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Research paper thumbnail of Investigating Peer Critique and Revision of Elementary Students' Conceptual Models During An Engineering Design Project

Research paper thumbnail of Joy, Love, and Well-being: Envisioning a Future Free of Oppression

International Journal of Engineering Social Justice and Peace, Feb 5, 2021

Both authors reflect on personal accounts of engineering toward social justice and peace. Upon re... more Both authors reflect on personal accounts of engineering toward social justice and peace. Upon reflection, each of our experiences as engineers working toward clean water suggests the presence of potentially existential threats for engineering practitioners-and possibly designers more generally: hyper-specialization and the problem-solver narrative. Our reflection on well-intentioned efforts that seek to remove oppression from practices and foster mutual understanding may inadvertently contribute to oppression and reveal a third threat: engineering parasites. Lastly, we envision systems free of oppression in both practice and training centered on joy, well-being, and love.

Research paper thumbnail of Engineering Complex Systems: Do Parts and Interactions Receive Equal Attention?

Research paper thumbnail of Framing to reduce present bias in infrastructure design intentions

Research paper thumbnail of Engineers Writing for Public Audiences

Research paper thumbnail of Subtraction

Research paper thumbnail of Examining ontological and self-monitoring scaffolding to improve complex systems thinking with a participatory simulation

Instructional Science

Most of humanity’s important and difficult problems such as pandemics, environmental health, and ... more Most of humanity’s important and difficult problems such as pandemics, environmental health, and social unrest require recognizing and understanding complex systems. Students often have difficulty understanding complex systems concepts and previous research indicates that scaffolded computer simulations may facilitate learning. Few studies, however, have investigated which types of scaffolding can help students understand complex systems concepts with simulations. This study compares ontological and self-monitoring scaffolds with an agent-based participatory simulation on mainly undergraduate students’ (N = 96) understanding of complex systems. Data sources included pretest and posttest assessments of complex systems concepts. Results revealed that students in the ontological condition significantly improved from pretest to posttest on their agent actions and processes-based causality understanding, while apparently decreasing their understanding in action effects . In addition, students in the ontological condition improved more from pre- to post-test than students in the self-monitoring condition in their understanding of order . This study highlights how scaffolded, agent-based participatory simulations can help students learn complex systems concepts and that ontological scaffolding may help students understand decentralized and emergent order within complex systems.

Research paper thumbnail of Twenty Questions About Design Behavior for Sustainability

Research paper thumbnail of Overcoming Bounded Scalability: Achieving Interoperability Through Behavioral Boundary Objects

Tuberculosis (TB), an airborne infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (M... more Tuberculosis (TB), an airborne infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), remains a global health problem. West Africa has a unique epidemiology of TB that is characterized by medium-to high-prevalence. Moreover, the geographical restriction of M. africanum to the sub-region makes West Africa have an extra burden to deal with a two-in-one pathogen. The region is also burdened with low case detection, late reporting, poor treatment adherence leading to development of drug resistance and relapse. Sporadic studies conducted within the subregion report higher burden of drug resistant TB (DRTB) than previously thought. The need for more sensitive and robust tools for routine surveillance as well as to understand the mechanisms of DRTB and transmission dynamics for the design of effective control tools, cannot be overemphasized. The advancement in molecular biology tools including traditional fingerprinting and next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies offer reliable tools for genomic epidemiology. Genomic epidemiology provides in-depth insight of the nature of pathogens, circulating strains and their spread as well as prompt detection of the emergence of new strains. It also offers the opportunity to monitor treatment and evaluate interventions. Furthermore, genomic epidemiology can be used to understand potential emergence and spread of drug resistant strains and resistance mechanisms allowing the design of simple but rapid tools. In this review, we will describe the local epidemiology of MTBC, highlight past and current investigations toward understanding their biology and spread as well as discuss the relevance of genomic epidemiology studies to TB control in West Africa.

Research paper thumbnail of Critical Conversations and A Call to Action!

International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace

Critical Conversations are held by members of the greater Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace ... more Critical Conversations are held by members of the greater Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace network in the activist tradition of reflecting on our public engagement and collectively discovering ways of deepening our action. The particpants are selected based on their submissions (Expressions of Interest) in response to the Call for Participation in the Critcial Conversations disseminated through the ESJP website (esjp.org). For years, we have gathered in locations immersed in nature. In 2018 and 2019, the gathering took place in Cala Munda, organized by Caroline Baillie and Eric Feinblatt, in the beautiful Catskills mountains in upstate New York in the U.S.A. We want to feel our connection with the land while we engage in critical conversations on the intersection of the engineering field with social justice and peace. Caroline Baillie facilitates these conversations employing forest pedagogy. Through this pedagogy, we open our hearts to the forest for seeking guidance on how o...

Research paper thumbnail of Less Is More? In Patents, Design Transformations that Add Occur More Often Than Those that Subtract

Design Computing and Cognition’20

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral planning: Improving behavioral design with “roughly right” foresight

Many challenges emerging from the current COVID-19 pandemic are behavioral in nature, which has p... more Many challenges emerging from the current COVID-19 pandemic are behavioral in nature, which has prompted the field of behavioral design to propose solutions for issues as wide-ranging as hand-washing, wearing masks, and the adoption of new norms for staying and working from home. However, on the whole these behavioral interventions have been somewhat underwhelming, exposing an inherent brittleness that comes from three common "errors of projection" in current behavioral design methodology: Projected stability, which fails to recognize that interventions often function within inherently unstable systems;projected persistence, which neglects to account for changes in those system conditions over time;and projected value, which assumes that definitions of success are universally shared across contexts. Borrowing from strategic design and futures thinking, a new proposed strategic foresight model-behavioral planning-allows practitioners to better address these system-level, an...

Research paper thumbnail of Future tense can reduce present bias in infrastructure design

Design professionals (N = 261) were randomly assigned to either a future or present-framed projec... more Design professionals (N = 261) were randomly assigned to either a future or present-framed project description before recommending design attributes for an infrastructure project. The future condition led designers to propose a significantly longer infrastructure design life, useful life to the community, and acceptable return on financial investment. The findings suggest that using future framing when soliciting sustainable design expertise can be a straightforward and inexpensive way to lessen present bias.

Research paper thumbnail of “Adding Stuff From Other People”: How Peer Comparison Influences Conceptual Modeling in Precollege Engineering Contexts

Research paper thumbnail of Critical Conversations and A Call to Action!

International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace

Critical Conversations are held by members of the greater Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace ... more Critical Conversations are held by members of the greater Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace network in the activist tradition of reflecting on our public engagement and collectively discovering ways of deepening our action. The particpants are selected based on their submissions (Expressions of Interest) in response to the Call for Participation in the Critcial Conversations disseminated through the ESJP website (esjp.org). For years, we have gathered in locations immersed in nature. In 2018 and 2019, the gathering took place in Cala Munda, organized by Caroline Baillie and Eric Feinblatt, in the beautiful Catskills mountains in upstate New York in the U.S.A. We want to feel our connection with the land while we engage in critical conversations on the intersection of the engineering field with social justice and peace. Caroline Baillie facilitates these conversations employing forest pedagogy. Through this pedagogy, we open our hearts to the forest for seeking guidance on how o...

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral brittleness: the case for strategic behavioral public policy

Behavioural Public Policy

Despite widespread recognition that behavioral public policy (BPP) needs to move beyond nudging i... more Despite widespread recognition that behavioral public policy (BPP) needs to move beyond nudging if the field is to achieve more significant impact, problem-solving approaches remain optimized to achieve tactical success and are evaluated by short-term metrics with the assumption of stable systems. As a result, current methodologies may contribute to the development of solutions that appear well formed but become ‘brittle’ in the face of more complex contexts if they fail to consider important contextual cues, broader system forces, and emergent conditions, which can take three distinct forms: contextual, systemic, and anticipatory brittleness. The Covid-19 pandemic and vaccination rollout present an opportunity to identify and correct interventional brittleness with a new methodological approach – strategic BPP (SBPP) – that can inform the creation of more resilient solutions by embracing more diverse forms of evidence and applied foresight, designing interventions within ecosystems...

Research paper thumbnail of Investigating Peer Critique and Revision of Elementary Students' Conceptual Models During An Engineering Design Project

Research paper thumbnail of Joy, Love, and Well-being: Envisioning a Future Free of Oppression

International Journal of Engineering Social Justice and Peace, Feb 5, 2021

Both authors reflect on personal accounts of engineering toward social justice and peace. Upon re... more Both authors reflect on personal accounts of engineering toward social justice and peace. Upon reflection, each of our experiences as engineers working toward clean water suggests the presence of potentially existential threats for engineering practitioners-and possibly designers more generally: hyper-specialization and the problem-solver narrative. Our reflection on well-intentioned efforts that seek to remove oppression from practices and foster mutual understanding may inadvertently contribute to oppression and reveal a third threat: engineering parasites. Lastly, we envision systems free of oppression in both practice and training centered on joy, well-being, and love.

Research paper thumbnail of Engineering Complex Systems: Do Parts and Interactions Receive Equal Attention?

Research paper thumbnail of Framing to reduce present bias in infrastructure design intentions

Research paper thumbnail of Engineers Writing for Public Audiences

Research paper thumbnail of Subtraction

Research paper thumbnail of Examining ontological and self-monitoring scaffolding to improve complex systems thinking with a participatory simulation

Instructional Science

Most of humanity’s important and difficult problems such as pandemics, environmental health, and ... more Most of humanity’s important and difficult problems such as pandemics, environmental health, and social unrest require recognizing and understanding complex systems. Students often have difficulty understanding complex systems concepts and previous research indicates that scaffolded computer simulations may facilitate learning. Few studies, however, have investigated which types of scaffolding can help students understand complex systems concepts with simulations. This study compares ontological and self-monitoring scaffolds with an agent-based participatory simulation on mainly undergraduate students’ (N = 96) understanding of complex systems. Data sources included pretest and posttest assessments of complex systems concepts. Results revealed that students in the ontological condition significantly improved from pretest to posttest on their agent actions and processes-based causality understanding, while apparently decreasing their understanding in action effects . In addition, students in the ontological condition improved more from pre- to post-test than students in the self-monitoring condition in their understanding of order . This study highlights how scaffolded, agent-based participatory simulations can help students learn complex systems concepts and that ontological scaffolding may help students understand decentralized and emergent order within complex systems.

Research paper thumbnail of Twenty Questions About Design Behavior for Sustainability

Research paper thumbnail of Overcoming Bounded Scalability: Achieving Interoperability Through Behavioral Boundary Objects

Tuberculosis (TB), an airborne infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (M... more Tuberculosis (TB), an airborne infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC), remains a global health problem. West Africa has a unique epidemiology of TB that is characterized by medium-to high-prevalence. Moreover, the geographical restriction of M. africanum to the sub-region makes West Africa have an extra burden to deal with a two-in-one pathogen. The region is also burdened with low case detection, late reporting, poor treatment adherence leading to development of drug resistance and relapse. Sporadic studies conducted within the subregion report higher burden of drug resistant TB (DRTB) than previously thought. The need for more sensitive and robust tools for routine surveillance as well as to understand the mechanisms of DRTB and transmission dynamics for the design of effective control tools, cannot be overemphasized. The advancement in molecular biology tools including traditional fingerprinting and next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies offer reliable tools for genomic epidemiology. Genomic epidemiology provides in-depth insight of the nature of pathogens, circulating strains and their spread as well as prompt detection of the emergence of new strains. It also offers the opportunity to monitor treatment and evaluate interventions. Furthermore, genomic epidemiology can be used to understand potential emergence and spread of drug resistant strains and resistance mechanisms allowing the design of simple but rapid tools. In this review, we will describe the local epidemiology of MTBC, highlight past and current investigations toward understanding their biology and spread as well as discuss the relevance of genomic epidemiology studies to TB control in West Africa.

Research paper thumbnail of Critical Conversations and A Call to Action!

International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace

Critical Conversations are held by members of the greater Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace ... more Critical Conversations are held by members of the greater Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace network in the activist tradition of reflecting on our public engagement and collectively discovering ways of deepening our action. The particpants are selected based on their submissions (Expressions of Interest) in response to the Call for Participation in the Critcial Conversations disseminated through the ESJP website (esjp.org). For years, we have gathered in locations immersed in nature. In 2018 and 2019, the gathering took place in Cala Munda, organized by Caroline Baillie and Eric Feinblatt, in the beautiful Catskills mountains in upstate New York in the U.S.A. We want to feel our connection with the land while we engage in critical conversations on the intersection of the engineering field with social justice and peace. Caroline Baillie facilitates these conversations employing forest pedagogy. Through this pedagogy, we open our hearts to the forest for seeking guidance on how o...

Research paper thumbnail of Less Is More? In Patents, Design Transformations that Add Occur More Often Than Those that Subtract

Design Computing and Cognition’20

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral planning: Improving behavioral design with “roughly right” foresight

Many challenges emerging from the current COVID-19 pandemic are behavioral in nature, which has p... more Many challenges emerging from the current COVID-19 pandemic are behavioral in nature, which has prompted the field of behavioral design to propose solutions for issues as wide-ranging as hand-washing, wearing masks, and the adoption of new norms for staying and working from home. However, on the whole these behavioral interventions have been somewhat underwhelming, exposing an inherent brittleness that comes from three common "errors of projection" in current behavioral design methodology: Projected stability, which fails to recognize that interventions often function within inherently unstable systems;projected persistence, which neglects to account for changes in those system conditions over time;and projected value, which assumes that definitions of success are universally shared across contexts. Borrowing from strategic design and futures thinking, a new proposed strategic foresight model-behavioral planning-allows practitioners to better address these system-level, an...

Research paper thumbnail of Future tense can reduce present bias in infrastructure design

Design professionals (N = 261) were randomly assigned to either a future or present-framed projec... more Design professionals (N = 261) were randomly assigned to either a future or present-framed project description before recommending design attributes for an infrastructure project. The future condition led designers to propose a significantly longer infrastructure design life, useful life to the community, and acceptable return on financial investment. The findings suggest that using future framing when soliciting sustainable design expertise can be a straightforward and inexpensive way to lessen present bias.

Research paper thumbnail of “Adding Stuff From Other People”: How Peer Comparison Influences Conceptual Modeling in Precollege Engineering Contexts

Research paper thumbnail of Critical Conversations and A Call to Action!

International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace

Critical Conversations are held by members of the greater Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace ... more Critical Conversations are held by members of the greater Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace network in the activist tradition of reflecting on our public engagement and collectively discovering ways of deepening our action. The particpants are selected based on their submissions (Expressions of Interest) in response to the Call for Participation in the Critcial Conversations disseminated through the ESJP website (esjp.org). For years, we have gathered in locations immersed in nature. In 2018 and 2019, the gathering took place in Cala Munda, organized by Caroline Baillie and Eric Feinblatt, in the beautiful Catskills mountains in upstate New York in the U.S.A. We want to feel our connection with the land while we engage in critical conversations on the intersection of the engineering field with social justice and peace. Caroline Baillie facilitates these conversations employing forest pedagogy. Through this pedagogy, we open our hearts to the forest for seeking guidance on how o...

Research paper thumbnail of Behavioral brittleness: the case for strategic behavioral public policy

Behavioural Public Policy

Despite widespread recognition that behavioral public policy (BPP) needs to move beyond nudging i... more Despite widespread recognition that behavioral public policy (BPP) needs to move beyond nudging if the field is to achieve more significant impact, problem-solving approaches remain optimized to achieve tactical success and are evaluated by short-term metrics with the assumption of stable systems. As a result, current methodologies may contribute to the development of solutions that appear well formed but become ‘brittle’ in the face of more complex contexts if they fail to consider important contextual cues, broader system forces, and emergent conditions, which can take three distinct forms: contextual, systemic, and anticipatory brittleness. The Covid-19 pandemic and vaccination rollout present an opportunity to identify and correct interventional brittleness with a new methodological approach – strategic BPP (SBPP) – that can inform the creation of more resilient solutions by embracing more diverse forms of evidence and applied foresight, designing interventions within ecosystems...