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.

Impact of distributed virtual reality on engineering knowledge retention and student engagement

Sulbaran, Tulio Alberto Georgia Institute of Technology 2002 해외박사(DDOD)

Engineering Education is facing many problems, one of which is poor knowledge retention among engineering students. This problem affects the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (A/E/C) industry, because students are unprepared for many necessary job skills. This problem of poor knowledge retention is caused by many factors, one of which is the mismatch between student learning preferences and the media used to teach engineering. The purpose of this research is to assess the impact of Distributed Virtual Reality (DVR) as an engineering teaching tool. The implementation of DVR addresses the issue of poor knowledge retention by impacting the mismatch between learning and teaching style in the visual versus verbal spectrum. Using as a point of departure three knowledge domain areas (Learning and Instruction, Distributed Virtual Reality and Crane Selection as Part of Crane Lift Planning), a DVR engineering teaching tool is developed, deployed and assessed in engineering classrooms. The statistical analysis of the data indicates that: (1) most engineering students are visual learners; (2) most students would like more classes using DVR; (3) engineering students find DVR more engaging than traditional learning methods; (4) most students find the responsiveness of the DVR environments to be either good or very good; (5) all students are able to interact with DVR and most of the students found it easy or very easy to navigate (without previous formal training in how to use DVR); (6) students' knowledge regarding the subject (crane selection) is higher after the experiment; and, (7) students' using different instructional media do not demonstrate statistical difference in knowledge retained after the experiment. This inter-disciplinary research offers opportunities for direct and immediate application in education, research, and industry, due to the fact that the instructional module developed (on crane selection as part of construction crane lift planning) can be used to convey knowledge to engineers beyond the classrooms. This instructional module can also be used as a workbench to assess parameters on engineering education such as time on task, assessment media, and long-term retention among others.

Sustaining and rapid response engineering in the reservoir sampling and pressure group of the commercial products and support organization at Schlumberger Sugar Land Technology Center

Kerr, Bradley Gray Texas A&M University 2006 해외박사(DDOD)

This record of study investigates twelve months of engineering industry experience, a required internship of the Doctor of Engineering degree program at Texas A&M University. The internship company was Schlumberger Limited. The record of study begins with a brief introduction to the company. Three projects undertaken by the intern during the internship are discussed. The projects show how a wide variety of knowledge, both technical and practical, is required to solve engineering problems. Issues facing newly graduated engineers in industry are discussed. Issues facing newly graduated engineers exposed to industry for the first time are quite different than a traditional engineering curriculum has prepared them to encounter. Industry today is demanding a well-educated engineer capable of tackling technical problems in several areas as well as engineers with the ability to easily communicate and interact with others and develop leadership potential. Academia, industry, and society all have a highly influential role in developing engineers. The engineer must consider the interaction of technology and society when searching for a solution to optimize the benefit to all. The study further investigates academic challenges as well as the declining number of engineers, international competition, industry responsibility, and observations made during the internship period. Research has shown that in the next few year as the Baby Boomer generation of approximately 77 million people begin to retire, the next generation of approximately 44 million will have difficulty keeping up with technical and scientific demands. Industry demand for science and engineering graduates is beginning to overwhelm academia's ability to respond and produce. Few U.S. undergraduates are continuing education in graduate schools. This leaves a large student population base to be filled by international students. U.S. citizens accounted for only 35-percent of the total number of doctoral degree recipients in science and engineering during the 2005 academic year. Observations made during the internship period will be used to make recommendations to both industry and academia to help align industry demands and academic abilities in order to produce engineering graduates that are ready to accept the vastly different challenges encountered in industry.

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.

Evolving social responsibility understandings, motivations, and career goals of undergraduate students initially pursuing engineering degrees

Rulifson, Gregory A University of Colorado at Boulder 2015 해외박사(DDOD)

Engineers impact the lives of every person every day, and need to have a strong sense of social responsibility. Understanding what students think about social responsibility in engineering and their futures is very important. Further, by identifying influences that change these ideas and shape their conceptualizations, we can intervene to help prepare students for their responsibilities as part of the profession in the future. This thesis presents the experiences, in their own words, of 34 students who started in engineering. The study is composed of three parts: (i) engineering students' ideas about socially responsible engineering and what influenced these ideas, (ii) how students see themselves as future socially responsible engineers and how this idea changes over their first three years of college, and (iii) what social responsibility-related reasons students who leave engineering have for choosing a new major. Results show that students are complicated and have varied paths through and out of engineering studies. Students came up with their own ideas about socially responsible engineering that converged over the years on legal and safety related aspects of the profession. Relatedly, students identified with the engineering profession through internships and engineering courses, and rarely described socially responsible aspirations that could be accomplished with engineering. More often, those students who desired to help the disadvantaged through their engineering work left engineering. Their choice to leave was a combination of an unsupportive climate, disinterest in their classes, and a desire to combine their personal and professional social responsibility ambitions. If we want engineering students to push the engineering profession forward to be more socially responsible, we can identify the effective influences and develop a curriculum that encourages critical thinking about the social context and impacts of engineering. Additionally, a social responsibility-related curriculum could provide more opportunities for engagement that keeps those socially-motivated students in engineering. The engineering profession must also reflect these values to keep the new engineers working towards social responsibility and pushing the profession forward.

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: 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.

Motivation of Students Who Switch from Engineering to Engineering Technology

Ramirez, Nichole Purdue University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 2017 해외박사(DDOD)

A set of studies is reported describing the demographics, outcomes, and motivations of students who start in engineering and switch their major to engineering technology. There has been extensive research in engineering persistence, but little focus has been given to the "T" in STEM. Most research combines technology with other science and mathematics fields, ignoring the unique characteristics of this population. Exploring this population at the intersection of Engineering and Engineering Technology is particularly valuable as the lines between the disciplines are blurred. For example, the Engineering Technology Council of the American Society for Engineering Education markets the tagline: "The Degree is Engineering Technology, the Career is Engineering.". With engineering technology enrollment on the rise, we may expect to see more changes in engineering technology education. For example, Purdue's Polytechnic Institute (a 2015 rebrand from the College of Technology) is part of an initiative to open a technology-focused high school as a direct pathway into Purdue. In this particular situation, it has yet to be seen where students will go -- engineering, technology, or somewhere else. This research helps inform policy decisions related to such a pathway. The goal of this research was to determine why students choose to matriculate in engineering and then decide to change majors to engineering technology. Using a mixed methods approach, this work includes three studies focused on academic outcomes and student motivation. The studies draw upon Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT), focusing on intrinsic factors like interest and self-efficacy and extrinsic factors like social influence and career goals. The first study employs data sampled from the Multiple Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD; https://engineering.purdue.edu/MIDFIELD) to determine demographic and academic factors associated with leaving engineering and switching to technology as well as their graduation outcomes. The next study focuses on motivation constructs related to SCCT and EVT. A survey instrument was e-mailed to Purdue students who switched from engineering to engineering technology, and it was also used as a recruitment tool for the third study. The third and final study employed a thematic analysis to explore the reasons why students switched from engineering to engineering technology. Statistical methods include regression analysis of longitudinal data, correlational analysis of theoretical constructs consisting of Likert-scale survey items, and thematic analysis of open-ended survey responses and semi-structured interviews. Based on data from MIDFIELD, students disproportionately switched to ET than any other major, comprising over 40% of all students who leave engineering went to technology. Self-reported survey data from students who switched from engineering to engineering technology at Purdue University revealed that students rated themselves higher on general self-efficacy than on engineering self-efficacy. These students were also intrinsically motivated and still identified with engineering. Of those survey respondents, thirteen participated in interviews as part of the third study. Themes that emerged from their surveys and interviews included pre-college expectations, parental input, alternative paths to career goal, and barriers to persist in engineering and to switch to engineering technology. Students sought engineering technology as an alternative pathway to their engineering-related career goal when their college engineering experience did not match their pre-college expectations. Because of that, students faced barriers to persisting in engineering, like their academic performance. They also faced obstacles to pursuing ET, including the stigma others associate with switching. Gathering input from their parents helped them in their decision-making process. The results support findings from other studies and provided context for students' motivations to switch. Ultimately, students maintain their engineering interests and career goals but accomplish their goals through a different context. This work has implications for students, advisors, parents, and policy makers. Advisors in high school and college can improve their ability to identify the reasons why students switch and which students may be likely to switch. This set of studies is the first step towards understanding students who start in engineering and switch their major to engineering technology.

Experts and novices: Differences in their use of mental representation and metacognition in engineering design

Dixon, Raymond Anthony University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2010 해외박사(DDOD)

Research shows that mental representation such as analogical reasoning is a fundamental cognitive tool for design problem solving (Daugherty & Mentzer, 2008; Hey, Lensey, Agogino, & Wood, 2008; Lewis, 2008). Not much is known, however, about the way students and professional engineers actively generate and change their mental representation when solving a engineering design problem. There are very few studies that show how different types of mental representations; such as metaphors, propositions, and analogies; interplay with higher order cognitive processes; such as planning, monitoring, and evaluation; as engineering designers navigate their problem and solution spaces. This empirical study investigated the mental representation and metacognitive regulation of student and professional engineers while they solve an engineering design problem. The intent is to gain a deeper insight in the differences that exists in the cognitive process of engineering students and professional engineers. The research questions guided this study were (a) How do the mental representations (propositions, metaphors, and analogies) of student and professional engineers differ in their problem and solution spaces in terms of their frequency, types, and attributes? (b) How does the metacognitive regulation (planning, monitoring, and evaluation) of student and professional engineers differ in their problem and solution spaces in terms of their frequency and characteristics? and (c) How do the mental representation and metacognitive regulation of students and professional engineers relate to their overall engineering design strategy? Concurrent and retrospective verbal protocols were collected from six mechanical engineering students and four professional mechanical engineers as they solved an engineering design problem. Their verbalizations were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded. The conclusions drawn from the data were: the use of mental representations such as propositions, analogies, and metaphors by experts and novice engineering designers in the different mental spaces are important in engineering design. Expert engineering designers use analogies differently in their solution space than do novice engineering designers. Expert engineering designers rely on within-domain analogies, between-domain analogies, heuristics, and formulas differently from novice engineering designers. In engineering design evaluation plays a larger role in the solution space of expert designers while novice designers tend to do more planning in the problem space. Finally, based on the findings recommendations are provided for engineering and technology education curriculum and instruction, engineering practice in industry, and for future research.

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.