Abstract:In 2007 Gary Downey, Juan Lucena and Carl Mitcham argued that a "key issue in ethics education for engineers concerns the relationship between the identity of the engineer and the responsibilities of engineering work". They suggested that "one methodological strategy for sorting out similarities and differences in engineers' identities is to ask the 'who' question. Who is an engineer? Or, what makes one an engineer?" (Downey, Lucena & Mitcham, 2007). This chapter explores these questions of who is an engineer and what makes one an engineer by examining how engineering and engineering technology students in Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) describe and differentiate themselves. DIT offers both 4-year engineering degrees (that are equivalent to the educational standard required for professional status) and 3-year degrees in engineering technology. Annually DIT graduates the largest combined number of engineering and engineering technology majors in the country. We present results that show that there is no distinct sense of identity for a technologist. For faculty as well as engineering students and engineering technology students, design is perceived as a key differentiating activity that separates the engineer from the engineering technologist. Paradoxically, while all students chose DIT based on its reputation and practical focus, it is engineering technology students who indicated they are prepared for the 'real world' as they near graduation. Results also show, in terms of their own responses, that engineering and engineering technology students have fairly consistent views of their education and preparation for the workforce.
Research on the role of gritdefined as both perseverance and passion for long-term goalson human performance has been conducted for the past decade. It has been suggested that this non-cognitive factor is a better predictor of students' retention than traditional academic measures. These findings hold relevance for engineering education research but studies on this area are still scarce. This paper provides a systematic review of the current state of research on grit and its correlates in engineering higher education research. Publications were identified using three types of databases specific to engineering education; a final set of 31 relevant records was analysed by type of population, methods, research topics and main results. Most of the reviewed studies implemented quantitative methodologies to assess grit and also used one of the two versions of Duckworth's Grit scale. Key findings are that in engineering education research, both the conceptualisation of grit and research reporting procedures have been inconsistent. Such inconsistency hinders interpretation of the impact of grit in engineering education. In response, new research avenues and best practices for reporting are proffered.
This paper provides a system level perspective of the contextual pressures facing designers, engineers and businesses today. In it, we challenge negative creative norms and we champion positive 'post normal' creativity to enable a sustainable future. We hypothesise that organisations working towards creative sustainable solutions are driven by a purpose designed to respond to the current and contextual pressures faced by the Earth's systems, a global society and a global economy. Developing motivations within a sustainable system will require instilling a long-term world-view perspective in all learnersand in this we include international leaders and industrialists, business owners, academic teachers and pupils. A regenerative mind-set must be encouraged across the collective of engineers, designers and business leaders-so that humanity can realise ecological, social and financial prosperity. 'Business as normal' must come to an end. We must enable an industrialised humanity to design its way out of unsustainable times. Across undergraduate and postgraduate education, through to Continued Professional Development and lifelong learning, the impact of design and business decisions must be qualified and quantified with respect to the three pillars (people, planet and profit). The consequences must be recognised, discussed, measured and used to productive and healthy advantage. By generating and adopting a more holistic view of impact, we have the potential for making real time measurement in a clean Fourth Industrial Revolution. With tangible measures of impact across full project lifecycle and the full supply and distribution chain, designers and engineers will be better informed to make sustainable decisions.
Research in Engineering Education Symposium (REES). Shannon's teaching areas include architecture and urban design, introductory engineering, Building Information Modeling, environmental sustainability, and educational planning. Dr. Gavin Duffy is a faculty member in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Systems at Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin), where he has been teaching since 2002. He received a PhD in engineering education in 2017, with a study focused on the role of spatial ability in problem representation among engineering students. He is a member of TU Dublin's CREATE (Contributions to Research in Engineering and Applied Technology Education) research group. He has interest in epistemological development and on how engineering education research is conducted. Prior to joining TU Dublin, Gavin worked in engineering design consultancies as both a chemical engineer and control systems engineer. At DIT, he delivers modules on chemical technology, instrumentation, automation, and control engineering and has been using project-based learning since 2005. Prof. Brian Bowe is Head of Academic Affairs and Assistant Registrar at Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin). He leads the research group called CREATE (for Contributions to Research in Engineering and Applied Technology Education) with more than 30 members. He has been active in STEM education research for over 20 years and led the development of this area in TU Dublin. In 2001, he established the Physics Education Research group that evolved between 2001 and 2008 to include education research in computer science, chemistry and engineering. In 2013, he established CREATE, which currently involves a diverse range of PhD research topics that he supervises, including studies of spatial skills development, ethics in STEM education, epistemological development, and the impact of pedagogy on minority students in STEM. Geolocation: Dublin: (capital city) 53° 20' N, 6° 16' W Comparing grounded theory and phenomenology as methods to understand lived experience of engineering educators implementing Problem-Based LearningGetting lecturers/professors to implement pedagogical innovations is a central focus of university managers/administrators today. Convincing teachers to change is notoriously hard. This research project investigated the shift in pedagogical approach among a small group of faculty as they replaced traditional lecture-based methods with Problem-Based Learning projects. Interviews were conducted with eight of the most active drivers of this change, around the research question: What was it like to be part of a learning group focused on tangible change toward student-centered learning? Objectives of this study were:(1) to understand how pedagogical changed happened in an electrical engineering programme at a post-secondary institution in Ireland; (2) to analyse data using two different research methods to distill as much meaning as possible; (3) to describe the process, results, and findings achieved using each method; and (4...
This exploratory study investigates how nine London-based civil engineers have enacted 'global responsibility' and how their efforts involve ethics and professionalism. The study assesses moral philosophies related to ethics, as well as professional engineering bodies' visions, accreditation standards, and requirements for continuing professional development.Regarding ethics, the study questions where the line falls between what an engineer 'must do' and what 'would be good to do'. Although the term ethics did not spring to mind when participants were asked about making decisions related to global responsibility, participants' concern for protecting the environment and making life better for people did, nonetheless, demonstrate clear ethical concern. Participants found means and mandates for protecting the health and safety of construction workers to be clearer than those for protecting society and the natural environment. Specific paths for reporting observed ethical infringements were not always clear. As such, angalyses suggest that today's shared sense of professional duty and obligation may be too limited to achieve goals set by engineering professional bodies and the United Nations. Moreover, although professional and educational accreditation standards have traditionally embedded ethics within sustainability, interviews indicate sustainability is a construct embedded within ethics.
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