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1. Framing Engineering Problems in an Intramural Context

   Olewnik, Andrew; Svihla, Vanessa (January 2021, ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Supporting students to frame design problems is one of the most challenging aspects of engineering education, and as faculty, sharing agency with students, such that they have framing agency to make decisions that are consequential to the problem frame is difficult. In this paper, we report on students’ progress framing authentic problems early and after four months of work. Set in a high-agency, co-curricular intramural program where students work on interdisciplinary design projects, we found, using surveys and student work, that early in the process, students reported open-ended problems constrained somewhat by budget or design requirements. Over time, they came to recognize their own limitations as constraining, became more tentative in their treatment of the problem, and reported opportunities to learn from their own and peers’ decisions. Students who reported opportunities to learn also reported working on somewhat more constrained problems yet being able to make consequential decisions. Collectively, this suggests problems that offer a Goldilocks middle ground, that include endemic constraints yet allow students to make consequential decisions may be a key ingredient for developing problem framing capacity. We share instructional implications related to supporting students to differentiate between design requirements and constraints, in shifting from qualitative understandings to quantitative requirements and their role in doing so, and navigating their own limitations. 

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2. Framing engineering problems in an intramural context

   Olewnik, A.; Svihla, V. (January 2021, Proceedings of the ASEE 128th Annual Conference and Exhibition)

   Supporting students to frame design problems is one of the most challenging aspects of engineering education, and as faculty, sharing agency with students, such that they have framing agency to make decisions that are consequential to the problem frame is difficult. In this paper, we report on students’ progress framing authentic problems early and after four months of work. Set in a high-agency, co-curricular intramural program where students work on interdisciplinary design projects, we found, using surveys and student work, that early in the process, students reported open-ended problems constrained somewhat by budget or design requirements. Over time, they came to recognize their own limitations as constraining, became more tentative in their treatment of the problem, and reported opportunities to learn from their own and peers’ decisions. Students who reported opportunities to learn also reported working on somewhat more constrained problems yet being able to make consequential decisions. Collectively, this suggests problems that offer a Goldilocks middle ground, that include endemic constraints yet allow students to make consequential decisions may be a key ingredient for developing problem framing capacity. We share instructional implications related to supporting students to differentiate between design requirements and constraints, in shifting from qualitative understandings to quantitative requirements and their role in doing so, and navigating their own limitations. 

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3. Designing research collaboratively: Socioenvironmental systems research in the French Basque Country

   https://doi.org/10.1080/00187259.2024.2431079  

   Welch-Devine, Meredith; Burke, Brian J; Thompson, Jennifer Jo; Eppherre, Beñat; Eppherre, Monique; Jaragoyhen, Pierre; Maraud, Simon; Rolland, Hélène; Sourdril, Anne (December 2024, Human Organization)

   Highly participatory research and the co-production of knowledge are widely recognized as key to advancing sustainability research that produces useful and usable results. There is great variety in how different teams approach collaborative work, but the initial problem-framing stage is a critical moment of engagement. In this article, we describe our efforts to create a collaborative research project on climate and pastoralism in the northern Basque Country (southwestern France), focusing on our process for determining the research focus. We use the various funding proposals submitted along the way to illustrate concretely the ways in which integrating our different ways of knowing and different approaches led to different research questions than would have been the case had the scientists developed the project alone. We also discuss the difficult choices that must sometimes be made. Researchers and pastoralists worked together to produce this analysis and to make recommendations to others interested in following a similar path. 

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4. Exploring agency in capstone design problem framing

   https://doi.org/10.21061/see.69  

   Svihla, V.; Peele-Eady, T.B.; Gallup, A. (January 2021, Studies in engineering education)

   Background: Because of prior experience solving well-structured problems that have single, correct answers, students often struggle to direct their own design work and may not understand the need to frame ill-structured design problems. Purpose: Framing agency—defined as making decisions that are consequential to framing design problems and learning through this process—sheds light on students’ treatment of design problems; by framing, we mean the various actions designers take to understand, define, and bound the problem. Using the construct framing agency, we sought to characterize design team discourse to detect whether students treated design problems as ill- or well-structured and examine the consequences of this treatment. Method: Data were collected through extended participant observation of a capstone design course in a biomedical engineering program at a large research university. Data included audio and video records of design team meetings over the course of framing and solving industry-sponsored problems. For this paper, we analyzed three cases using sociolinguistic content analysis to characterize framing agency and compared the cases to illuminate the nuances of framing agency. Results: All teams faced impasses; one team navigated the impasse by framing the problem, whereas the others treated the problem as given. We identified markers of agency in students’ discourse, including tentative language, personal pronouns, and sharing ownership. Conclusions: Framing agency clarifies the kinds of learning experiences students need in order to overcome past experiences dominated by solving archetypical well-structured problems with predetermined solutions. 

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5. Equity-based CS Case Study: An Approach to Exploring White Teachers’ Conceptions of Race and Racism in a Professional Development Setting

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3487332  

   Veeragoudar, Sneha; Sullivan, Florence R. (September 2022, ACM Transactions on Computing Education)

   Here, we present the results of a study of in-service teachers’ responses to equity-based case study vignettes focused on racialized classroom incidents. This study was conducted in the context of an ongoing research practice partnership aimed at integrating computer science concepts in elementary grades. Our work took place in a public school district that enrolls primarily students of color, while largely employing White teachers and administrators. Using a racial literacy framework [Guinier 2004 ], we conceptualized a continuum and developed codes to analyze teachers’ responses from racially liberal to racially literate. Our results describe a range of positions across the continuum, including those consistent with the racial liberalism viewpoint that expresses individualistic views of meritocracy and colorblindness that sometimes supports a deficit view of students, those that reside in the middle who validate equity work through minimal acknowledgment yet find ways to resist further engagement with race or equity, and those who express views consistent with racial literacy practices including student-centered perspectives, asset-orientations, and the willingness to engage race directly. Further, our results indicate that teachers may express contradictory views or views across the continuum. These findings point to the developmental nature of racial literacy and the difficulty of unlearning racist mindsets. We discuss the efficacy of our case study design: anonymized, locally derived vignettes, and our case study learning activity design: written reflections, small group dialogues, and whole group share-outs in supporting teacher reflection and learning. Finally, we demonstrate the special leadership role of teachers who are moving toward racial literacy. 

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