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Engineers are societal caregivers, solving problems for the betterment of society. However, both practitioners and students of engineering struggle to make concrete connections between empathy and their role as engineers. While general empathy scales exist, these scales do not describe empathy in specific engineering scenarios and other helping professions have unique empathy scales. To address both the empathetic nature of the engineering discipline and the lack of discipline specific empathy understanding, our research team has set out to create an engineering empathy scale (EES) funded by the National Science Foundation. Our research is guided by two research questions: How is empathy conceptually perceived, experienced, and shown in engineering specific situations? and Can engineering specific situations be used to measure empathy in engineering students, faculty, and practitioners? In this article, we present a systematic literature review of empathy in engineering and engineering education. Based on our selection criteria, we found 48 peer reviewed articles. Three themes of the articles emerged focusing on empathy in engineering: teaching and learning, design, and the role of empathy in engineering. We analyzed the articles to determine what areas of connection to the constructs of empathy and the current model of empathy in engineering are supported and which need more research to support. Lastly, we present our research plan to create and validate the EES, which will be aided by this literature review.
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Open Questions for Empathy-Building Interventions for Inclusive Software Development
Research has demonstrated that much of the software being created today is not sufficiently inclusive, unbiased and equitable. This has been found to frequently result in real-world implications such as prejudice against women or people of color, and software that is inaccessible to people with disabilities. Preliminary research has found that empathyfocused experiential educational activities can be beneficial for not only creating empathy, but in advancing the participant’s interest and knowledge retention over traditional non empathy-building interventions. This work will provide a foundational background on the current research in the intersection of experiential learning and empathy-building interventions in computing education. We will also present several important questions that still must be explored, thus serving as the foundation for future work in this area.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2145010
- PAR ID:
- 10459881
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Studies indicate that much of the software created today is not accessible to all users, indicating that developers don’t see the need to devote sufficient resources to creating accessible software. Compounding this problem, there is a lack of robust, easily adoptable educational accessibility material available to instructors for inclusion in their curricula. To address these issues, we have created five Accessibility Learning Labs (ALL) using an experiential learning structure. The labs are designed to educate and create awareness of accessibility needs in computing. The labs enable easy classroom integration by providing instructors with complete educational materials including lecture slides, activities, and quizzes. The labs are hosted on our servers and require only a browser to be utilized. To demonstrate the benefit of our material and the potential benefits of our experiential lab format with empathy-creating material, we conducted a study involving 276 students in ten sections of an introductory computing course. Our findings include: (I) The demonstrated potential of the proposed experiential learning format and labs are effective in motivating and educating students about the importance of accessibility (II) The labs are effective in informing students about foundational accessibility topics (III) Empathy-creating material is demonstrated to be a beneficial component in computing accessibility education, supporting students in placing a higher value on the importance of creating accessible software. Created labs and project materials are publicly available on the project website: http://all.rit.edumore » « less
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Abstract PurposeMeasurable results of efforts to teach empathy to engineering students are sparse and somewhat mixed. This study’s objectives are (O1) to understand how empathy training affects students’ professional development relative to other educational experiences, (O2) to track empathy changes due to training over multiple years, and (O3) to understand how and what students learn in empathy training environments. MethodsStudents in a multiple-semester empathy course completed surveys ranking the career development impact of the empathy program against other college experiences (O1), rating learning of specific empathy skills (O2), and ranking program elements’ impact on empathy skills (O3). Intervention and control groups completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and Jefferson Scale of Empathy at four time points (O2). Cohort students participated in post-program interviews (O1, O3). ResultsO1: Empathy training impacted career development more than several typical college activities but less than courses in major. O2: Students reported gains in four taught empathy skills. Cohort students showed significant increases in the Jefferson Scale while the control group did not. There were no significant changes in Interpersonal Reactivity Index scores. O3: interactive exercises had a significant effect on students’ learning all empathy skills while interactions with people with disabilities had significant effect on learning to encounter others with genuineness. Students valued building a safe in-class community facilitating their success in experiential environments. ConclusionsThis study highlights empathy skills’ importance in engineering students’ development, shows gains in empathy with training, and uncovers key factors in students’ learning experience that can be incorporated into engineering curricula.more » « less
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Abstract Caregivers who are higher in dispositional empathy tend to have children with better developmental outcomes; however, few studies have considered the role of child‐directed (i.e., “parental”) empathy, which may be relevant for the caregiver–child relationship. We hypothesized that mothers’ parental empathy during their child's infancy will be a stronger predictor of their child's social‐emotional functioning as a toddler than will mothers’ dispositional empathy. We further explored whether parental and dispositional empathy have shared or distinct patterns of neural activation during a social‐cognitive movie‐watching task. In 118 mother–infant dyads, greater parental empathy assessed when infants were 6 months old was associated with more social‐emotional competencies and fewer problems in the children 1 year later, even after adjusting for dispositional empathy. In contrast, dispositional empathy was not associated with child functioning when controlling for parental empathy. In a subset of 20 mothers, insula activation was positively associated with specific facets of both dispositional and parental empathy, whereas right temporoparietal junction activation was associated only with parental empathy. Thus, dispositional and parental empathy appear to be dissociable by both brain and behavioral metrics. Parental empathy may be a viable target for interventions, especially for toddlers at risk for developing social‐emotional difficulties.more » « less
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null (Ed.)There is growing evidence that emphasizing the social and personal contexts of engineering can open up the field to people who have been conspicuously underrepresented, particularly women and girls. Recent research and advances in educational policy have advocated for reframing engineering education to prioritize social responsibility, empathy, and care for others as integral aspects of engineering practice. But how do we measure things like empathy in engineering practices of younger children? This paper features work from a three-year design-based research project in which we used narrative elements to frame engineering problems in ways that evoked empathy for others’ needs, and examined the intersections between expressions of empathy and engineering design practices among girls ages 7-14. This paper outlines the theoretical underpinnings of this approach, and our methods for observing empathy and engineering practices in this age group.more » « less
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