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Qualitative outcomes of a pilot study which seeks to investigate the ways and extent to which service-learning impacts the development of empathy in undergraduate engineering students are presented. Service-learning is an experiential education pedagogy in which students engage in activities designed to tackle community needs within structured opportunities to promote learning and development. Community service, teamwork, problem-solving, and reflection are common elements within service-learning activities. This educational approach can provide students with real-world scenarios that connect classroom theory and knowledge to community needs. A brief literature review on service-learning within engineering education, is presented alongside brief background on the meaning of empathy. This is followed by initial qualitative findings around a service-learning trip within an undergraduate engineering course involving 13 student participants. The findings indicate service-learning in a foreign community can serve as a platform for the development of empathy in engineering undergraduates. The development of empathy can be fostered within three main findings: group dynamics, interactions with the community, and individual interpretation of the service-learning experience through self-reflection. This paper concludes with a discussion on how these three findings collectively influence the development of empathy in students. This paper provides a qualitative approach to contextualizing the development of empathy as a learning outcome for engineering educators interested in service-learning.
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Water Quality: Adaptable Modules for Engaging K-16 Students
Highlighting the role engineers have in solving community and global challenges has been shown to positively affect students' engineering identity development. Poor water quality and water scarcity have been recognized as a critical global issue by many organizations, including the United Nations. Students of all ages can relate to the importance of having drinkable water through their experiences with thirst, drought, floods, news stories, or just accidentally swallowing salt water while on holiday at a beach. This talk describes the development and implementation of a series of engineering education activities focused on water quality. These activities ranged from three-minute activities for community outreach events to week-long lessons for engineering freshmen. Younger students were able to readily recognize how using different types of filters and natural media can increase the clarity of water with particulate or color contamination. Middle and high school students were able to design and test filter set-ups and learn about the role of nanotechnology in water purification. They also developed analytical and data analysis skills through qualitative and quantitative water quality measurements. Freshman engineering students learned about the water industry, local and global water issues, and performed water quality sampling around their campuses using portable meters that log data via a cell phone app. The activities and results were then used to meet university-course outcomes related to the societal impacts of engineering, statistical analysis, plotting data, and written communication. By centering learning on a tangible and important engineering challenge, this work provides a flexible framework for learning and problem solving that can be tailored to the needs of students from different age groups and for different learning outcomes.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1826181
- PAR ID:
- 10471280
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) |
- ISBN:
- 978-1-6654-6244-0
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 6
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Uppsala, Sweden
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962639
