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

随着美国人口的迅速老龄化，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，存在着充分证明的挑战。该项目旨在发起跨界研究，以增强共情创新能力，这将支持在工程设计过程中以用户为中心。在这个项目中，研究团队将研究本科工程专业学生如何随着时间的推移学习移情创新，以及这种学习如何受到社区学习项目和课程的影响。研究结果将为在本科阶段进行有效的移情创新教学提供启示。在研究成果的指导下，可以更好地设计教学和学习技巧，帮助学生茁壮成长，获得宝贵的STEM知识和技能。通过知识传播和社区外展，本研究将影响多个利益相关者和机构。最终，这项研究将帮助学生成功地为不断发展的医疗保健行业的职业生涯做好准备，该行业需要来自美国八分之一人口的劳动力，消耗近五分之一的美国国内生产总值，每年花费约2.7万亿美元。本课题的具体研究问题为：(1)工科本科生的共情设计倾向和能力在工程设计项目中是如何演变的；(2)在各种以用户为中心的智能健康工程设计项目中，工科本科生的移情设计与他们的工程创新在多大程度上相关？对于这项研究，研究小组将采用混合方法的方法。量化指标包括个体共情倾向、创新倾向、共情设计能力和团队创新潜力。定性数据收集包括调查、实时观察和设计评审会议的录像。该团队将利用一套统计分析方法，包括被动纵向设计中具有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一起设计和评估个人和团队的绩效评估任务。该项目将帮助我们了解个人创新行为倾向与共情倾向的关系，研究团队创新潜力与团队每个成员所呈现的共情设计能力之间的关系，并通过更好地培养学生的创新能力来支持当前智能医疗工程的努力。

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.