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1. Immersive In‐Person Field Courses during the Pandemic: Minimizing Risk while Maximizing Efficacy

   https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1984  

   McLaughlin, John ( March 2022 , The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America)

   Field courses can provide formative experiences that also reduce disparities in STEM education. Impacts of the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic on‐field programs have been particularly severe, as many institutions shifted to online instruction. Some courses retained in‐person field experiences during the pandemic, and achieved high student learning outcomes. Here, I describe an approach to mitigating risk of COVID‐19 and other hazards during expedition‐based field courses, and student learning outcomes achieved using that approach. I applied comprehensive risk management to in‐person field expeditions that treated COVID‐19 as a hazard, requiring mitigation to maintain an acceptable low level of risk. Prior to broad availability of COVID‐19 vaccines, we applied a coronavirus‐free “bubble” strategy in which all participants passed a COVID‐19 PCR test immediately before departure and then avoided contact with people outside our bubble. In the future, vaccination can reduce risk further. We implemented additional safety factors to reduce risk of incidents that could require evacuation into medical facilities overloaded with COVID‐19 patients. The courses were successful: we had no infections or other serious incidents and student learning outcomes were transformative. The approach provides a model for conducting immersive field courses during the pandemic and beyond. Several field course networks are implementing similar approaches to restore valuable field education opportunities that have declined during the pandemic.

    

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2. Criteria Conundrum: Engineering Students’ Beliefs about the Role of Competing Criteria in Process Safety Judgements

   Ritz, C. ; Stransky, J. ; Bodnar, C. A. ; Dringenberg, E. ; Miskioglu, E. ( January 2023 , American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition)

   This research paper focuses on comparing engineering students’ beliefs and behaviors related to making process safety judgements. Despite emphasis on process safety education, serious health and safety accidents in the chemical process industry continue to occur. Investigations of major incidents have reported that, in many cases, tension caused by the need to balance several competing criteria was the culprit. While there have been substantial improvements in process safety education, most efforts have focused on preventing incidents through safer design, while few have focused on making process safety judgements in situations that have competing criteria. This pilot study investigates (1) what are engineering students’ beliefs about how they would approach process safety judgements with competing criteria? and (2) how do students react to the process of comparing their beliefs and behaviors in process safety judgements? We interviewed three chemical engineering students to determine their beliefs about making judgements in process safety contexts with competing criteria. Next, the students played through a digital process safety game, Contents Under Pressure (CUP). In CUP, students make process safety judgements in a digital chemical plant setting, and the judgements they encounter include a variety of criteria juxtapositions. Upon completing CUP, students were asked to reflect on their criteria priorities as they believed they played CUP through an online survey. GAP Profiles were generated as a way to directly compare initial beliefs, gameplay, and reflection criteria priorities. Finally, students reconciled differences between their beliefs and behaviors through a semi-structured interview, prompting students to think about the cause of the observed differences. In the initial beliefs interviews, we identified themes tied to prioritization of competing criteria. Some students rationalized their prioritizations by aligning them with their perceived priorities of the company, while others overcomplicated proposed hypotheticals in an attempt to find an optimized outcome. None of the participants could understand the link between process safety judgements and relationships, so they tended to devalue this criterion in their prioritizations. After playing CUP, the students communicated a better awareness of how relationships influence process safety judgements. Following gameplay, all participants stated that in-game feedback was critical to the ways in which they made judgements during CUP. Some participants indicated that their behaviors in CUP were more representative of the way they would approach process safety judgements in real life than their responses in the initial interview. This result may suggest that students have difficulty accurately predicting how they will apply process safety criteria in judgements without practicing these priorities in context. Results of this pilot study indicate that using a game-based approach to practice judgements with competing criteria gives students an opportunity to gain awareness about their approaches to process safety judgements and any differences that exist with their formulated beliefs. 

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3. Criteria Conundrum: Engineering Students’ Beliefs about the Role of Competing Criteria in Process Safety Judgements.

   Ritz, C. ; Stransky, J. ; Bodnar, C.A. ; Dringenberg, E. ; Miskioglu, E. ( January 2023 , ASEE annual conference exposition proceedings)

   This research paper focuses on comparing engineering students’ beliefs and behaviors related to making process safety judgements. Despite emphasis on process safety education, serious health and safety accidents in the chemical process industry continue to occur. Investigations of major incidents have reported that, in many cases, tension caused by the need to balance several competing criteria was the culprit. While there have been substantial improvements in process safety education, most efforts have focused on preventing incidents through safer design, while few have focused on making process safety judgements in situations that have competing criteria. This pilot study investigates (1) what are engineering students’ beliefs about how they would approach process safety judgements with competing criteria? and (2) what are students’ responses to differences between their beliefs and behaviors in process safety judgements with competing criteria? We interviewed three chemical engineering students to determine their beliefs about making judgements in process safety contexts with competing criteria. Next, the students played through a digital process safety game, Contents Under Pressure (CUP). In CUP, students make process safety judgements in a digital chemical plant setting, and the judgements they encounter include a variety of criteria juxtapositions. Upon completing CUP, students were asked to reflect on their criteria priorities as they believed they played CUP through an online survey. GAP Profiles were generated as a way to directly compare initial beliefs, gameplay, and reflection criteria priorities. Finally, students reconciled differences between their beliefs and behaviors through a semi-structured interview, prompting students to think about the cause of the observed differences. In the initial beliefs interviews, we identified themes tied to prioritization of competing criteria. Some students rationalized their prioritizations by aligning them with their perceived priorities of the company, while others overcomplicated proposed hypotheticals in an attempt to find an optimized outcome. None of the participants could understand the link between process safety judgements and relationships, so they tended to devalue this criterion in their prioritizations. After playing CUP, the students communicated a better awareness of how relationships influence process safety judgements. Following gameplay, all participants stated that in-game feedback was critical to the ways in which they made judgements during CUP. Some participants indicated that their behaviors in CUP were more representative of the way they would approach process safety judgements in real life than their responses in the initial interview. This result may suggest that students have difficulty accurately predicting how they will apply process safety criteria in judgements without practicing these priorities in context. Results of this pilot study indicate that using a game-based approach to practice judgements with competing criteria gives students an opportunity to gain awareness about their approaches to process safety judgements and any differences that exist with their formulated beliefs. 

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4. Criteria Conundrum: Engineering Students’ Beliefs about the Role of Competing Criteria in Process Safety Judgements

   Ritz, C. ; Stransky, J. ; Bodnar, C.A. ; Dringenberg, E. ; Miskioglu, E. ( January 2023 , ASEE annual conference exposition proceedings)

   This research paper focuses on comparing engineering students’ beliefs and behaviors related to making process safety judgements. Despite emphasis on process safety education, serious health and safety accidents in the chemical process industry continue to occur. Investigations of major incidents have reported that, in many cases, tension caused by the need to balance several competing criteria was the culprit. While there have been substantial improvements in process safety education, most efforts have focused on preventing incidents through safer design, while few have focused on making process safety judgements in situations that have competing criteria. This pilot study investigates (1) what are engineering students’ beliefs about how they would approach process safety judgements with competing criteria? and (2) what are students’ responses to differences between their beliefs and behaviors in process safety judgements with competing criteria? We interviewed three chemical engineering students to determine their beliefs about making judgements in process safety contexts with competing criteria. Next, the students played through a digital process safety game, Contents Under Pressure (CUP). In CUP, students make process safety judgements in a digital chemical plant setting, and the judgements they encounter include a variety of criteria juxtapositions. Upon completing CUP, students were asked to reflect on their criteria priorities as they believed they played CUP through an online survey. GAP Profiles were generated as a way to directly compare initial beliefs, gameplay, and reflection criteria priorities. Finally, students reconciled differences between their beliefs and behaviors through a semi-structured interview, prompting students to think about the cause of the observed differences. In the initial beliefs interviews, we identified themes tied to prioritization of competing criteria. Some students rationalized their prioritizations by aligning them with their perceived priorities of the company, while others overcomplicated proposed hypotheticals in an attempt to find an optimized outcome. None of the participants could understand the link between process safety judgements and relationships, so they tended to devalue this criterion in their prioritizations. After playing CUP, the students communicated a better awareness of how relationships influence process safety judgements. Following gameplay, all participants stated that in-game feedback was critical to the ways in which they made judgements during CUP. Some participants indicated that their behaviors in CUP were more representative of the way they would approach process safety judgements in real life than their responses in the initial interview. This result may suggest that students have difficulty accurately predicting how they will apply process safety criteria in judgements without practicing these priorities in context. Results of this pilot study indicate that using a game-based approach to practice judgements with competing criteria gives students an opportunity to gain awareness about their approaches to process safety judgements and any differences that exist with their formulated beliefs. 

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5. Impact of Immersive Training on Senior Chemical Engineering Students' Prioritization of Process Safety Decision Criteria

   Stransky, J. ( July 2021 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Process safety is becoming a greater focus of chemical plant design and operation due to the number of incidents involving dangerous chemical accidents. Since its creation nearly 20 years ago, the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has investigated 130 safety incidents and provided over 800 safety recommendations to operating chemical facilities. Following a gas well blowout in 2018, the CSB gave a recommendation to the American Petroleum Institute (API) to establish recommended practice on alarm management. Similarly, in 2017, the CSB gave a recommendation to Arkema Inc. to update their emergency response training following a hurricane that caused a fire at one of their manufacturing sites. Many times, CSB-led investigations resulted in new regulations and standards that are enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These critical recommendations positively impact not only the plant workers but also the surrounding community and the environment. While these safety measures enhance industrial safety culture, it is important that process safety also be integrated into university-level engineering curricula to promote safety culture while future engineers are still developing. Integrating process safety into the curriculum prepares students by familiarizing them with the difficult decisions they will be required to make in professional practice. ABET, the engineering program accreditation body, acknowledges the value of early, appropriate training within their program guidelines “Criteria for Chemical Engineering Curriculum” which states that recognition and assessment of the hazards associated with chemical processes must be included in the curriculum for program accreditation. Based on this requirement, many institutions have taken the approach to integrate process safety into their curriculum using video case studies, adding entire courses to cover hazard identification, and including safety lectures in design courses. A common theme missing from these methods is instruction on how to approach, recognize, and navigate decisions within a process safety context; a lack of this situational awareness was noted as a key element in industrial process safety incidents. Understanding how students approach process safety decisions is important for developing teaching methods and curriculum that will better prepare them for professional practice. As part of this study, we will measure how students rank criteria associated with process safety decisions, and how these prioritizations change after exposure to a process safety decision making intervention. Through this work, we hope to determine how process safety curriculum may be improved to help better prepare students for process safety decisions within industry. 

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