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The NSF Research Initiation in Engineering Formation (RIEF) project described in this paper is grounded in our understanding of the realities of professional practices. Engineers must be able to construct and participate in sound judgments that balance complex, competing objectives or constraints, and they must simultaneously produce recognizable engineering identities that enable them to articulate and justify those judgments to others through a variety of communication mechanisms, including writing. Consequently, the objective of our project isto investigate the ways students produce engineer identities in written artifacts through which they expect to be recognized as engineers. We divided the project into two phases: Phase 1 involving semi-structured interviews designed to conceptualize the engineering judgment process using thematic analysis; Phase 2 involving the design and dissemination of pedagogical approaches based on our results. This paper primarily reports the preliminary results of Phase 1. This project is an instrumental case study using semi-structured artifact-based interviews as the primary data source. Our semi-structured interviews are designed to focus on the ways students construct engineering judgments and produce engineer identities through their written projects. Course documents (including assignments and related material) as well as reflective field notes and analytic memos are used to provide additional contextual data. The data from this project provide a foundation for an understanding of engineering judgment that conceptualizes students as decision makers who participate in acts of engineering judgment. These judgments may be constructed individually, or constructed jointly through the interactions of multiple individuals working in teams to navigate ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflicting objectives. Moreover, our project situates engineering judgment as an interplay among several interdependent cognitive processes, and shows how the theories of identity as in interpretive lens, academic literacies, identity production, and naturalistic decision making can help to explain how undergraduate students come to view themselves as professionals capable of participating in acts of engineering judgment.
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Lessons Learned Manual: Applying Geospatial and Engineering Technology (AGET)
The document includes a summary of the AGET project background including the process of forming the Executive Advisory Board. In addition, a diagram of the curriculum structure is provided to demonstrate use of modular and stackable credentials. Semi-structured interviews were used to identify and classify lessons learned and results from these semi-structured interviews with AGET team members and project collaborators are provided. Lastly, teaching resources include samples of course syllabi, surveying and geomatics educational materials, and GIS lab exercises.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1700568
- PAR ID:
- 10402442
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- NSF AGET Lessons Learned
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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