More Like this

1. Understanding the Skills and Knowledge Emphasized in Undergraduate Industrial Engineering Courses

   Cabrera, B A; Clancy, S M; Vempala, V; Wu, J; Mosyjowski, E; Lattuca, L R; Mondisa, J; Daly, S R (June 2024, ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   A strong understanding of technical knowledge is necessary for all engineers, but understanding the context in which engineering work takes place is just as important. Engineering work impacts people, communities, and environments, and there is increasing recognition of the importance of preparing engineers to account for these sociocultural dimensions. The engineering curriculum needs to include both technical and sociocultural topics to prepare students as holistically competent engineers. A call for broader engineering skills is evident in ABET student outcomes, a few of which directly denote the importance of students’ ability to identify the ethical, cultural, and social impact engineers have on society. However, engineering education continues to underemphasize or omit entirely non-technical aspects of engineering practice. Technical knowledge persists as the central focus in engineering classes. Omitting sociocultural material in engineering classes can result in the development of future engineers whose designs further perpetuate social and systemic inequities, such as environmental pollution that affects vulnerable populations or inefficient designs that risk human lives. Additionally, emphasizing sociotechnical content in undergraduate engineering courses can help attract and retain a more diverse population of students who value socially relevant engineering work. A deep grounding in both technical and social skills and knowledge is particularly important in Industrial Engineering (IE), a field that focuses on analyzing data to improve systems and processes and which tends to focus more on human and business dimensions than many other engineering fields. Even so, there is little evidence to indicate that sociocultural skills and knowledge are taught in IE courses. Because the curricular focus of a field communicates to students what is and is not valued in the field, students who enter IE with a strong desire to advance social good may learn that such a goal is inconsistent with the field’s values and ultimately feel alienated or disinterested if social dimensions are not incorporated into their coursework. More insight is needed into the kinds of messages IE coursework sends about the nature of work in the field and the opportunities these courses provide for students to develop the sociotechnical knowledge and skills that are increasingly crucial in Industrial Engineering. In an effort to characterize how, if at all, core courses in IE facilitate students’ development of sociotechnical engineering skills, this research paper examines the general content of core IE courses at a predominantly white institution. This paper draws on data generated for a larger research study that leverages Holland et al.’s Figured Worlds framework to explore the messaging undergraduate engineering students receive in their classes around valued knowledge in their field. In this study, we draw on observation data leveraging recordings of seven required undergraduate courses in IE. We analyzed three randomly selected sessions from each course, with a total of 21 unique sessions observed. Our findings describe the practices that are and are not emphasized within and across required IE courses and the ways these practices are discussed. Our characterization of emphasized engineering practices provides an important foundation for understanding what is communicated to students about the nature of engineering work in their field, messaging which has substantial implications for the population of students who enter and persist in the field beyond their undergraduate studies. 

   more » « less
2. Perspectives of Seven Minoritized Students in a First-Year Course Redesign toward Sociotechnical Engineering Education

   Özkan, D.; Andrews, C. (August 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   The social/technical dualism in the engineering curriculum leaves students ill-prepared to tackle real-world technical problems in their social, economic, and political contexts (Cech, 2013; Faulkner, 2007; Trevelan, 2010, 2014). Increasingly, students have expressed the desire for their technical courses to show the interplay between social and technical considerations (Leydens & Lucena, 2017), but they have few opportunities to develop these sociotechnical ways of thinking (i.e., values, attitudes, and skills that integrate the social and technical). Instead, students are left to infer engineering as technically neutral through the instructional decisions that make up an engineering curriculum (Cech, 2013; Trevelan, 2014). In this study, we focus on how students understand the role of sociotechnical thinking in engineering. Particularly, this study centers seven minoritized students in an introductory engineering computation class who are pursuing an engineering degree. The study takes place at a medium private university in New England. These seven students are from a group of roughly seventy students split between two of the five sections for the course. These two sections were recently revised to include more sociotechnical readings, discussions, and homework facilitated with learning assistants. We are interested in understanding the self-described sense of belonging that these students feel as they relate it to learning about engineering as a sociotechnical field. While the dualism between engineering's technical and social dimensions has been studied in ASEE LEES papers, articles in Engineering Studies, broader engineering education research, and Science, Technology, and Science publications (e.g., Cech, 2013; Faulkner, 2007; Leydens & Lucena, 2017; Riley, 2017; Wisnioski, 2012), there is a need to connect this vast literature with the similarly extensive research on students' sense of belonging and engineering identity development, specifically for those students who have historically been excluded from engineering. Specifically, we draw on W.E.B. DuBois's notion of a 'double consciousness' from the Souls of Black Folks (1903) as a lens through which to understand how these seven students take on the political, economic, and social dimensions presented to them through a first-year engineering curricular redesign around engineering as sociotechnical. We note the small-n design of this study (Slaton & Pawley, 2018). The seven interviewed students are gender and racial minorities in engineering. However, we note that they do not represent all minoritized students in engineering, and to respect and elevate their experiences, we take a narrative approach. This study is intended to center the perspectives and experiences of these seven students as they navigate an engineering learning environment. We do not intend for the findings to be generalizable or exhaustive but informative as we think about scaling up the sociotechnical curricular redesign in engineering at this university and more broadly. 

   more » « less
3. What Is Engineering and Who Are Engineers? Student Reflections from a Sustainability-Focused Energy Course

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063499  

   Forbes, Marissa H.; Lord, Susan M.; Hoople, Gordon D.; Chen, Diana A.; Mejia, Joel Alejandro (March 2022, Sustainability)

   In the spring of 2021, the University of San Diego’s Department of Integrated Engineering taught the course, “Integrated Approach to Energy”, the second offering of a new required course, to nine second-year engineering students. The sociotechnical course covered modern energy concepts, with an emphasis on renewable energies and sustainability, and it exposed the students to other ways of being, knowing, and doing that deviated from the dominant masculine Western White colonial discourse. Following the course completion, we interviewed five students by using a semistructured protocol to explore how they perceived of and communicated about engineers and engineering. We sought to identify the takeaways from their course exposure to sustainability and the sociotechnical paradigm, which were central to the course. The findings suggest that the students were beginning to form sociotechnical descriptions, and that they were still developing their understanding and perceptions of engineers and engineering. Moreover, we observed that they were still wrestling with how best to integrate sustainability into those perceptions. There was an a-la-carte feel to the students’ conceptualizations of sustainability as it related to engineering, as in, “you can ‘do’ sustainability with engineering, but do not have to”. We argue that engineering students likely need these pedagogical paradigms (sociotechnical engineering and sustainability) woven through the entirety of their engineering courses if they are to fully accept and integrate them into their own constructs about engineers and engineering. 

   more » « less
4. Collaborative Research: Research Initiation: Assessing Global Engagement Interventions to Advance Global Engineering Competence for Engineering Formation

   Schneider, Scott; Mowrey, Corinne; Moulton, Michael; Vasquez, Erick; Murzi, Homero; Witenstein, Matthew; Holcomb, Jeanne (June 2024, American Society For Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings)

   The purpose of this work is to determine if global engagement interventions without extended international travel can help engineering students develop a global learner mindset and build towards the overarching goal of developing a holistic global engineering educational approach to meet the current and future needs of the engineering profession. The global learner mindset refers to how engineers perceive and interpret the global environment, and is assumed to be foundational in developing global engineering competence, how they define problems and formulate and implement solutions. This project has focused on assessing the global learner mindset elements, which include cultural humility, global citizenship, and critical reflection within the context of four distinctly different global engagement interventions. These interventions include international engineering case studies in a quantitative analysis course, intentional formation of multi-national student teams within a capstone design course, a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) research project in a fluid flow course, and an engineering short course coupled to a community engaged project. The PIs conducted pilot implementations of the four interventions during the spring 2023 semester and collected pre and post assessment data from the Global Engagement Survey (GES) and Global Engineering Competency Scale (GECS) instruments. The results have been used to determine a path forward to improve the next implementation of the interventions during the Spring 2024 semester. This path includes the development of a focus group with students participating in each intervention to obtain a deeper understanding through qualitative data, specifically targeting global engineering mindset formation that will help better contextualize the quantitative results from the GES and GECS instruments. This work aspires to expand the required development of global competencies in engineering beyond the current research focused on the development of intercultural competence in international or study-abroad experiences. Our focus is on the development of a holistic global engineering education process able to reach all engineering students even when institutions are not able to provide opportunities to fully immerse in other cultures, either because of global crises (such as a pandemic or violent conflicts), financial limitations, or the need for more sustainable methods of globally connecting. 

   more » « less
5. Fostering Reflective Engineers : Outcomes of an Arts- and Humanities-Infused Graduate Course

   https://doi.org/10.1109/WEEF-GEDC.2018.8629714  

   Campbell, Ryan C.; Reible, Danny D.; Taraban, Roman; Kim, Jeong-Hee (November 2018, Proceedings of the 2018 World Engineering Education Forum - Global Engineering Deans Council (WEEF-GEDC))

   Engineering education traditionally focuses on technical content and problem-solving, leaving little room in the curriculum to examine broader environmental and sociotechnical impacts of engineering work. However, if engineers wish to have intentional, positive influences on these broader impacts, skills for reflective thinking and ethical decision-making are essential. The arts and humanities can provide important and often neglected perspectives for engineers in developing such skills. In a recent seminar course for civil/environmental engineers, we explored ways of developing these skills through activities including Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), in-class readings & discussions, essay writing, and portfolio assignments. In this paper, we present selected findings from this experimental course. While the class was small, comprised of a dozen graduate students, results were encouraging. For example, findings from qualitative thematic analysis of pre- and post-course essays showed an increase in recognition of the importance of breadth of knowledge and/or perspective. Similarly, pre-post Likert-type survey results showed a statistically significant increase (p<0.005, d=1, n=10) in Contextual Competence, a self-reported measure of ability to anticipate and understand the impacts and constraints of broader contexts on engineering solutions. These findings are preliminary but suggest the course helped students develop capacity for reflection through arts- and humanities-based activities. 

   more » « less