IUSE/PFE: RED Innovation: Enabling Convergence in Undergraduate Engineering through Structural Change

当今世界面临着新的经济和环境挑战。从历史的角度来看，国家应对此类挑战的最有效方法之一是投资开发新技术。这种投资不仅仅是在机器和方法上，还包括通过培养既能理解复杂挑战又能开发有效技术解决方案的工程师来投资于人。然而，随着挑战变得越来越复杂，解决这些挑战所需的技术和培养下一代工程师的教育需求也在增加。这个项目旨在帮助工程专业的学生更好地准备解决“聚合”问题，这些问题的解决方案需要来自许多不同领域的专业知识。这类问题的例子包括许多最新的医学突破，以及先进的通信网络等基础设施，这些基础设施改变了公民处理日常事务的方式。为了更好地培养下一代工程师来解决这些问题，该项目将把这些问题整合到本科课程中，扩展学生的技术和专业技能，并改变评分方法，以培养学生面对未来挑战所需的能力。该项目汇集了来自多个学科的专家，帮助教师培养必要的技能，以便更好地将社会重要问题融入课堂。通过教育学生解决社会规模的融合挑战，学生将更好地为工程职业做好准备，并被吸引，并能够利用新兴的职业机会。该项目的一个关键假设是，通过在本科学位课程中解决趋同问题，学生将更好地准备在以后的职业生涯中解决这些问题，并更有可能选择与社会重要挑战相一致的职业。由于汇聚性问题来自多个专业领域，因此该项目促进了跨学科界限沟通的技能发展，以及学生考虑不同利益相关者观点的能力。为了建立所需的视角广度，该项目采用森的发展作为自由框架，从学生自己的经验中汲取。为了支持个人相关功能和能力的发展，该项目将通过修改评分方法和引入学习机会来拓展学生在工程课程中的学习途径，以培养学生的能动性和内在动机。该项目将研究学生自主的障碍，并寻求改变课程和制度的结构要素，包括评分实践、学生作业的管理以及课堂上技术的使用。通过现象学和社会认知职业理论的视角分析学生经历和学习的变化。教师的发展是通过广泛跨越学科界限的转型社区来支持的。为了在工程教育生态系统中激发更广泛的变化，项目效果的案例研究针对的是行政、教师和政策受众。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。

Today’s world faces emerging economic and environmental challenges. From a historical perspective one of the most effective ways the nation has addressed such challenges is through investing in the development of new technologies. Such investment is not just in machines and methods, but also includes investing in people through educating engineers who can both understand complex challenges and develop effective technological solutions. Yet as challenges grow in complexity so do the technologies needed to address them and the demands on education to prepare the next generation of engineers. This project seeks to better prepare engineering students to address “convergent” problems whose solution requires expertise from many different areas. Examples of such problems include many of the latest medical breakthroughs as well as infrastructure like advances communication networks that change how citizens go about their day-to-day affairs. To better prepare the next generation of engineers to address such problems, this project will integrate convergent problems into undergraduate courses, expand students’ technical and professional skillset, and change grading practices to develop the abilities students will need to face tomorrow’s challenges. The project brings together experts from multiple disciplines to help faculty develop the skills needed to better integrate societally important problems in classes. By educating students to address societal-scale convergent challenges students will be better prepared for, and attracted to, engineering careers and able to capitalize on emerging career opportunities. A key hypothesis of this project is that by addressing convergent problems in their undergraduate degree program students will be better prepared to address these problems later in their career and more likely to choose careers aligned with societally important challenges. Since convergent problems draw from multiple domains of expertise, the project fosters skill development in communication across disciplinary boundaries and students’ ability to consider diverse stakeholder perspectives. To build the needed breadth of perspective, the project adopts Sen’s development as freedom framework to draw from students’ own experiences. To support development of personally relevant functionings and capabilities, the project will expand student pathways through the engineering curriculum by modifying grading practices and introducing learning opportunities that develop student agency and intrinsic motivation. The project will examine barriers to student autonomy and seek to change structural elements of the curriculum and institution including grading practices, curation of student work, and the uses of technology in the classroom. Changes to students’ experiences and learning are analyzed through phenomenographic and social cognitive career theory lenses. Faculty development is supported through communities of transformation which cut broadly across disciplinary boundaries. To stimulate more wide-spread change in the engineering education ecosystem case studies of the project effects are targeted to administrative, faculty, and policy 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.