Engineering community engagement partnerships: Investigating motivation, nature, and structure

Thompson, Julia D Purdue University 2015 해외박사(DDOD)

Engineering community engagement programs have increased in popularity over the last decade or so, with related research and scholarship in this area focused primarily on student motivation and learning outcomes. Since 2000, however, the wider service-learning field has started investigating partnerships and community voice. Building from the existing service-learning literature, this study aims to better understand community-university partnerships in engineering community engagement programs from the perspectives of both the academic program and the served community. This study addresses three research questions: (1) Why are individuals and local community organizations involved in engineering service-learning partnerships?, (2) How does engineering community engagement program structure relate to the nature of the partnerships?, and (3) What is the role of the project in community engagement partnerships?. A multi-site case study approach was used to address these questions, which included interviews with community partners, faculty, and program administrators at three engineering community engagement programs at three different U.S. universities each of which maintains long-term domestic partnerships. These cases include: Engineering Projects In Community Service (EPICS) at Purdue University, select U.S. project centers for Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Global Projects Program (GPP-US), and the Community Playground Project (CPP) at Louisiana State University (LSU). Primary study participants were advisors, community partners, administrators and students (n=30) who are familiar with the partnerships and programs. From Spring 2011 to Spring 2014, I conducted semi-formal interviews with them about their experiences. Informal conversation and observations, as well as literature and program policy materials, were also used to triangulate findings. Data analysis and reporting were carried out as separate procedures for the first research question and then the second and third questions together. Data analysis for the first question, on motivation, involved use of deductive codes, based on previous research examining service learning partnerships not specific to engineering, along with inductive analysis using a combination of thematic analysis and typological analysis. The motivations of the programs and partners/sponsors were organized in three categories: motivations connected to students, personal motivation, and organizational motivations. Most of the motivations found within this study are similar to motivations found in other service learning literature. However, there were some differences between the stakeholders, with the community partners more likely to focus on having the students learn about the specific organizations, while the advisors were more likely to focus on the learning objectives of the course. The second and third research questions involved two phases of analysis. The first involved application of the Phillips-Ward framework in an attempt to find the stage of development of each partnership under investigation, and the second phase involving development and use of the Transactional, Cooperative, and Communal (TCC) framework for coding the data. The TCC framework categorizes interactions and activities as: transactional, which increases the boundaries between stakeholders; cooperative, which attempts to blur the boundaries; and communal, which transcends the boundaries for a higher purpose. Additionally, six structural themes were found to influence the nature of the partnerships: program purpose and objectives, overall program structure, type of partnering agencies, characteristics of participating individuals, types of projects, and the role of students. The findings from this study contribute to the existing literature in at least three major ways. First, they provide additional insights about how engineering community engagement partnerships can be examined as a series of relationships among individuals and/or as organizations. Second, the research findings, and specifically the TCC framework, can help support programs within the engineering community engagement programs reflect on and improve their relationships with their partner organizations and wider communities. And third, findings suggest how a project-based approach, coupled with the TCC framework, can further expand the ontology of engineering. That is, by having engineers work with community, the students' mindsets can be challenged, and their way of doing engineering and being engineers could essentially transform. I conclude the study with an overview of the limitations and future research, as well as my desired outcomes and next steps. It is my hope that community engagement programs will reflect on the desired nature of their own partnerships and make intentional decisions to align the purpose of the program with the structure of the program (including policies and procedures), the type of agencies they work with, the individuals involved, and the projects they do. This way, the programs will more likely reflect the nature of the partnerships they wish to cultivate.

Thinking Like an Engineer: Interrogating the Epistemic Hierarchy of a Professional Engineering Community of Practice

Kramer, Amy K ProQuest Dissertations & Theses The Ohio State Uni 2022 해외박사(DDOD)

What it means to ?think like an engineer? and what ?counts? as engineering knowledge is a foundational part of engineering culture. What engineers value as knowledge and how they act on that knowledge impacts nearly every aspect of engineering design and practice as well as who enters and persists in engineering. Researchers have shown that within engineering, there is a socially constructed epistemic hierarchy; technical knowledge and analytical or rational ways of knowing are consistently constructed as superior.This hierarchy is problematic because it 1) functions in ways that devalue social considerations from engineering work, and 2) has been constructed by the dominant social groups in engineering (i.e., White, cisgender, men) and works to maintain the exclusivity of engineering. In this interpretive study informed by feminist theories, I explore the beliefs, reported practices, and identities of engineers to interrogate how the epistemic hierarchy of engineering is reproduced within a professional engineering community of practice. I found that the epistemic hierarchy of engineering was indeed pervasive, and it was reproduced via beliefs about the definition of engineering and the role of objectivity in engineering. The most pervasive shared beliefs used to resist the epistemic hierarchy of engineering were rooted in capitalistic or neoliberal ideology, which is troublesome because it is often at odds with social justice and equity initiatives. I also found that the engineers who identified as women or gender non-binary were more likely to strongly identify with normative ways of knowing in engineering (i.e., analytical thinking) than their majority counterparts, which provides insight into the role of privilege in how engineering identity is negotiated in terms of the epistemic hierarchy. Ultimately, this work implies that we need to "make space? for students and professionals to critically reflect on what it means to think like an engineer to promote a more socially conscious and inclusive engineering field.

Engineering: Defining and differentiating its unique culture

Pilotte, Mary K Purdue University 2013 해외박사(DDOD)

The world of work for engineering professionals is changing. At a rapid pace, experienced engineers are exiting the workforce due to retirement of the Baby Boomer generation, while at the same time the problems facing engineers are increasingly complex and frequently global in nature. For firms to protect their knowledge assets, they must ensure that acquired understandings are shared among their engineering work groups. Engineering teaching and learning in the workplace (i.e., knowledge sharing), is a social activity that resides in a social context governed by the professional engineering culture. This quantitative study uses Hofstede's Organizational Cultural Values Model (Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, & Sanders, 1990) to examine dimensions of engineering culture in the workplace, producing a central tendency profile of engineering's cultural practices. Further, it explores through hypotheses if demographic differentiators, including birth generation, gender, race, industry sector of employment, and engineering discipline, play roles in forming engineering cultural practices. Results both corroborate aspects of Hofstede's model and assert new understandings relative to factors influencing dimensions of engineering practice. Outcomes are discussed in terms of their potential impact on industrial knowledge sharing and formation of beneficial engineering cultures.

A framework for applying concurrent engineering principles to the construction industry

AbulHassan, Hisham Sherfi The Pennsylvania State University 2001 해외박사(DDOD)

The most crucial stages in the product life cycle are the product planning and design stages. It is here that decisions are made that have the greatest impact on the final product and its operating characteristics. The manufacturing industry has successfully applied downstream information to the planning and design stages of the product life cycle through a process called concurrent engineering. The benefits of concurrent engineering include reduced cost, increased speed, and improved quality. The objective of this research was to develop and test a framework for implementing concurrent engineering in construction. A case study research methodology was used to study the effect of concurrent engineering on construction projects. The principles of concurrent engineering were applied to a conceptual model of the building process to create a concurrent engineering model of the building process. A set of twenty-six rules that differentiate a concurrent engineering building project from a non-concurrent engineering project was derived from the revised functions of the conceptual model. A concurrent engineering index was also created to measure the level of concurrent engineering on a building project. Nineteen construction projects were studied to measure the effect of concurrent engineering on project performance. Evidence was found of a positive correlation between the concurrent engineering index and increased project delivery speed and improved project quality. While such a correlation was not found with the respect to project unit cost, it was apparent that unit cost remained constant with an increasing concurrent engineering index. Lastly, the more influential concurrent engineering rules were written in the form of a set of guidelines to be implemented in a construction company in order to achieve improved project unit cost, project delivery speed, and project quality.

Quantifying the impact of environmental policy on engineering design decisions

Whitefoot, Kate S University of Michigan 2011 해외박사(DDOD)

In order to realize environmental goals, policymakers are increasingly creating measures to encourage the redesign of products to improve environmental performance. Developing an approach to evaluate the influence of these policies on firm design decisions requires modeling both the demand- and supply-side of the relevant industry well. A mature body of literature in economics focuses on modeling consumer preferences and firm decision-making, but econometrically representing engineering tradeoffs that govern design decisions remains a challenge. The engineering design literature explicitly models these tradeoffs but representations of consumer preferences and firm competition are often simplified. This dissertation presents a quantitative methodology for analyzing the impact of policies on engineering design decisions by integrating state-of-the art approaches from engineering design and economics. A model of the U.S. automotive industry is presented, representing consumer purchase decisions and firm design and pricing decisions for the full line of vehicles produced in a year. The methodology integrating engineering design models with economic analyses produces three synergistic contributions. First, the combined model allows for policy analysis of the full-scale automotive industry accounting for design options that may be profit-optimal given a possible policy even if the design options are not observable in current data. Second, the structure of the product-development process is used to address the difficulty of econometrically identifying demand parameters for design attributes. Third, a hybrid engineering-economics cost model is presented, using the econometric demand model to derive cost parameters for which engineering estimates are unavailable. The value of the developed methodology is demonstrated through three case studies. The combined model is used to evaluate U.S. fuel economy regulations in terms of the ability to produce gains in fuel economy and the impact on firm profits. Results illustrate that estimates of cost effectiveness are substantially sensitive to design options considered, suggesting that analyses ignoring these design changes considerably overestimate the costs of the regulations. This model is then extended to examine footprint-based fuel economy standards. Results indicate that these standards could encourage substantial increases in vehicle size that diminish gains in fuel economy. Finally, applications of the presented approach to environmental lifecycle assessment are demonstrated.

Engineering problem finding in high school students

Franske, Benjamin James University of Minnesota 2009 해외박사(DDOD)

The purpose of this study was to explore the engineering problem finding ability of high school students at three high schools in Minnesota. Students at each of the three schools had differing backgrounds including pre-engineering coursework, traditional technology education coursework and advanced science coursework. Students were asked to find problems in two different engineering scenarios which were presented to them on a paper and pencil instrument. Responses were scored by a panel of judges based on measures of creativity (flexibility, fluency, originality and elaborateness) and analyzed based on demographic data including gender, prior coursework and school. In addition student responses were categorized and evaluated qualitatively based on school and gender of respondent. Quantitative results indicate that the most consistent predictor of creativity in engineering problem finding scenarios was the number of advanced science classes. Specific measures of creativity included other significant predictors but advanced science coursework was the most consistent across all measures and scenarios. The qualitative results showed striking differences in the responses from students at different schools. Students from schools with a pre-engineering and advanced science emphasis found similar categories of problems and had a similar view of the purview of engineers while students with a technology education background focused on a rather different set of problems and had a much narrower view of engineering. Results show clear differences in the types of problems found by students at these three high schools as well as their understanding of the scope of engineering problems. Educators need to become more aware of the importance of problem finding in engineering and better encourage the development of problem finding skills among their students. Specifically, technology education teachers may need supplemental professional development related to the scope of engineering and engineering problem finding as well as how these concepts might be infused into their curriculum and encouraged among their students.

Superstar K-5 Engineering Educators: A Narrative Study of Positive Deviant Educators

West, Megan E The Ohio State University ProQuest Dissertations & 2024 해외박사(DDOD)

Examining Underemphasized Engineering Practices: Engineering Students' Alignment With Curricular Emphases and Engagement With Divergent Thinking

Clancy, Shannon M University of Michigan ProQuest Dissertations & Th 2024 해외박사(DDOD)

Engineering students need to prepare to address increasingly complex, contextual, and ambiguous problems in their future careers. Many students pursue engineering to improve societal problems and create innovative solutions. Yet, divergent thinking needed for creativity, and the consideration of multiple social issues and a variety of contexts, is underemphasized in engineering education. Lack of this essential training hampers students' abilities to address sociotechnical problems and heightens risk of harm from their engineering solutions. Without social, contextual, and divergent thinking emphases during engineering training, historically marginalized students invested in these practices may be deterred from pursuing and persisting in engineering education. My dissertation addresses the underemphasis of divergent thinking and other important skills to address complex problems in engineering education through three distinct studies within a variety of engineering student experiences. In my first study, I explored undergraduate mechanical engineering students' perceptions of knowledge, skills, and messaging in their core engineering courses, how these emphases may (mis)align with students' interests and values, and the impact of (mis)alignments on engineering students' persistence, sense of fit, and career intentions in engineering. Leveraging multiple semi-structured interviews with 30 undergraduate mechanical engineering students, I identified curricular emphases students explicitly described as emphasized or not/seldom emphasized in the mechanical engineering curriculum. I also characterized (mis)alignments between student interests and the curriculum and students' compensatory actions to enable them to persist in engineering and aspiring career interests in response to their (mis)alignments. My second study examined mechanical engineering students' divergent thinking. I utilized semi-structured interviews to capture the depth and nuance of how and why students said they did or did not consider multiple options in several key points during varied engineering projects. I identified influential resources and structural, environmental, individual, and team factors that affected mechanical engineering students' divergent thinking. I leveraged narrative inquiry to elucidate how these intersecting factors affected students' divergent thinking. From these findings, I constructed narratives that also serve as pedagogical tools to support students and faculty learning about intentional divergent thinking in engineering. My final study examined patterns of divergent thinking in engineering students' idea development. The A/B study design compared student iterative concept transformation on their own and using Design Heuristics cards. In the first round, they generated and selected an early concept, and iteratively transformed it without the tool four times. In the second round, students returned to their selected early concept and transformed it four more times using up to seven Design Heuristics cards. I analyzed over 500 concepts, identifying both sequential and non-sequential links across concept generation sessions and developed Design Transformation Diagrams to identify patterns across students' idea changes. My findings showed iterative transformations in combination with Design Heuristics can assist students in deeper exploration and create more varied and distinct concepts without an escape from the influence of existing concepts. My work in this dissertation provides insights into engineering creativity and other underemphasized practices important to educating engineers for today's complex sociotechnical problems. Engineering education must provide opportunities, scaffolding, and practice where students can develop their knowledge and skills and experience more alignment of their values and interests in engineering curricula. Based on my findings, I recommend tools, strategies, and curricular changes to improve scaffolding of creative and sociotechnical processes that must be enhanced and more explicitly and intentionally integrated into today's engineering curricula. .

A Multi-Phase Exploration of Conceptualizations, Perceived Importance, and the Development of Empathy within Engineering

Hess, Justin L Purdue University 2015 해외박사(DDOD)

Throughout the United States, there have been numerous calls for the development of well-rounded engineers through a more holistic engineering education. This dissertation is a collection of three independent but related studies exploring the role of a disposition that seems intimately connected to many skills described as necessary for the next generation of engineers within these calls: empathy. Each chapter of this dissertation provides unique insights on conceptualizations, perceptions of the importance, and the development of this phenomenon within engineering and engineering education. The first study investigates how empathy and care look within an engineering context through three separate but interrelated phases including (a) a summative content analysis of existing literature, (b) thematic analysis of small group interviews with engineering faculty, and (c) thematic analysis of written responses from practicing engineers to an open-ended question about empathy and care. Taken together, findings from these three phases demonstrate that although empathy and care have a place within engineering, conversations and awareness of these phenomena are not often explicitly stated within the literature or frequently addressed by engineers or engineering faculty. The second study explores the importance and existence of empathy and care within engineering practice. This study includes (a) thematic analysis of engineers' conceptualizations of empathy and care (n = 25), (b) phenomenological analysis of engineers' experiences of empathy and care within the workplace (n = 25), (c) exploratory factor analysis of an empathy and care survey (n = 1574), and (d) non-parametric testing of engineers' responses to the derived factor structure (n = 1481) to explore in what ways empathy and care are perceived as most important to engineering practice, and whether these perceptions vary by gender or years of work experience. Phenomenological analysis led to the emergence of 13 themes along four categories including (a) design outcomes, (b) personal outcomes, (c) relational outcomes, and (d) broader ideas. Non-parametric testing of the derived factor structure indicated that practicing engineers with greater years of work experience were more likely to perceive empathy and care as existing in engineering practice and as important to their work. The third study explores developments in undergraduate engineering students' perspective-taking tendencies after participating in an engineering ethics course. This study follows a concurrent mixed methodological research approach, first analyzing students' changes in a psychometric instrument (the Interpersonal Reactivity Index) along with evaluative changes in an ethics transfer case study, and second through thematic analysis of critical incidents derived from semi-structured interviews with course participants (n = 19). Quantitative findings indicated that students' self-reported perspective-taking tendencies increased over the course of the semester and qualitative findings indicated there were six fundamentally distinct causes of this increase and five distinct types of outcomes related to perspective-taking. Taken together, the results from these three inter-related studies highlight contextual considerations for allowing empathy to manifest itself within engineering, potential pathways and improved outcomes of an empathically guided engineering process, and educational design strategies for prompting critical experiences to develop engineering students' empathic tendencies.

Engineering stratified tissues for in situ cartilage regeneration

Sharma, Blanka The Johns Hopkins University 2006 해외박사(DDOD)

Patients suffering from cartilage damage due trauma or disease may benefit from biological replacements developed using tissue engineering techniques. Current tissue engineering strategies, however, often fail to restore the unique structural organization of the tissue leading to inferior function. Articular cartilage has a zonal architecture consisting of superficial, middle, and deep chondrocytes, followed by transition and integration into the underlying bone. The cell layers have different morphological, biochemical and mechanical properties, which are crucial to the physiological role of the tissue. Regeneration of the structural organization will be important to the success of cartilage tissue engineering. The overall goals of this thesis were to engineer structurally organized cartilage and osteochondral tissues, study heterotypic cell interactions relevant to cartilage repair and homeostasis, and design a practical tissue engineering strategy that can be clinically applied. It was hypothesized that a scaffold that encourages the appropriate cell and matrix organization, and facilitates relevant cell-cell interactions, may improve the functional outcome of tissue engineered cartilage. Multi-layered hydrogels were developed using photopolymerization techniques to engineer cartilage with the zonal properties of the native tissue. Superficial, middle, and deep zone chondrocytes were isolated and encapsulated in respective layers of a tri-layered hydrogel. The polymerization conditions supported cell viability and matrix synthesis. Cell and matrix products were confined to their respective layers resulting in stratified, heterogeneous cartilage with similar zonal characteristics of the native tissue. Further coculture studies revealed that interactions between zone-specific cells affected the biological and mechanical properties of engineered cartilage. Specifically, superficial cells regulated deep cell proliferation and increased deep cell biosynthetic activity in a bi-layered hydrogel. The stratified cartilage constructs demonstrated greater mechanical strength compared to homogeonous cartilage constructs, implying potential benefits to isolating and organizing zonal chondrocytes for tissue engineering purposes. A bi-layering technique was then applied to the engineering of osteochondral composite tissues. Chondrocytes were cocultured with bone-marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) or fully differentiated osteoblasts. In both cases, cartilage and bone like matrix were spatially maintained in the distinct layers. However, MSCs uniquely stimulated the chondrocytes in this coculture system, evidenced by increased production of proteoglycan and collagen type II. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).