Does Context Matter? Engineering Students' Approaches to Global Vs. Local Problems (original) (raw)
Related papers
Considering Context: A Study of First-Year Engineering Students
Journal of Engineering Education, 2007
As engineers contribute to solving the increasingly complex problems facing our society, there is a growing need for the engineers graduating from undergraduate programs to deeply understand the context within which they are solving problems. There is a particular need for engineers who recognize the complexities of global and societal issues and respond to those complex issues with the solutions they develop.
Problem Definition in Design by First-Year Engineering Students
2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Engineering design involves insightful identification of factors influencing a system and systematic unpacking of specifications/requirements from goals. However, many engineering students are slow to articulate the major problems to be solved and the sub problems associated with achieving the main design goals and constraints. Prior research in design describes students" premature termination of solution finding to select a single idea. Then all other design decisions are constrained by this initial decision [1]. In this paper, we report how first-year engineering (FYE) students attempted to translate given design goals into sub-problems to be solved or questions to be researched. We found that, instead of decomposing the problem through further analysis and sense making, many FYE students tended to "restate" the goal, identify one major function, and then use hands on building as the central creative process. Further, students claimed they used a systematic design process, but observations of their problem solving process and teaming skills indicated a different behavior. Further investigation indicated that many FYE students could identify the superficial features from the problem statement, but they were not able to identify the implicit logical steps or deep structure of the problem. Our current data provided the baseline of how FYE students abstract and interpret information from a design goal to generate a specific problem statement. We are interested in treatments to improve students" ability to recognize critical features of a given context and encourage taking multiple perspectives to identify alternative solutions. We are combining the use of graphical representational tools as organizational tools to support teams collaboration and we encourage opportunities to reflect and refine their design process. This research is relevant to engineering instructors/researchers who want to develop students" ability to deal with complex design challenges and efficiently decompose, analyze and translate the problem statements into meaningful functional specifications, stakeholder requirements and a plan of action.
2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
This paper focuses on how students learn to become culturally responsive engineers for development within a graduate-level engineering course entitled Sustainable Community Development (SCD). A new type of engineer is required for the ever-increasing global demands to address the problems of equitable access to energy, nutrition, shelter, clean water, sanitation, and many other basic human needs. Given this context, engineers will need to play a more critical role in meeting these demands around the world and in local, historically marginalized, and economically struggling communities. Therefore we believe that becoming an engineer means developing dispositions that view engineering solutions as an outcome of collaboration between community members, engineers, funding organizations, and many other stakeholders. The SCD course was specifically designed to address engineering solutions for sustainable human development and poverty reduction. We studied students as they moved across locations, namely the engineering classroom and the local non-profit situated within a low-income community, in order to better understand how students come to identify problems and subsequent engineering solutions. Using a person-centered approach to learning, we focused on two students' experiences as they grappled with the process of problem identification within other communities, prior to developing engineering solutions. We concentrated on how students reorganize knowledge across contexts (the classroom and the community) as a basis for understanding learning. Specifically, we examined how these students negotiated the elements of problem identification including: moving from an abstract understanding of problem identification in the classroom into the situated understanding in the community, collaboration with a community partner, and managing goals between the classroom and the community.
Exploring Problem Definition in Student Global Humanitarian Design Project Cases in the Literature
—Engineering student involvement in community-based global humanitarian development has increased in recent decades. While engineers are trained problem-solvers, it has been argued that that more traditional engineering problem solving is not sufficient for tackling the " wicked " types of problems common to community-based development projects. The ways in which problems are defined has been identified as having significant impact on design outcomes when facing wicked problems. Initial literature review demonstrated a need to examine existing empirically based global humanitarian development cases published in the literature to better understand currently practiced ways of defining problems. This study, therefore, analyzed the problem definition processes across a set of water-related global development project cases published in the literature. Qualitative data analysis utilized a problem-scoping framework from design literature as well as the main author's personal experiences in similar projects to enhance the analysis. These preliminary findings demonstrated that while student design teams are achieving considerable breadth in their problem scoping efforts, there are still important aspects of problems that do not seem to be considered. This may be contributing to under-informed solution creation in the examined projects and ultimately may be affecting design outcomes. Limitations of the study and future work are also discussed. Keywords—design process, design problems, engineering and sustainable community development, global humanitarian development, literature review analysis, problem scoping, qualitative methods
The purpose of this paper was to investigate first-year undergraduate engineering students' awareness and conceptual understanding of environmental issues and to examine how effective a participatory game design strategy was to elicit their understanding. Respondents (n=1,394) completed baseline environmental awareness surveys and 24 respondents participated in the game design process consisting of four workshops and online activities. The game design component was focused on life cycle analysis (LCA) including environmental impacts of engineering design. Observations and artifacts were collected from workshops and interviews were conducted. Results showed that students had a general awareness about environmental issues but lacked awareness about LCA, pollution, and wetlands. Additionally, the participatory game design process showed that students struggled with applying the newly gained understandings of LCA in the game designs. The participatory game design provided a wealth of information on students' understanding and also served as an effective platform for knowledge elicitation.
Educating engineering students on sustainable development (SD) is a major concern in the 21st Century. Without the inculcation of SD, the students, as future innovators and problem solvers, may well be part of the problem, instead of providing the solution. Problem based learning is a possible approach to inculcate SD to have a deep impact on students. Problems were shown to be effective in engaging learning. A systematic and supportive learning environment provided through the Cooperative Problem-Based Learning framework was shown to yield deep understanding in various domains of learning. This paper describes the design of realistic problems and learning environment for inculcating SD among first year engineering students. While the problems are different each semester, there are underpinning elements maintained to reach the outcomes. Design based on constructive alignment and "How People Learn" framework, the problem is set as a competition to find engineering solutions...
Ac 2011-2576: Problem Definition in Design by First Year Engineering Students
2011
Engineering design involves insightful identification of factors influencing a system and systematic unpacking of specifications/requirements from goals. However, many engineering students are slow to articulate the major problems to be solved and the sub problems associated with achieving the main design goals and constraints. Prior research in design describes students" premature termination of solution finding to select a single idea. Then all other design decisions are constrained by this initial decision [1]. In this paper, we report how first-year engineering (FYE) students attempted to translate given design goals into sub-problems to be solved or questions to be researched. We found that, instead of decomposing the problem through further analysis and sense making, many FYE students tended to "restate" the goal, identify one major function, and then use hands on building as the central creative process. Further, students claimed they used a systematic design process, but observations of their problem solving process and teaming skills indicated a different behavior. Further investigation indicated that many FYE students could identify the superficial features from the problem statement, but they were not able to identify the implicit logical steps or deep structure of the problem. Our current data provided the baseline of how FYE students abstract and interpret information from a design goal to generate a specific problem statement. We are interested in treatments to improve students" ability to recognize critical features of a given context and encourage taking multiple perspectives to identify alternative solutions. We are combining the use of graphical representational tools as organizational tools to support teams collaboration and we encourage opportunities to reflect and refine their design process. This research is relevant to engineering instructors/researchers who want to develop students" ability to deal with complex design challenges and efficiently decompose, analyze and translate the problem statements into meaningful functional specifications, stakeholder requirements and a plan of action.
2009 39th IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 2009
By studying closed-ended technical problems, upper-undergraduate and early graduate environmental engineering students may not appreciate the importance of the nontechnical aspects of sanitation or the critical interrelationship between technical and nontechnical components. A module on sanitation engineering for the developing world was created and implemented in a senior/graduate level wastewater engineering course. Students developed case studies as a means to broaden and deepen their understanding of nontechnical issues of wastewater engineering. The case studies focused on developing countries, but the perceptions, treatment methods, and nontechnical issues are also relevant in developed countries. The goal was to increase student appreciation for the technical and nontechnical complexities and their interplay when designing and implementing sanitation systems in both the developed and developing world. Based on tests administered before and after case-study development, statistically significant change was observed in the students' understanding of technical and nontechnical sanitation issues. This paper presents the module design and implementation, assessment instruments and a detailed statistical and qualitative analysis of the module's impact in the first classroom implementation.
Adding Context to First-Year Engineering Design Experience through Sustainability
2013
The first year of the engineering curriculum at xxxx includes a course titled Engineering Graphics and Design that is required of all engineering majors. This type of course is very common and achieves, among others, the following objectives: it gives the student an exposure level experience with the various engineering disciplines; it provides the student with the training to communicate using engineering drawings; and, it leads the student through the design process. The value of teaching design to freshmen students is well documented 1,2 and is understood to help with the all-important retention 3 into the second year and beyond. More importantly, the National Academy of Engineering released two reports imploring the engineering education community to provide context to engineering design projects 4,5 and to do so very early in the curriculum. The all-important context to the engineering projects has manifested itself in a number of ways. The oldest and, perhaps, the most prevale...
By studying only closed-ended technical problems, environmental engineering students often fail to appreciate critical interrelations between technical and nontechnical aspects of sanitation. To address this deficiency, a case-study module on sanitation for the developing world was implemented in a senior/graduate level onsite water reclamation course. The goal was to increase student awareness of the interplay between technical and nontechnical complexities when designing and implementing sanitation systems in both the developed and developing world. Learning objectives included increasing student familiarity with (1) perceptions and treatment options of sanitary waste in developing countries and (2) nontechnical constraints and issues (such as economic, social, cultural, political, and ethical) associated with sanitation. Content was integrated into the course using a case-study approach. Between weeks three and seven of a 15-week semester, students investigated and contrasted common sanitation practices in the U.S. and developing nations and then began work on mini-case studies focused on specific communities in developing countries. Guest speakers supplemented instruction by sharing experiences from living and working in such communities and overseeing sanitation-engineering projects. In week nine, student teams described their chosen community, its relevant demographics, current sanitation practices, and the team's initial sanitation options. In week 12, student teams identified key community stakeholders, conducted a sanitation options assessment, and assembled evidence to support their recommended option. The same test was administered in the second and 14 th weeks of the semester to assess student understanding of technical and nontechnical issues associated with sanitation engineering in both developed and developing contexts. This paper presents the case-study module design and implementation, measurement instruments used to detect change and a detailed statistical analysis of the case-study module's impact in the classroom. Nonparametric statistical analysis measured statistically significant increases in student responses regarding technical and nontechnical sanitation issues, similar to a previous wastewater engineering class in which significant increases were also detected. The results of this investigation support the potential for broader use of this case-study module beyond the course for which it was developed.