Research Initiation: Enhancing the Learning Outcomes of Empathic Innovation in Longevity Engineering

随着美国人口迅速老龄化，智能医疗技术对老年人和残疾人的福祉和护理质量至关重要。不幸的是，在工程创新过程中，要让学生具备开发以用户为中心的解决方案的技术和专业能力，存在着有充分证据的挑战。该项目旨在发起跨越边界的研究，以增强共情创新能力，在工程设计过程中支持以用户为中心。在这个项目中，研究团队将研究工科本科生如何随着时间的推移学习共鸣创新，以及这种学习如何受到基于社区的学习项目和课程的性质的影响。研究结果将为本科生进行有效的共情创新教学提供启示。在研究结果的指导下，教与学的技术可以更好地设计，以帮助学生茁壮成长并获得有价值的STEM知识和技能。通过知识传播和社区推广，这项研究将影响多个利益攸关方和机构。最终，这项研究将帮助学生为在不断发展的医疗行业中的职业生涯做好准备。医疗行业需要占美国人口八分之一的劳动力，消耗美国国内生产总值的近五分之一，每年的支出约为2.7万亿美元。本项目的具体研究问题是(1)工科本科生在工程设计项目中的共情设计倾向和能力是如何演变的；(2)工科本科生的共情设计与他们在各种以用户为中心的智能健康工程设计项目上的工程创新有多大程度的关联。对于这项研究，研究小组将采用混合方法。量化指标包括个体移情倾向、创新倾向、移情设计能力和基于团队的创新潜力。定性数据收集包括调查、实时观察和设计评审会议的录像。该团队将开发一套统计分析方法，包括在被动纵向设计中使用潜在变量的结构方程建模。定性分析将采用主题分析、内容分析和语篇分析。研究团队将与社区项目合作伙伴和领域专家合作，设计和评估个人和基于团队的绩效评估任务。这个项目将让我们了解个人的创新行为倾向与他们的共情倾向之间的关系，研究基于团队的创新潜力与团队中每个成员提出的共情设计能力之间的关系，并通过更好地让学生具备创新能力来支持当前在智能医疗工程方面的努力。

With a rapidly aging US population, smart healthcare technologies are critical to the well-being and quality of care among the elderly and disabled. Unfortunately, there are well-documented challenges in equipping students with the technical and professional competencies for developing user-centered solutions during the engineering innovation process. This project aims at initiating boundary-spanning research for enhancing empathic innovation abilities, which will support user-centeredness during the engineering design process. In this project, the research team will examine how undergraduate engineering students learn empathic innovation over time and how this learning is affected by the nature of community-based learning projects and curricula. The results will provide insights into effective teaching of empathic innovation at the undergraduate level. Guided by the research findings, teaching and learning techniques can be better designed to help students thrive and gain valuable STEM knowledge and skills. Through knowledge dissemination and community outreach, this research will impact multiple stakeholders and institutions. Ultimately, this research will help successfully prepare students for careers in an ever-evolving healthcare industry, which demands a workforce from one eighth of the U.S population, consumes nearly one fifth of the U.S. gross domestic product, and spends about $2.7 trillion annually. Specific research questions for this project are (1) how do undergraduate engineering students' empathic design tendencies and abilities evolve during an engineering design project; and (2) to what extent, do undergraduate engineering students' empathic designs relate to their engineering innovation on various user-centered smart health engineering design projects. For this research study, the research team will apply a mixed-methods approach. The quantitative measures include individual empathic tendencies, innovative tendencies, empathic design abilities, and team-based innovation potential. Qualitative data collection involves surveys, real-time observations, and videotaping of design review sessions. The team will exploit a suite of statistical analysis methods, including structural equation modeling with latent variables in passive longitudinal designs. The qualitative analysis will employ thematic, content, and discourse analyses. The research team will work with community project partners and domain experts to design and evaluate individual and team-based performance evaluation tasks. This project will inform our understanding of an individual's tendencies in innovative behaviors in relationship to their empathic tendencies, examine how team-based innovation potential is related to empathic design abilities presented by each member of the team, and support current efforts in smart healthcare engineering by better equipping students with the ability to innovate.