Anneliese Watt is a professor of English at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She teaches and researches technical and professional communication, rhetoric and composition, medicine in literature, presidential election rhetoric and other humanistic studies for engineering and science students. Her current work focuses on engineering design.
Entrepreneurial Thinking in a First-Year Engineering Design StudioIn summer 2016, the authors and several other collaborators developed and taught a course aiming to advance the pedagogy informing a proposed new degree program in Engineering Design, in which design, writing, and engineering topics are integrated into a multidisciplinary design studio setting. Most closely associated with the disciplines of industrial design and architecture, design studios immerse students in an authentic problem-solving environment:"In studio, designers express and explore ideas, generate and evaluate alternatives, and ultimately make decisions and take action. They make external representations (drawings and three-dimensional models) and reason with these representations to inquire, analyze, and test hypotheses about the designs they represent. Through the linked acts of drawing, looking, and inferring, designers propose alternatives, and interpret and explore their consequences. ... They use the representations to test their designs against a priori performance criteria. And in the highly social environment of the design studio students learn to communicate, to critique, and to respond to criticism, and to collaborate."
Sarah Brownell is a Lecturer in Design Development and Manufacturing for the Kate Gleason College of Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She works extensively with students in the multidisciplinary engineering capstone design course and other project based elective courses, incorporating human centered design, participatory development, and design for development themes. She was a cofounder of the non-profit Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) which promotes ecological sanitation in Haiti. Alexander Dale is the Executive Director of Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh. His academic background is in energy and water policy, life-cycle assessment, and sustainable design. As one of the re-founders of ESW, he has focused on expanding educational opportunities as well as new engagement for faculty and professionals.c American Society for Engineering Education, 2015 Page 26.508.1
Development and Application of the Sustainability Skills and Dispositions Scale to the Wicked Problems in Sustainability InitiativeAbstract Throughout engineering curriculum there has been a growing focus on sustainability-related learning objectives, oftentimes with the ultimate learning goals being instilling dispositions such as the awareness of the environmental impact of engineering outcomes or concern towards social justice issues. Within this paper, we first provide an overview of an instrument we have developed to evaluate students' attainment of analogous learning objectives. This instrument, the Sustainability Skills and Dispositions Scale (SSDS), was designed to measure four sustainabilityrelated outcomes: (a) confidence in responding to wicked problems and awareness of (b) global, (c) social, and (d) environmental responsibilities as a designer. The SSDS was implemented pre-post within a course context as part of a multi-university initiative called the Wicked Problems in Sustainability Initiative (WPSI) during the Fall of 2014.The primary objective of this paper was to provide an overview of the reliability of the SSDS and to consider where the SSDS may still be improved for optimal alignment with WPSI objectives and outcomes. Our secondary goal was to consider where WPSI may be improved in the future in light of the survey results, which included the survey items and written reflections.To accomplish this second goal, we first used the SSDS items to compare pre-and post-course responses overall and on a course-by-course basis. To corroborate findings from this quantitative component, and to elucidate how both WPSI and the SSDS may be refined and improved, our secondary goal was pursued through content analysis of students' post-course written reflections. Participating instructors' experiences within WPSI were juxtaposed against these qualitative and quantitative findings to discuss broader implications for engineering education curriculum and to consider future recommendations for WPSI.
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