SGER: Engineering in Context: An investigation of how experts and students incorporate global and societal issues in their engineering design processes

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

This Small grant for Exploratory Research will conduct an in-depth analysis of verbal protocol data to explore how both undergraduate engineering students and engineering experts go about defining the scope of the problem as they do engineering design. It expect to generate a set of detailed case studies of both effective and ineffective problem scoping and information gathering (and use) behavior for students and experts. These cases can be used as the basis to design both learning experiences to help students incorporate global and societal considerations in their engineering design processes as well as assessment instruments to gauge how well they accomplish this goal. The proposed research addresses a critical issue in engineering education and adheres to the principles outlined in a recent Nation Research Council publication Engineer of 2020. Specifically, the team pose an important question that can be addressed by empirical research. The work draws on relevant theories from the education and design communities and will use well documented research methods in empirical work that will enable the PI to link results back to the theories. It will use data from a diverse set of students, providing the groundwork to generalize our results to broader populations and settings. This project addresses broader impacts in two ways; first, by be analyzing design process data that was collected from a diverse set of students to represent a broad range of problem solving processes. Second, the ultimate goal of the proposed work is to increase the number of engineering graduates who consider the broader impacts of the engineering design problems as they graduate and join the engineering workforce. Broadening the context within which learning engineering takes place not only prepares graduates to be more socially and culturally responsive in their professional lives, but it also helps to create an educational climate that is more responsive and attractive to women and currently underrepresented minority students.