez The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley

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Eleazar Marquez is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rice University.

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Abstract

Freshman engineering students can have a hard time transitioning to college. The freshman year is critical to the students’ academic success; in this year they learn basic skills and establish essential networks with other students, faculty, and resources. How can we help these freshman engineering students in this transition? We propose that freshman students can learn from the engineering design innovation process and apply it by analogy to the design of their academic pathways. There are multiple similarities between product innovation (i.e., technology) and the continuous academic challenges faced by the student. Engineers as designers and innovators have a vast and rich repository of techniques, tools, and approaches to develop new technologies, and a parallelism can be drawn between the design and innovation of a technology (e.g., redesign of a kitchen appliance), and the “design” of the students’ academic career pathways. During the Spring 2023 semester pilot implementation program, students in Intro to Mechanical Engineering (Course A) worked in teams in a 6-week product innovation project to redesign a simple kitchen appliance. Students learned basic concepts of the design process (e.g., creative exploration of solutions, decision making, multi objective evaluation, etc.). These same students concurrently took Course B (Learning Frameworks) where they worked on a 6-week project to define their career pathways. Both projects, product innovation and career pathways, followed the Challenge Based Instruction (CBI) approach. Periodically, participant students were shown how to use the lessons from product innovation by analogy and reflection in their career pathways project. The objective is for students to learn about the engineering design process and to apply it to their academic challenges by analogy. This prepares students with meta skills to help solve future problems in their academic path, and at each iteration, the students transform themselves, hence the use of the term self-transformation (also referred as “self-innovation”). Data collected from pre and post surveys will be presented to measure self-efficacy in engineering design, grit, motivation to learn, and STEM identity. Participant interviews provide a qualitative insight into the intervention. This project is funded by NSF award 2225247.

Citation
Format

Vargas Hernandez, N., & Ortega, J., & Fuentes, A. A., & Marquez, E. (2024, June), Work in Progress: Teaching Engineering Students to Self-Transform: Parallelisms between Product Innovation and Student Career Path Planning Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/48515

TY - CPAPER
AB - Freshman engineering students can have a hard time transitioning to college. The freshman year is critical to the students’ academic success; in this year they learn basic skills and establish essential networks with other students, faculty, and resources. How can we help these freshman engineering students in this transition? We propose that freshman students can learn from the engineering design innovation process and apply it by analogy to the design of their academic pathways. There are multiple similarities between product innovation (i.e., technology) and the continuous academic challenges faced by the student. Engineers as designers and innovators have a vast and rich repository of techniques, tools, and approaches to develop new technologies, and a parallelism can be drawn between the design and innovation of a technology (e.g., redesign of a kitchen appliance), and the “design” of the students’ academic career pathways. During the Spring 2023 semester pilot implementation program, students in Intro to Mechanical Engineering (Course A) worked in teams in a 6-week product innovation project to redesign a simple kitchen appliance. Students learned basic concepts of the design process (e.g., creative exploration of solutions, decision making, multi objective evaluation, etc.). These same students concurrently took Course B (Learning Frameworks) where they worked on a 6-week project to define their career pathways. Both projects, product innovation and career pathways, followed the Challenge Based Instruction (CBI) approach. Periodically, participant students were shown how to use the lessons from product innovation by analogy and reflection in their career pathways project. The objective is for students to learn about the engineering design process and to apply it to their academic challenges by analogy. This prepares students with meta skills to help solve future problems in their academic path, and at each iteration, the students transform themselves, hence the use of the term self-transformation (also referred as “self-innovation”). Data collected from pre and post surveys will be presented to measure self-efficacy in engineering design, grit, motivation to learn, and STEM identity. Participant interviews provide a qualitative insight into the intervention. This project is funded by NSF award 2225247.
AU - Noe Vargas Hernandez
AU - Javier Ortega
AU - Arturo A. Fuentes
AU - Eleazar Marquez
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Work in Progress: Teaching Engineering Students to Self-Transform: Parallelisms between Product Innovation and Student Career Path Planning
UR - https://peer.asee.org/48515
ER -