NLI: Design and Development: RUI: Prototyping a systems thinking framework to foster environmental and sociotechnical thinking across an interdisciplinary engineering curriculum

Harvey Mudd College, Claremont CA

Investigators

Abstract

The future engineering workforce demands professionals who, in addition to their technical skills, can evaluate and address the environmental, social, and ethical factors impacting their engineering decisions. In parallel, engineering faculty need pathways to meet emerging workforce needs in both their individual courses and across the engineering curriculum. This work will address these needs by designing, developing, implementing, and assessing a Systems Thinking Framework that undergraduate engineers can apply to coursework, projects, and professional practice. Systems Thinking considers a concept not as a discrete idea but as housed within a broader system, with dynamic and interconnected relationships between system components. Systems Thinking is inherently a sociotechnical approach to problem solving and can promote examining environmental, social, and ethical relationships. The Systems Thinking Framework will be deployed in 5-7 activities across courses in an interdisciplinary engineering curriculum and in an industry-partnered capstone design project. By consistently practicing evaluating the environmental and sociotechnical aspects of engineering design, students will be equipped to contribute this skill upon entering the workforce. To incorporate the Systems Thinking Framework, this project will deploy and evaluate a prototyping process for faculty enacting large-scale curricular change. This prototyping-based change process can further be applied to additional emerging workforce needs. This work is aligned with the NSF-Lemelson Initiative and Research in the Formation of Engineers program goals of effectively integrating environmental and social sustainability into engineering education and enhancing our understanding of curricular change. Implementation and assessment using student-produced deliverables, surveys, and interviews will answer research questions focused on (i) how students use Systems Thinking to evaluate environmental, social, and ethical implications, (ii) student growth over multiple Systems Thinking experiences, and (iii) comparisons between case-study and open-ended contexts. Expected measurable outcomes include that students will assess the environmental, social, and ethical implications of an engineering technology by defining and evaluating the system, and that students will use Systems Thinking to make design decisions that consider environmental, social, and ethical factors in addition to technical optimality. In parallel, this work will examine how a distributed, coordinated prototyping process can address faculty barriers and drivers towards addressing sustainability and social impacts in their courses. Assessment of the prototyping process through surveys and interviews will contribute to new understanding of faculty needs and effective strategies for large-scale curricular change. The expected measurable outcome for this work is that faculty will demonstrate increased self-efficacy toward instructing on sustainability and sociotechnical impacts. To support applicability and propagation, the Framework and modular course activities (Modules) will be co-created and implemented with faculty partners across institutions through prototyping Community of Practice groups. Graduate students and postdocs from around Southern California will also gain experience teaching Systems Thinking and using prototypes to explore new teaching practices through a summer teaching workshop. All Modules will be made publicly available with a Creative Commons license, including a “Module Skeleton” that can be adapted to new topics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.