Preparing empathetic engineers via an empathy-oriented smart manufacturing curriculum

该项目旨在通过让工程学学生参与面向同理心的智能制造课程来服务于国家利益，从而培养为工业4.0时代做好充分准备的具有同理心的工程师。未来的工程师不仅需要优先考虑解决方案的有效性，还需要接受同理心，以开发真正满足用户需求的以用户为中心的设计和产品。该项目旨在培养具备同理心技能的未来工程师，以便在现实世界解决问题的场景中有效地预测、感知和回应用户的需求和关切。通过在未来工厂平台这一小规模智能制造环境中嵌入以同理心为导向的课程单元，并通过整合设计思维方法和主动学习策略，为工科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，该劳动力擅长于引领数字化转型到智能制造。该项目的总体目标是设计、开发和实施以同理心为导向的智能制造课程，评估其在培养同理心工程师方面的有效性，并为工程教育中以同理心为导向的课程的扩大提供设计指南。遵循基于证据的方法，一个由教育工作者、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。这些课程单元将专注于为学生创造机会，让他们从以人为中心的角度来处理现实世界的制造问题。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移情水平和对课程的参与度。对于定性数据，将进行半结构化访谈，以衡量大学生对移情的感知，并引发对定量数据可能遗漏的学生学习的更深层次的理解。来自两个数据来源的调查结果将被融合，以形成对这一以同理心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加深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践启示。NSF IUSE：EDU计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过参与的学生学习路径，该计划支持有前景的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.