Search for: All records

This research-to-practice paper describes an experiment designed to understand educational opportunities valued by students. Engineering education has, since the advent of ABET's EC-2000, operated using an outcomes-based paradigm predominantly focused on preparing engineers for the workforce. Engineering departments create curricula based on this paradigm that are more rigid than most other disciplines, thereby limiting the opportunities students have to explore beyond established curricular boundaries. The outcome-based paradigm limits students' agency in engineering education to pursue growth in unique, individual ways. Recognizing these challenges, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Bucknell University is adapting Amartya Sen's Capability Approach, which emphasizes student agency. In contrast to top-down approaches to curriculum design that focus narrowly on students' mastery of defined content areas, we focus on enabling students to develop the abilities needed to live a life aligned with their values. Rather than ensuring students achieve mandated outcomes, the focus is on providing opportunities, which students actively choose to transform into achievements. This study sought to better understand the opportunities that students value. The department first created a capabilities list that classified several opportunities that are of potential importance in engineering education. To gather feedback from students in the department, we offered two focus groups to discuss our capabilities list and a follow-up survey to formally elicit student valuation of capabilities. In addition, we offered an experimental course that promoted an opportunity-based engineering education model that nurtures both academic and personal growth. Student reflections from this class were analyzed using inductive coding with multiple coders, categorizing portions of students' reflections that align with our capabilities list. This study reveals the opportunities students highly regard to be better equipped to live a life they value. 

This work in progress (WIP) research paper describes student use of representations in engineering design. While iterative design is not unique to engineering, it is one of the most common methods that engineers use to address socio-technical problems. The use of representations is common across design methodologies. Representations are used in design to serve as external manifestations of internal thought processes that make abstract concepts tangible, enhance communication by providing a common language, enable iteration by serving as a low-effort way to explore ideas, encourage more empathetic design by capturing users' perspectives, visualize the problem space, and promote divergent thinking by providing different ways to visualize ideas. While representations are a key aspect of design, the effective use of representations is a learned process which is affected by other factors in students' education. This study sought to understand how students' perceptions of the role of representations in design changed over the course of a one-semester design course. Small student teams created representations in a three-stage process-problem exploration, convergence to possible solutions, and prototype generation-that captured their evolving understanding of a socio-technical issue and response to it. The authors hypothesize that using effective representations can help develop skills in convergence in undergraduate students; one of engineering's contributions to convergent problem solving is design. More specifically, this research looked at students' use of design representations to develop convergent understanding of ill-defined socio-technical problems. The research questions focus on how students use representations to structure sociotechnical design problems and how argumentation of their chosen solution path changed over time. To answer these questions this study analyzed student artifacts in a third-year design course supported by insights on the process of representation formation obtained from student journals on the design process and a self-reflective electronic portfolio of student work. Based on their prior experiences in engineering science classes, students initially viewed design representations as time-bound (e.g. homework) problems rather than as persistent tools used to build understanding. Over time their use of representations shifted to better capture and share understanding of the larger context in which projects were embedded. The representations themselves became valued reflections on their own level of understanding of complex problems, serving as a self-reflective surface for the status of the larger design problem. 

This research-to-practice full paper presents and approach to bringing convergence to the undergraduate engineering context. Convergence is the process of integrating a variety of ideas, skills, and methods to create new ideas, skills, and methods in order to address complex, socially relevant challenges like the UN Sustainable Development Goals [1] and the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) Grand Challenges [2]. In the US, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been a major driver of convergence related research and has focused on work primarily at the graduate level and beyond. To explore how convergence concepts translate to an undergraduate engineering context this research to practice paper describes a taxonomy that translates convergent knowledge, skills, and mindsets into the domain of undergraduate engineering education. While we do not believe it is reasonable to expect undergraduates to engage with convergence in the same way as graduate students or postdoctoral scholars, we believe that they can develop in areas that will allow them to engage in convergent work later in their careers. This paper first defines convergence and then examines the challenges and opportunities related to developing a student's ability to do convergent work in an undergraduate context. The developed taxonomy outlines the knowledge, skills, mindsets, and structures that support convergent work from the larger research literature, and adapts these to an undergraduate context. The taxonomy is then used to conduct a gap analysis of an undergraduate electrical and computer engineering degree program. This analysis is based on the syllabi. This work was conducted in the context of an electrical and computer engineering department situated in a medium-sized primarily undergraduate liberal arts institution in the mid-Atlantic region. As the challenges and opportunities are similar to but also unique to this institution this work forms a rich case study that can inform similar efforts in other institutions and contexts where a similar gap analysis may be beneficial. The goal of this work is to enable others to analyze an their existing student experience to see what aspects of convergence are currently included. 

Over the last several years the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) program at Bucknell University has established a four-year ‘design thread’ in the curriculum. This six-course sequence utilizes a representational approach, having students frame design challenges through diagrams and drawings before starting to implement solutions. The representations students create provide eight lenses on the design process; several of these lenses capture elements of societal implications and social justice. Within the design course sequence, the third-year particularly emphasizes the larger societal and human contexts of design. A challenge in the third-year course has been having engineering students who are acculturated to quantitative and linear methods of problem solving shift their perspectives to address complex societal topics. In the social sciences such topics are usually described textually with rich qualitative descriptions. In an attempt to engage engineering students, the authors have utilized graphical design representations rather than textual descriptions into the course. Such representations better align with engineering epistemology, potentially making the large body of work in the social sciences more accessible to students. This paper reports on how a particular representation, the system map, has third-year students explore systemic structures and practices that impact design decisions and processes. Students use system maps to identify ways design projects can impact on society in ways that have both positive and potentially negative consequences. Qualitative analysis of student artifacts over five course iterations was used in an action research approach to refine how to effectively integrate system map representations that capture societal issues and address issues of justice. Action research is an iterative methodology that utilizes evidence to improve practice, in this case the improving students’ facility with, and conceptions of, the societal impact of engineering work. This practice-focused paper reports on how system maps can be used in engineering and what supporting practices, e.g. interviews and research, make their use more effective. Ways to utilize system maps specifically, and representations more generally, to connect technical aspects of engineering design to social justice topics and issues are 

The purpose of this WIP research paper is to briefly consider the basis of higher education’s current grading system and to discuss an implemented grading structure based on a human development framework which was part of a cultural shift within the department. The letter-grade marking system is relatively new compared to the institution of higher education and brings with it a secondary effect of an “A” ranking conveying significant value and meaning to the interpreter. Students (and faculty) bring their own interpretation of what it means to be an ‘A’ student and connect this to their personal identity. The shift to letter-based grades coincided with influx of capital into American universities and an industry need for more research. Providing such letter-based sortings is often a required part of the instructional contract with most university structures. Grading systems at their best may provide helpful developmental feedback to learners and reward valued behaviors, but they are also punitive and contribute to shame and feelings of alienation or un-belonging. Grading itself is a strong voice of the faculty. While a curriculum guides the overall experience of students, grades themselves are the “coin of the realm” in terms of directly conveying students what faculty value. These weightings of various activities and what work is and is not graded tacitly tell students where faculty expect students to spend their time and effort. Who can be an engineer is then restricted to those who show aptitude in predefined outcomes and can successfully navigate the grading structures given to them. We ask if it is possible to grade across a curriculum in a way that increases opportunities for student agency and can convey to students the multi-faceted nature of being an engineer. While technical skills and knowledge are important, they are only one aspect of being an engineer. We introduce an attempted grading structure that includes six factors of engineering development used across each assignment within a first year engineering course. This change informed ongoing efforts to align grading approaches that place value on student agency in student development and informed an educational model based on the Capability Approach. 

Abstract—Wicked problems, the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges, the United Nations’ Sustainability Goals, and similar complex, global-scale endeavors fall under the broad umbrella of “convergent” work. Over the past two decades there has been an increase in interest and funding for work in this space. The NSF has two programs focused in this area, Growing Convergence Research and the Convergence Accelerator. Boston University’s College of Engineering recently announced a focus on convergent projects and work. The National Academic of Engineering also has the Grand Challenge Scholars program with over 100 participating schools. The list continues to grow. The broad concept of convergence seems to be quite simple: combine the ideas, skills, and/or methods of multiple disciplines to create something new. More specific definitions vary and while the interest in convergence and convergent problems continues to increase, there is no easily operational definition of convergence. This is especially true with respect to undergraduate-level education where students have limited experience and knowledge to carry out such efforts. To better understand the variation that exists within the literature on convergence we conducted a systematic review to explore how convergence is defined in scholarly literature. We have identified a small number of categories within the definition space and conducted a thematic analysis of the aspects of each. The results show that there is a fairly consistent focus on the work being socially-relevant and on creating something new such as an idea, method, product, or process to address desired needs. Additionally, doing convergent work requires the integration of aspects of multiple disciplines and is conducted by diverse teams. Lastly, the disciplinary backgrounds of those teams almost always includes the natural and biological sciences with a subset the following disciplines: information or computing sciences, engineering, social sciences, and humanities. While there is some consistency in the definition, there also seems to be space for some variation which leaves for some level of choice in the definition. 

Education literature has long emphasized the compounding benefits of reflective practice. Although reflection has largely been used as a tool for developing writing skills, contemporary research has explored its contributions to other disciplines including professional occupations such as nursing, teaching and engineering. Reflective assignments encourage engineering students to think critically about the impact engineers can and should have in the global community and their future role in engineering. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at a small liberal arts college adopted ePortfolios in a first-year design course to encourage students to reframe their experiences and cultivate their identities as engineers. Our recent work demonstrated that students who create ePortfolios cultivate habits of reflective thinking that continue in subsequent courses within our program’s design sequence. However, student ability to transfer reflective habits across domains has remained unclear and encouraging critical engagement beyond the focused scope of technical content within more traditional core engineering courses is often difficult. In this work, we analyze students’ ability to transfer habits of reflective thinking across domains from courses within a designfocused course sequence to technical content-focused courses within a degree program. Extending reflection into core courses in a curriculum is important for several reasons. First, it stimulates metacognition which enables students to transfer content to future courses. Second, it builds students’ ability to think critically about technical subject matter. And third, it contributes to the ongoing development of their identities as engineers. Particularly for students traditionally underrepresented in engineering, the ability to integrate prior experiences and interests into one’s evolving engineering identity may lead to better retention and sense of belonging in the profession. In the first-year design course, electrical and computer engineering students (N=28) at a liberal arts university completed an ePortfolio assignment to explore the discipline. Using a combination of inductive and deductive coding techniques, multiple members of our team coded student reports and checked for intercoder reliability. Previously, we found that students’ reflection dramatically improved in the second-year design course [1]. Drawing upon Hatton and Smith’s (1995) categorizations of reflective thinking [2], we observed that students were particularly proficient in Dialogic Reflection, or reflection that relates to their own histories, interests, and experiences. In this paper, we compare the quality of student reflections in the second-year design course with those in a second-year required technical course to discover if reflective capabilities have transferred into a technical domain. We discovered that students are able to transfer reflective thinking across different types of courses, including those emphasizing technical content, after a single ePortfolio activity. Furthermore, we identified a similar pattern of improvement most notably in Dialogic Reflection. This finding indicates that students are developing sustained habits of reflective thinking. As a result, we anticipate an increase in their ability to retain core engineering concepts throughout the curriculum. Our future plans are to expand ePortfolio usage to all design courses as well as some 

Interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability (IES) programs are different from other fields because they focus on a complex integration of humanities, social, and natural sciences concepts centered on the interactions of coupled human and natural systems. The interdisciplinary nature of IES programs does not lend itself to traditional discipline-specific concept inventory frameworks for critically evaluating preconceptions and learning. We discuss the results of the first phase of a research project to develop a next generation concept inventory for evaluating interdisciplinary concepts important for introductory IES courses. Using the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus (the intersections/interdependencies of food, energy, and water sectors) as our focus, we conducted a content analysis of eight representative college-level introductory environmental course syllabi and course materials (e.g., textbooks, journal articles, print media) to identify common interdisciplinary FEW Nexus concepts taught in introductory IES courses. Results demonstrate that all IES introductory course materials reference the FEW Nexus. Food, energy, and/or water resources as individual elements of the FEW Nexus are frequently described, but connections between these resource systems are included less often. Biology, energy systems, waste and pollution in the natural environment, agriculture, earth sciences and geology, climate change, behavioral social sciences, and economics concepts are most associated with FEW concepts, hinting at commonalities across IES topics that anchor systems thinking. Despite differences in IES programs, there appears to be some alignment between core concepts being taught at the FEW Nexus in introductory courses.