RAPID: Ethnographic field study of engineering knowledge systems: Developing a social-process-centric situated model

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

This project conducted by Oregon State University will advance the development of a social-process-centric situated model of engineering knowledge systems by a studying a group of NASA researchers as they develop the design of the BioSentinel nano satellite. This satellite will measure the effects of radiation in space on living organisms and will be the first biosensor operated remotely in space. The complexity and unprecedented nature of the BioSentinel project provides a unique opportunity to study how a team of engineers negotiates conflicting and competing demands in the highly restricted size, weight, and power capacity of a nano satellite package. Understanding the knowledge systems of engineer practitioners and how they communicate across differences is crucial to the development of an engineering curriculum that aligns more closely to actual engineering practice. The Bio Sentinel project will bring together individuals with expertise in genetic engineering, optics, microfluidics, control systems, communications, solar and battery power, propulsion, guidance and navigation systems, radiation physics, robotics, software and user interface, and thermal regulation. This group of engineers will be convened together for concentrated period of time in a single location working against strict deadlines. The Bio Sentinel design offers a unique opportunity to study how engineering expertise is actually applied and to document the social processes by which engineers with competing knowledge claims interact, reach consensus, and create a complex technological system. Understanding the processes by which engineers effectively communicate across differences helps to reframe engineering knowledge as a social, situated practice and will help to create an engineering education curriculum that is relevant to the workplace demands of creating complex technological systems. The Oregon State team will structure this field study as an epistemological ethnography. This will be an immersive, participatory observation protocol designed to capture reliable and valid evidence of a group's knowledge practices. The project design recognizes that a significant recent shift in cognitive and learning sciences has been the move from individual-centric cognitive models of cognition to social-process-centric situative models. There is evidence that context and particularly, exactly the social, human context that is so often intentionally removed from studies, classrooms, and textbooks plays a vitally important role in what a person can be said to know. Situative models shift the focus from the students' knowledge and skills to their actions in specific social systems. To understand how and what STEM students need to know, data must be derived from social the processes surrounding the application of this knowledge in workplace environments. Study of the BioSentinel design will combine leading-edge theories of learning and cognition with engineering knowledge and social science research methods to simultaneously apply and develop an understanding of engineering knowledge systems as applied in an exceptionally complex and open-ended technological system design.