Research Initiative: A Holistic Cross-Disciplinary Project Experience as a Platform to Advance the Professional Formation of Engineers

为了保持世界经济的领先地位，美国必须培养一支更有能力解决问题的工程师队伍，考虑到我们作为一个社会所面临的社会问题。今天的工程毕业生在工程的技术方面已经做好了充分的准备。为了解决当今世界面临的复杂、多方面的问题，工程师还需要发展广泛的非技术技能，并在多学科团队中有效地工作。这种新一代的工程师不仅需要解决问题，还需要定义问题，领导多学科专业团队为未来的工程重大挑战制定议程。该项目旨在了解工程专业学生的专业形成，并为工程学院提供社会科学研究专业知识，使他们能够解决当前工程课程中的问题。工程本科生的跨学科经验是为了解决当代工程问题和研究工程师的专业形成而开发的。通过这种方式，工科学生通过与社会科学学科的合作交流，将解决问题的工具箱扩展到传统工程领域之外。整体工程项目课程让学生了解全球问题，拓宽他们的视野，提高他们的专业技能，并可以作为未来工程教育的平台，以应对工程挑战和未来工程毕业生的期望。设计了一个跨学科团队学习模型来评估工程师的专业形成。本文收集和分析了不同的定量和定性经验数据，以验证理论模型，并评估整体工程项目课程在工程师专业形成中的价值。首要的研究问题是：(1)在培养未来的工程师和准备工程师应对21世纪我们作为一个社会所面临的挑战方面，跨学科的开放式基于问题的经验有多有效？(2)开放式的基于问题的经验作为指导工程学院社会科学研究方法的平台，效果如何？本研究使工程教育工作者对工程课程中跨学科课程的有效性有了更深入的了解。通过整体工程项目课程的专业形成的研究成果可以在整个西弗吉尼亚大学共享，并通过会议和期刊文章传播，以鼓励其他工程学院使用社会科学研究技能来扩展他们的教学方法。此外，这种全面的课程方法为全国各地的工程教育工作者提供了一个令人信服的机会，让他们重新思考工程顶点经验的传统方法。拟议的项目预计将影响工程pi，他们受益于教师导师在社会科学方法和方法方面的指导。通过与不同的学生团体/组织和部门学术顾问委员会的合作，确定并招募代表性不足的科学，技术，工程和数学学生（例如，少数民族，女性，来自西弗吉尼亚州农村的第一代大学生）参加顶点课程。这项研究对美国国家科学基金会有贡献。通过对工程师专业形成的研究，将3个工程学院引入社会科学研究方法，并使他们能够在未来进一步扩展工程教育研究，开展“工程形成研究启动”计划。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

To remain a world economic leader, the U.S. must develop an engineering workforce who are more competent in their problem-solving skills considering social dimensions of problems we face as a society. Today's engineering graduates are well prepared in the technical aspects of the engineering. To address the complex, multi-faceted problems facing the world today, engineers also need to develop a wide range of nontechnical skills and work effectively in multidisciplinary teams. This new breed of engineer needs to not only be a problem solver, but also a problem definer, leading multidisciplinary teams of professionals in setting agendas for future engineering grand challenges. This project seeks to understand professional formation of engineering students and equip engineering faculty with social science research expertise that will enable them to address current w in the engineering curriculum. A cross-disciplinary experience for engineering undergraduates is developed to solve a contemporary engineering problem and to study the professional formation of engineers. In this way, engineering students expand the problem-solving toolbox beyond the realm of traditional engineering through a collaborative exchange with social science disciplines. A Holistic Engineering Project Course exposes students to global issues, broadens their outlook, increases their professional skillsets, and can serve as a platform of future engineering education that responds to engineering challenges and expectations of future engineering graduates. A Cross-Disciplinary Team Learning model is designed to assess the professional formation of engineers. Diverse sets of quantitative and qualitative empirical data are collected and analyzed to validate the theoretical model, and to assess the value of the Holistic Engineering Project Course in the professional formation of engineers. The overarching research questions are: (1) How effective is a cross-disciplinary open-ended problem-based experience in the formation of future engineers and in preparing engineers to address 21st century challenges we face as a society? (2) How effective is the open-ended problem-based experience as a platform for instructing engineering faculty in social science research methods? This research informs engineering educators on much-needed understanding of effectiveness of cross-disciplinary courses in engineering curriculum. Research findings on professional formation through the Holistic Engineering Project Course can be shared throughout West Virginia University and disseminated through conference and journal articles to encourage other engineering faculty to use social science research skills to expand their pedagogical approaches. In addition, this holistic course approach provides a compelling opportunity to engineering educators around the country to rethink the traditional approach to engineering capstone experiences. The proposed project is expected to impact the engineering PIs, who benefit from the guidance of faculty mentors in social science methods and approaches. Through collaboration with different student groups/organizations and department academic advisory board, underrepresented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students (e.g., minority, women, first-generation college students from rural West Virginia) are identified and recruited to participate in the capstone offerings. The research contributes to the NSF?s Research Initiation in Engineering Formation program by conducting research on the professional formation of engineers that introduce three engineering faculty to social science research methods and allow them to further extend engineering education studies in the future.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.