This paper contrasts performances overall and by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES) for middle school students learning science through traditional scripted inquiry versus a design-based, systems approach. Students designed and built electrical alarm systems to learn electricity concepts over a fourweek period using authentic engineering design methods. The contrast study took place in the eighth grade of an urban, public school district, with the systems approach implemented in 26 science classes (10 teachers and 587 students) and the scripted inquiry approach implemented in inquiry groups of 20 science classes (five teachers and 466 students). The results suggest that a systems design approach for teaching science concepts has superior performance in terms of knowledge gain achievements in core science concepts, engagement, and retention when compared to a scripted inquiry approach. The systems design approach was most helpful to low-achieving African American students.
This paper describes an engineering graduate option in Systems Engineering designed to overcome some of the effects of specialization and compartmentalization by building a link between technical and ethical training. Students in this option produce case studies that emphasize ethical issues in the design process. The goal of the program is to turn out ethical professionals who are able to reflect on the moral implications of technology. The proposed approach uses realistic or real‐hypothetical hybrid case studies as a type of vicarious mentoring, and, when supplemented with readings in ethical theory and codes, may serve as a starting point for a deeper understanding of behavioral dilemmas. The developers of this approach are a multi‐disciplinary team from the Engineering School and the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. The paper describes how the graduate option is structured and provides data on student outcomes.
This article proposes three states in an actor-network and a global/local distinction among actants. This theoretical framework is applied to two invention networks: one created by an inventor of solar heating systems and another created by a designer who wanted to create an environmentally sustainable furniture fabric. Both solar inventor and fabric designer wanted to develop technologies that would improve the environment and also make money. The article concludes by considering whether invention networks that intend to turn “good into gold” have to evolve a shared representation or whether it is sufficient for a new design to serve as a boundary object for actants.
I use an actor-network perspective to analyze a case study of an environmentally sustainable, commercial textile fabric design. Susan Lyons of DesignTex, Inc., William McDonough of William McDonough and Partners, and Albin Käin of Rohner Textil AG constructed and maintained a network of people and objects with an environmental focus by anticipating contingencies that continually threatened their network, such as waste disposal, credibility, and financial problems. In response to these contingencies, they developed and implemented environmental tools, such as an environmental design protocol, a life-cycle development (LCD) methodology, environmental cost accounting procedures, product-evaluation metrics, and employee-management systems. The success of their efforts rests on their ability to recruit network allies by integrating these environmental tools.
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