Collaborative Research: Community-Engaged Student Learning for the Development of Empathy in Engineering

研究表明，同理心是工程学中的一项重要技能。例如，增加同理心可以促进沟通、设计过程、职业成功、道德和整个工程文化。然而，移情能力的发展尚未被认为是工科教育的重要组成部分。可能的结果是，与其他领域的专业人士相比，如今的工程师普遍缺乏充分的共鸣技能。社区参与的学生学习为工科学生提供了机会，让他们在围绕共同目标建立的面向社区的伙伴关系中培养同理心。该项目将探索社区参与的学生学习，将其作为将同理心发展纳入工程课程的平台。因此，它可以为工程教育工作者提供一种促进移情作为一项关键工程技能的机制。在这个项目中，研究人员将使用准实验、混合方法研究：1)研究社区参与的学生学习如何促进工程师的移情发展；以及(2)开发研究型教学工具来教授工程中的移情并提高学习结果。在该项目的第一阶段，目标是收集七项社区参与学习活动的基线数据，其中包括社区内的服务学习、外联和志愿性活动。学生反思、焦点小组和访谈将提供定性的洞察力，定量测量将对结果进行三角测量。该项目第二阶段的目标是开发同理心教学工具。在第三阶段，这些教学工具将在社区参与的学生学习活动中实施，并将重复收集数据，以确定这些工具对工程类学生共情发展的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Research studies have shown that empathy is an important skill in engineering. For example, increased empathy can contribute to communication, design processes, professional success, ethics, and the overall culture of engineering. However, development of empathy has not yet been recognized to be an important component of engineering education. Likely as a result, engineers today generally have less fully developed empathy skills, when compared to professionals in other fields. Community-engaged student learning offers opportunities for engineering students to develop empathy within community-oriented partnerships built around mutual goals. This project will explore community-engaged student learning as a platform inclusion of empathy development in engineering curricula. Thus, it can provide engineering educators with a mechanism to promote empathy as a key engineering skill.In this project, the investigators will use quasi-experimental, mixed methods research to: 1) study how community-engaged student learning may foster the development of empathy in engineers; and (2) develop research-informed instructional tools to teach empathy and enhance learning outcomes around empathy in engineering. In the first phase of the project, the goal is to collect baseline data across seven community-engaged learning activities, which include service learning, outreach, and volunteer-type activities within the community. Student reflections, focus groups, and interviews will provide qualitative insight, and quantitative measurements will triangulate findings. The goal of the second phase of the project is to develop instructional tools for empathy. In the third phase, these instructional tools will be implemented in community-engaged student learning activities and data collection will be repeated to determine the impact of the tools on empathy development in engineering students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.