Service Learning Projects to Improve Engineering Students' Civic Engagement and Capacity for Innovation

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This project aims to serve the national interest by improving engineering students’ learning. To do so, it will engage students in an interdisciplinary engineering service-learning model focused on civic engagement. The project will seek to develop students’ capacity for innovation while they use their engineering skills and knowledge to decrease suffering, marginalization, or exclusion of particular groups. Many engineering programs emphasize the economic opportunities that engineering degrees will open to graduates, such as working for the private sector. However, engineering students are increasingly interested in ways to use their engineering education to pursue careers in which they can see the human impact of their work. The premise of this project is that opportunities for civic engagement can improve student engagement in engineering education. These opportunities require students to learn new approaches and skills that are not typically taught in the engineering curriculum, such as human centered design and problem solving with empathy. By helping students develop these skills, students will be better positioned to use their engineering knowledge in the future to benefit society. The project will test the hypothesis that mentoring, oriented towards civic engagement and addressing societal challenges, will enhance the engagement of undergraduate engineering students in STEM learning. This project expects to enhance students’ learning experiences and provide opportunities to strengthen communities, while simultaneously encouraging students’ development of civic responsibility.With the goal of improving engineering education through the cultivation of innovative civic engagement, this project will: (i) develop, implement, and evaluate a pedagogical intervention that engages students in service learning projects; (ii) assess the effectiveness of the intervention in supporting student learning with respect to engagement in their engineering program and capacity for innovation; and (iii) refine a theoretical model of how the intervention helps students develop civic responsibility. This project will contribute to constructs of learning by combining theories on social learning into an “engagement by innovation and situated cognition” theory. The intervention will include two one-credit seminar courses designed to promote students’ innovation and civic engagement. The courses will use case-based learning based on cases drawn from local studies in the DC-metro region. Students will learn problem-solving based on principles of systems thinking, human-centered design, and ethnographic field research. In this study, quantitative and qualitative data will be collected through regular surveys, interviews, and video diaries to assess student engagement, development of civic responsibility, and capacity for innovation. The service-learning projects will benefit the region by generating engineering solutions that address community challenges. The problem-solving experiences will help prepare engineering students for success in the engineering workforce. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.