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

一个国家在技术领域的竞争实力取决于工程劳动力的成功。因此，至关重要的是，我们要更好地科学地理解工程师是如何工作的，以及他们的工作是如何变化的。如果没有经过充分研究和值得信赖的专业实践表现，教育者能否为未来的工程师做好充分的职业准备是值得怀疑的。然而，关于工程师在工作场所做什么的研究一直缺乏。这个探索性项目将通过测试新的研究方法来产生关于工程师在工作中所做的事情的新知识，从而帮助弥合这些差距。传统上，这类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，因为开放的工作空间、地理上分散的团队和新的数字工具使得对研究人员、资助者和研究地点进行长时间的现场研究越来越不可行。调查和访谈等其他方法通常更容易实施，但它们所能提供的见解种类有限。提出的研究的新颖性和探索性方面来自于采用新的和不同的经验方法来研究工程工作场所的实践。通过该项目开发的发现和资源将支持持续的努力，以改善当前和未来的工程师如何在他们的工作角色和职业生涯中获得成功和卓越的培训。在这个探索性项目中，我们将采用创新的方法来收集、分析和归档与工程实践相关的经验数据。该项目将涉及在代表多个行业部门的多个实地地点进行民族志研究，使用新颖的方法，如敏捷民族志、追踪民族志和网络民族志。这些方法都是新的和不断发展的，因此很少用于研究工程实践。然而，由于许多原因，它们看起来非常有希望，包括它们有可能更快地产生研究结果，并且更关注具体的问题和问题。正是由于这些优势，这些方法开始在工业中获得牵引力，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。为该项目提出的实地研究特别关注如何在团队内部和团队之间协调和协调工作，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)将新的数据收集和分析方法与新兴的研究主题和站点访问限制结合起来；2)管理、存档和共享多模式人种学数据集；3)探索交流研究成果的替代方法，包括更容易获取和吸引不同受众的格式和风格。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。

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.