Preparing empathetic engineers via an empathy-oriented smart manufacturing curriculum

该项目旨在通过让工程专业学生参与以移情为导向的智能制造课程，从而培养为工业4.0时代做好充分准备的移情工程师，从而为国家利益服务。未来的工程师不仅需要优先考虑他们的解决方案的有效性，还需要具备同理心，以开发以用户为中心的设计和真正满足用户需求的产品。该项目旨在培养具有同理心技能的未来工程师，在现实世界解决问题的场景中有效地预测、感知和响应用户的需求和关注。通过在未来工厂平台（一个小规模的智能制造环境）中嵌入以移情为导向的课程单元，并通过整合设计思维方法和主动学习策略，为工程专业学生提供参与式学习体验。该项目的成果将有助于培养世界级智能制造劳动力的愿景，这些劳动力在引领数字化转型到智能制造方面表现出色。本项目的总体目标是设计、开发和实施以移情为导向的智能制造课程，评估其对培养移情工程师的有效性，并为在工程教育中扩大以移情为导向的课程提供设计指南。遵循循证方法，由教育工作者、研究人员和工程师组成的多学科团队将共同设计智能制造课程单元。这些课程单元将侧重于为学生创造机会，从以人为本的角度来解决现实世界中的制造问题。为了确定课程的有效性，本项目将采用并行混合方法设计，收集和分析互补的定量和定性数据。对于定量数据，将使用问卷来评估大学生的共情和参与课程的水平。对于定性数据，将采用半结构化访谈来衡量大学生对共情的感知，并对定量数据中可能遗漏的学生学习进行更深入的了解。来自两个数据来源的研究结果将融合在一起，以形成对这门以移情为导向的智能制造课程中学生体验的全面理解。该项目的研究结果将增强对工程教育中以同理心为导向的设计的理解，并为扩大学生参与智能制造劳动力和教育提供实际意义。NSF IUSE: EDU项目支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。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。

This project aims to serve the national interest by engaging engineering students in an empathy-oriented smart manufacturing curriculum and thereby fostering empathetic engineers who are well-prepared for the Industry 4.0 era. Future engineers need to not only prioritize the effectiveness of their solutions but also embrace empathy to develop user-centric designs and products that truly cater to user needs. This project aims to cultivate future engineers equipped with empathy skills to effectively anticipate, sense, and respond to users’ needs and concerns in real-world problem-solving scenarios. An engaged learning experience will be provided to engineering students through embedding empathy-oriented curricular units in the Future Factory platform, a small-scale smart manufacturing environment, and by integrating design thinking approach and active learning strategies. The outcome of this project will contribute to the vision of fostering world-class smart manufacturing workforce that excels in leading digital transformation into smart manufacturing.The overarching goal of this project is to design, develop, and implement an empathy-oriented smart manufacturing curriculum, evaluate its effectiveness for preparing empathetic engineers, and provide design guidelines for the scale-up of empathy-oriented curricula in engineering education. Following an evidence-based approach, a multidisciplinary team of educators, researchers, and engineers will co-design smart manufacturing curricular units. Those curricular units will focus on creating opportunities for students to approach real-world manufacturing problems from a human-centered perspective. To determine the effectiveness of the curriculum, this project will apply a concurrent mixed methods design, collecting and analyzing complementary quantitative and qualitative data. For quantitative data, questionnaires will be used to assess college students’ level of empathy and engagement in the curriculum. For qualitative data, semi-structured interviews will be conducted to gauge college students’ perception of empathy and elicit deeper understanding of student learning that may have been missed in quantitative data. The findings from two sources of data will be converged to formulate a comprehensive understanding of student experience in this empathy-oriented smart manufacturing curriculum. The findings of the project will enhance the understanding of empathy-oriented design in engineering education and provide practical implications on broadening student participation in the smart manufacturing workforce and education. The NSF IUSE: EDU 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.