Service-Learning and Civic Engagement as the Basis for Engineering Design Education (original) (raw)
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Service Learning: A Powerful Approach to the Introduction of Engineering Design for Freshman
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association, 2011
Service learning is a very interesting pedagogical approach for engineering education. It can be used in most engineering courses, but it fits well in a project-based design course. Through service learning, the students work with a real customer, apply all the steps of the design cycle, deliver a functional prototype, manage a real project, understand the multi-faceted responsibilities of an engineer and develop team work and communication skills. The approach was introduced in an existing, first year, first semester, design course. The experience shows that projects can be found in the community without too much effort, students perform very well and can deliver functional and useful prototypes in four months. Before introducing the service learning approach, the course was already well evaluated and is even more appreciated now. The conclusion is that service learning is a perfect approach for a course that was designed to introduce students to real-world problems in engineering ...
2020
Design courses embedded in service-learning are rapidly emerging within the curricula of many engineering programs. The learning outcomes service-learning courses seek to promote are well aligned with the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology criteria 2000 (EC 2000) 1. The Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program integrates engineering design with meeting the needs of the local community through a multidisciplinary service-learning curricular structure. The EPICS courses can be counted for a wide range of courses in several disciplines, including capstone design in electrical and computer engineering and computer science. The approaches of EPICS to conceptualize and measure specific professional skills for program evaluation purposes are discussed. These include: socialresponsibility, awareness of ethical issues, teamwork, and communication competence. Specifically, the theoretical framework used for scale construction, preliminary results, and evidence of the scales' psychometric properties are provided. The aim of this paper is to provide information regarding the use of self-report measures to assess program outcomes. Service-learning seeks to promote student learning in the form of experiential education. Jaccoby and Associates 3 define service-learning as, "a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development…" (p. 5). Collectively, definitions of service-learning agree that it "joins two complex concepts: community action, the 'service,' and efforts to learn from that action and connect what is learned to existing knowledge, the 'learning'" (p. 2) 4 .
International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering, Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship
The Senior Capstone Design course is one of the most important in the four-year industrial engineering curriculum. The course concludes the Industrial Engineering (IE) student’s undergraduate studies, satisfying the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology’s (ABET) requirements and allowing students to work in collaborative teams. Service-learning is an educational approach that integrates academics with community service; students apply classroom content to community problems, thereby enhancing learning while providing needed services to underserved populations. The proposed service-learning aims to address all the ABET requirements as well as involve a collaborative research partnership in which students conduct research to meet a community organization’s needs. The deliverables for this project include (1) a detailed report describing the design, analysis, performance, and alternative approaches, (2) the physical prototype developed by the team, and (3) a network of expe...
2005 Annual Conference Proceedings
Interest in applying and studying service learning in engineering courses is increasing due to both the experiential learning and values-based approach it offers. Integration of service learning into a required senior-level mechanical engineering product design class was undertaken and the cognitive and social effects of the pedagogy were studied through use of a pre-post survey tool. In this paper, we focus on the results of three main questions for study: 1) whether students' perceptions of their ability in various engineering skills changed over the course of the class, 2) whether students' perceptions of career goals changed over time, and 3) whether students' interest in community service changed over the course of the class. Results indicate that students perceived learning gains in key product design areas such as ability to design new products, creativity, and problem solving, and some differential effects were found for women. Students, particularly minorities, also increased their orientation toward a service approach, changing their professional aspirations away from consulting and medicine to more innovative product development work and graduate research while increasing their overall interest in community service and their beliefs about engineers' social responsibility.
2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
is a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder in engineering education. Her research interests include engineering student learning, diversity and recruitment. Her current research is centered on the impacts of project-based service-learning on student identity, recruitment, and retention in engineering. She is a Co-Director of the Engineering for American Communities student organization, on the development team as well as a content editor for the TeachEngineering.org digital library, and has co-created and co-taught engineering elective courses for both high school and undergraduate students through CU-Boulder's Integrated Teaching and Learning Program. A former middle and high school math and science teacher, she received her MAT in secondary science from the Johns Hopkins University and her MS in civil engineering from CU-Boulder.
Service-Learning Projects in Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses
International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering, Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship
The College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) has integrated service-learning (S-L) into many of its core required undergraduate courses over the last three years. Projects that meet real community needs and that help students achieve academic objectives in these core courses are percieved to be difficult to create, but, in this paper, projects for 35 different undergraduate required courses are summarized to help faculty, staff, and students develop S-L projects for their own courses. Faculty at UML were encouraged to “start small rather than not at all.” Courses and projects include, for example, a first-year introduction to engineering course in which 340 students, divided into teams, designed and built moving displays illustrating various technologies for 60,000 middle school students that every year visit a history center that is part of a national park. Another example is a sophomore kinematics course in which student teams visited local playground...
Service-learning in engineering
32nd Annual Frontiers in Education, 2002
Service learning is a pedagogy that integrates academic learning with community-based work. Service learning has been widely adopted within higher education nationally in many disciplines and offers engineering a compelling environment to meet many of the EC 2000 criteria that may be difficult to integrate into traditional engineering courses and provides a learning environment in which students gain the necessary skills for life long learning. There is also a growing case that service learning presents opportunities to attract underrepresented groups to engineering through the context of community-based projects. Despite the vast potential for service learning, engineering has lagged behind most other disciplines in the acceptance of this pedagogy. To encourage more widespread adoption of service learning within engineering, a panel session will present several successful models of engineering service learning and discuss the benefits and outcomes of the programs. This paper provides overviews and contact information for the panel participants.
Ac 2009-177: A Service-Learning Experience in Engineering and Its Impact on Students
2009
The engineering education literature addressing service learning as a new pedagogy and its assessment and benefits is scarce. This paper describes a concise engineering service-learning experience in the context of a typical heat transfer course for undergraduate mechanical engineering students. The service learning was designed to probe the ability of students to a) explain the societal context of engineering, b) explain the importance of pro-active community service, and demonstrate an inclination to continue such service in the future, c) exhibit an appreciation of communication with non-engineers and finally, d) challenge some of the students' stereotypes regarding others. The service-learning project was executed in collaboration with a local not-for-profit organization. Reflections were conducted by the students by answering a set of carefully-phrased questions after conducting the project. Analysis of students' responses as well as the implications of the trends obtained, are explained in this paper. The recorded benefits of service learning are described and can be expected from similar service learning projects in other engineering courses.
A Service Learning Experience In Engineering And Its Impact On Students
2009
The engineering education literature addressing service learning as a new pedagogy and its assessment and benefits is scarce. This paper describes a concise engineering service-learning experience in the context of a typical heat transfer course for undergraduate mechanical engineering students. The service learning was designed to probe the ability of students to a) explain the societal context of engineering, b) explain the importance of pro-active community service, and demonstrate an inclination to continue such service in the future, c) exhibit an appreciation of communication with non-engineers and finally, d) challenge some of the students’ stereotypes regarding others. The service-learning project was executed in collaboration with a local not-for-profit organization. Reflections were conducted by the students by answering a set of carefully-phrased questions after conducting the project. Analysis of students’ responses as well as the implications of the trends obtained, are...