Engineering performance and teamwork perceptions shaped by structured learning experiences in a makerspace.

The ability to work on teams is of critical importance to the field of engineering and a critical competency for future engineers. Fostering performance of effective teamwork through the education of engineers emphasizes the humanistic dimension of the engineering profession and engages future engineering professionals in complex and dynamic team experiences. Team performance and effectiveness of student teams is strongly influenced by individual student perceptions of teamwork as a learning mechanism for successful collective learning experiences. Initial perceptions of teamwork among first year engineering students are often negative due to prior adverse or unproductive team performance. Makerspace learning environments are becoming more prominent in engineering education as promising environments for open-ended, team-based learning experiences that promote positive perceptions of teamwork and performance. The educational potential that makerspaces have to promote engineering design-thinking among the community of teams has great appeal among engineering education. This study explored the engineering performance and student teamwork perceptions of a cohort of first year engineering students (N=488, 126 teams) engaged in a team-based learning experience within a makerspace learning environment. The mixed methods convergent case study design examined teams within and across cases to extract systematic patterns within and across the three constructs of this study: 1) team effectiveness, 2) engineering practice, and 3) teamwork perceptions. Using a 3-phase analysis approach teams were found to be effective in their ability to perform and a relationship emerged between the effectiveness of a team and the team’s collective efficacy. Student perceptions were found to shift over time and through experience. The team-based learning experience implemented through the course was valuable to improving student perceptions of teamwork by 1) ensuring multidisciplinary teams, 2) gradually releasing teams to perform complex, ill-structured problem solving, and 3) using the resources and space within the makerspace to encourage teams to creatively solve the design problem. More research is needed to investigate the inner dynamics of the teams, particularly how well makerspace learning environments engage diverse individuals and what differences exist among experiences

Teaching Innovation as Part of an Agribusiness Curriculum

Innovation is critical to the survival of agricultural businesses in the U.S. yet few universities have classes in their curricula that focus on innovation and innovation management. Innovation includes developing new processes and concepts and taking products based on those ideas to market. By its nature, innovation generally involves technical components, market assessment, business analysis, and implementation strategies that include marketing campaigns to a target market. As a result, if innovation is going to be experientially taught to students, the class will likely need to include concepts from multiple disciplines. The objectives of this paper are to present an outline of capstone/senior design classes designed to cause students to learn innovation by participating in interdisciplinary teams working with real companies on the development of new product innovation.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

From Gatekeeping to Engagement: A Multicontextual, Mixed Method Study of Student Academic Engagement in Introductory STEM Courses.

The lack of academic engagement in introductory science courses is considered by some to be a primary reason why students switch out of science majors. This study employed a sequential, explanatory mixed methods approach to provide a richer understanding of the relationship between student engagement and introductory science instruction. Quantitative survey data were drawn from 2,873 students within 73 introductory science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses across 15 colleges and universities, and qualitative data were collected from 41 student focus groups at eight of these institutions. The findings indicate that students tended to be more engaged in courses where the instructor consistently signaled an openness to student questions and recognizes her/his role in helping students succeed. Likewise, students who reported feeling comfortable asking questions in class, seeking out tutoring, attending supplemental instruction sessions, and collaborating with other students in the course were also more likely to be engaged. Instructional implications for improving students' levels of academic engagement are discussed

Choosing Creativity: The Role of Individual Risk and Ambiguity Aversion on Creative Concept Selection in Engineering Design

While creativity is often seen as an indispensable quality of engineering design, individuals often select conventional or previously successful options during the concept selection process due to the inherent risk associated with creative concepts and their inadvertent bias against creativity. However, little is actually known about what factors attribute to the promotion or filtering of these creative concepts during concept selection. To address this knowledge gap, an exploratory study was conducted with 38 undergraduate engineering students. This study was aimed at investigating the impact of individual risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, and student educational level on the selection and filtering of creative ideas during the concept selection process. The results from this study indicate that an individuals ability to generate creative ideas is not significantly related to their preference for creative ideas during concept selection, but individual risk aversion and ambiguity aversion are significantly related to both creative concept selection and creative idea generation. Our results also revealed that first and third-year students’ creative ability are affected differently by varying levels of tolerance for ambiguity. These results highlight the need for a more directed focus on creativity in engineering education in both concept creation and concept selection. These results also add to our understanding of creativity during concept selection and provide guidelines for enhancing the design process

A PHENOMENOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS\u27 EXPERIENCES WITH PROBLEMS INVOLVING MULTIPLE POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Engineers are expected to solve problems that are ill-structured. These problems are presented with a lack of necessary information and allow for different ways of engaging with the problem; they are open-ended and involve multiple possible solutions with multiple means of evaluation. In order to allow maximum time for students to develop skills for solving such problems, undergraduate engineering programs can introduce such problems during the first year of students’ education, in the form of cornerstone design tasks. This provides students with more opportunities to develop their ability to engage with ill-structured problems, which are characteristic of engineering work. Researchers have documented variation within both the behavior and perceptions of students’ early experiences with design problems. General themes include novice-like design behavior, discomfort with lack of information, difficulty with problem scoping, and resistance to ambiguity. To build on these generalizations of students’ experiences, a more thorough understanding of the variation in how students experience this phenomenon of engaging with ill-structured problems is needed to design effective learning environments

Clab torino: A transdisciplinary environment to provide a challenge-based teaching model

Promoting an open dialogue, a constant interdisciplinary collaboration with companies, between universities, about partnership or open innovation perspective, today is a challenge that still faces some resistance. Learning to deal with complexity, with the coexistence of different points of view, in collaboration to combined and re-combined know-how in ever new, original and challenging formulations, brings with its specific needs. In this sense, design takes on a fundamental role to create projects with a view to sustainable innovation, projects that are increasingly responsive to contemporary complexity. So, how does design education need to change? How do working designers and design researchers can update their skills to meet the challenges of the present and future? This contribution, through the experimentation of the Contamination Lab Torino, investigates a new design-driven educational model intended as an extremely dynamic process from the creation of a multidisciplinary team to the transition from a product design logic to a Product Service System one, as the most effective way to face the issue of the system management, as a way to guarantee the appropriate flexibility to the contemporary needs of our society

Exploring 21st Century Learning in Virginia Secondary School Technology and Engineering Classrooms: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine how integrative STEM teachers utilize the Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy (STEL) to foster and assess 21st-century learning in technology and engineering classes at multiple Virginia public secondary schools. The theory guiding this study was Kolb’s experiential learning theory, which integrates nine learning theories into an innovative cyclical learning process that is like the engineering design loop. This hermeneutic phenomenology included 15 Virginia technology and engineering schoolteachers (Grades 6-12) who purposefully taught multiple academic disciplines and utilized the eight practices of the STEL in the context of their curriculum to foster 21st-century learning. Data collection included individual interviews, journal prompts, and physical artifacts (lesson plans, assessment tools, etc.). Data were entered into the Delve data analysis software and were analyzed using Van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenological theory for common themes regarding the fostering and assessment of 21st-century literacy. The themes extracted from the data included measuring 21st-century learning, developing 21st-century curriculum, and the eight practices of technology and engineering educators: creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, optimism, attention to ethics, systems thinking, and making and doing. The findings indicated that integrative STEM methodology, multidisciplinary instruction, and the eight practices of the STEL fostered 21st-century learning. This study’s significance was to add to the available literature on integrative STEM education and the STEL fostering 21st-century learning

Advancing Patient Safety in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

As part of a systemwide transformation, the VA formed its National Center for Patient Safety to foster an organizational culture of safety within its nationwide network of hospitals and outpatient clinics. A recent medical team training program designed to improve communication among operating room staff was associated with a reduction in surgical mortality and improvements in quality of care, on-time surgery starts, and staff morale. The program is now being expanded to other clinical units, along with a patient engagement program that prevents errors by facilitating communication relating to patients' daily care plans. A recognition program stimulated facilities to conduct timelier and higher-quality root-cause analyses of reported safety events to identify stronger actions for preventing their recurrence. Other initiatives have reduced rates of health care -- associated infections, patient mortality, and post-operative complications. Success factors include leadership accountability for performance and organizational support for testing, expanding, and adopting improvements

Fostering Creativity in Engineering Education: Relationship of Design Task Difficulty to Solution Novelty

Conflicting claims about engineering students’ abilities to innovate solutions to design tasks warranted evaluation of measures and clarification of roles of design task and student characteristics in developing innovative solutions. Three manuscripts clarified quality of measures and roles of design tasks and student characteristics using survey data from 361 students. The first manuscript evaluated measures of task difficulty, current achievement motivation and cognitive style using CFA, EFA and reliability analyses. Measures were found to have low validity and reliability. Future studies should be conducted with large sample sizes and improved item quality. The second manuscript clarified roles of Grade Point Average (GPA), classification, major, task familiarity, current achievement motivation, and cognitive style in developing innovative solutions using decision tree analysis. GPA, major, current achievement motivation, and cognitive style were significant predictors of novelty. Eight combinations of students’ characteristics that predict novelty of students’ solutions to a design task were identified. Of the eight, four combinations predict conventional solutions. The remaining four combinations predict novel solutions. Stability of combinations and their thresholds should be verified with different design tasks and large sample sizes. The third manuscript examined relationships of design task structuredness and complexity to novelty of solutions after controlling for GPA, major, challenge, anxiety, interest and novelty-seeking orientation. Structural equation modeling found significant iii positive association between structuredness and novelty, significant negative association between complexity and novelty, and significant positive correlation between structuredness and complexity. Only major 2 (BAEN, BMEN, CHEN, ETID, ISEN, NUEN, OCEN or PETE) was found significant relative to undeclared majors. Structuredness, complexity, major 2 explained 21% of the total variance in novelty. Findings support development of models to explain relationships between design tasks and abilities to innovate as moderated or mediated by student characteristics, controlling confounding effects of design tasks and students’ characteristics in ideation studies, and discovery of strategies to develop students’ abilities to innovate solutions