Designing a Multi-Cycle Approach to Empathetic Electrical Engineering Courses

Abstract

Sara Jones completed both her BS and MS in Electrical Engineering at Iowa State University. Her interests in Engineering Education stem from her years spent as a teaching assistant and mentor for a freshman introductory Electrical Engineering class. She is particularly passionate about incorporating empathy into engineering education in order to promote diversity and inclusion.

Review on Empathy in Engineering Education: Conceptions, Interventions, and Challenges

“…Despite the need and initiatives for fostering empathy in engineering education (Wilson & Mukhopadhyaya, 2022) have revealed that engineering students often face "cognitive dissonance" when their myopic perception of the engineering profession is juxtaposed with society, policy and education's thrust towards empathetic design. This is further compounded by the inhibitory relationship between students' degree of responsibility towards the public vis a vis their technical and analytical thought that engineering education develops Hess et al, 2015;Shannon, Jones & Mina, 2019) Despite all that we know about empathy, its need and initiatives to promote its development, scholars have revealed the need for a coherent framework (Guanes et al, 2022;Strobel et al, 2013;Surma-aho & Hölttä-Otto, 2022), a set of directed guidelines for its development (Alzayed et al, 2021) and a description of "direct, measurable impact of interventions on the empathy of engineers" (Wilson & Mukhopadhyaya, 2022, p.03). Considering the length and breadth of these needs, this study undertakes a scoping review of the literature to develop a broad conceptualisation of empathy for the engineering profession and aggregate interventions to develop and measure it in engineering education.…”

Revisiting classroom environment and activities: Reexamination of mistakes and learning cycles

“…A philosophical cornerstone of our approach in facilitating the students' learning is the Deweyan Cycle of as shown in Figure 1 [1]. This Cycle shows the stages a student goes through to achieve mastery over new materials.…”

“…The role of educators is to facilitate the students' journey. Educators create safe space for students to learn, make mistakes, emancipate, and create an identity for themselves [1].…”

Cultivating Inclusivity: A Systematic Literature Review on Developing Empathy for Students in STEM Fields

“…As an alternative to, or supplement to lecture-based lessons, readings followed up with group discussions and reflections have been suggested to facilitate learning in relation to emotional intelligence [68]. Shannon et al also described how replacing traditional quizzes with games where students work together to find solutions to problems or to explore concepts well-received, and served to develop a community amongst the students.…”