Collaborative EAGER: Novel Ethnographic Investigations of Engineering Workplaces to Advance Theory and Research Methods for Preparing the Future Workforce

一个国家在技术竞技场的竞争力取决于工程师队伍的成功。因此，至关重要的是，我们要对工程师的工作方式以及他们的工作如何变化有更好的科学理解。如果没有经过充分研究和值得信赖的专业实践，教育工作者是否能为未来的工程师职业生涯做好充分的准备是值得怀疑的。然而，关于工程师在工作场所做什么的研究仍然持续缺乏。这个探索性的项目将通过测试新的研究方法来帮助弥合这些差距，以产生关于工程师在工作中做什么的新知识。传统上，这种研究是通过在实际工作场所进行直接观察来进行的。这种方法需要修改，因为开放式网络，地理上分散的团队，和新的数字化工具，使它越来越不可行，无论是研究人员，资助者和研究地点进行长时间的现场研究。其他方法，如调查和访谈，往往更容易进行，但在他们可以提供什么样的见解有限。所提出的研究的新奇和探索性方面来自于采取新的和不同的实证方法来研究工程工作场所的做法。通过该项目开发的结果和资源将支持正在进行的努力，以改善当前和未来的工程师如何在工作角色和职业生涯中获得成功和卓越的培训。在这个探索性的项目中，我们将采取创新的方法来收集，分析和归档与工程实践相关的经验数据。该项目将涉及民族志研究在多个现场代表多个行业部门使用新的方法，如敏捷民族志，痕迹民族志和网络民族志。这些方法是新的和不断发展的，因此很少被用于研究工程实践。然而，由于许多原因，它们似乎很有希望，包括它们有可能更快地产生研究结果，并更加注重具体问题。正是由于这些优势，这些方法已经开始在行业中获得吸引力，特别是在软件工程和相关领域，这些领域的工作已经非常数字化和分布式。为该项目提议的实地研究特别关注如何在团队内部和团队之间协调和调整工作，包括通过使用数字数据和工具。该项目还将调查和应对三个具体的研究挑战：1）使新的数据收集和分析方法与新兴的研究主题和网站访问限制保持一致，2）管理，存档和共享多模式人种学数据集，以及3）探索交流研究结果的替代方法，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，更广泛的影响审查标准。

The competitive strength of the nation in the technological arena depends on the success of the engineering workforce. It is therefore crucial that we develop better scientific understanding of how engineers work, as well as how their work is changing. Without well-researched and trustworthy representations of professional practice, it is questionable whether educators can adequately prepare future engineers for their careers. Yet there remains a persistent lack of research on what engineers do in the workplace. This exploratory project will help bridge these gaps by testing new research approaches to generate new knowledge about what engineers do at work. Traditionally, such research has been conducted through direct observations in a physical workplace. This approach needs to be modified since open workspaces, geographically distributed teams, and new digital tools make it increasingly infeasible to perform on-site research for long periods of time, both for researchers, funders, and study sites. Other approaches like surveys and interviews are often easier to carry out, but are limited in what kinds of insights they can provide. The novelty and exploratory aspect of the proposed study comes from taking new and different empirical approaches to study engineering workplace practices. Findings and resources developed through this project will support ongoing efforts to improve how current and future engineers are trained to succeed and excel in their job roles and careers. In this exploratory project we will undertake innovative approaches to collecting, analyzing, and archiving empirical data related to engineering practice. This project will involve ethnographic research at multiple field sites representing multiple industry sectors using novel methods such as agile ethnography, trace ethnography, and network ethnography. These methods are new and evolving, and thus have scarcely been used to study engineering practice. Yet they appear highly promising for many reasons, including their potential to generate research findings more rapidly and with a greater focus on specific problems and questions. Such methods have started to gain traction in industry precisely due to such advantages, especially in software engineering and related fields where work is already very digital and distributed in character. The field studies proposed for this project are especially concerned with how work is coordinated and aligned within and across teams, including through the use of digital data and tools. This project will also investigate and respond to three specific research challenges: 1) aligning new data collection and analysis approaches with emerging research topics and site access constraints, 2) managing, archiving, and sharing multi-modal ethnographic data sets, and 3) exploring alternative approaches to communicating research findings, including formats and styles that are more accessible and appealing to different audiences.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.