Fostering Effective Multidisciplinary Student Teams Through Engineering Projects in Community Service

在过去的十年里，人们已经普遍认识到，工程专业的学生需要超越他们技术优势的技能：沟通、项目规划和团队合作的技能，以及在工程设计项目中对客户的认识，对道德和专业问题的认识，以及对他们所从事的工程所处的社会和全球背景的认识。这种更广泛的教育的一个关键组成部分是与来自许多学科的人合作的经验。与此同时，工程专业的学生面临着学习“软技能”的需要，基本上所有其他学科的学生都面临着理解和欣赏技术的需要。提高非技术学生的技术流畅性的一个有力工具是与来自技术学科的学生一起参与面向设计的项目团队。PI领导着一个来自教育、组织心理学、组织沟通和工程学的教师团队来解决培养有效的多学科学生团队的问题。EPICS（社区服务工程项目）计划为拟议的工作提供了框架。EPICS的学生通过长期的、多学科的、基于团队的项目来获得学分，这些项目解决了非营利性社区服务机构、K-12学校、博物馆和市政组织面临的基于技术的问题。EPICS项目于1995年在普渡大学创立，目前正在六所大学进行，并计划在另外两所大学进行，有500多名学生参加了50多个项目团队，与社区合作伙伴配对。尽管EPICS项目以工程为中心，但有效的现实解决方案很少依赖于单一学科。因此，如果建立运作良好的多学科团队的制度和教育挑战能够得到解决，团队解决方案的质量和学生教育经验的广度将受到深刻影响。该项目预计将在三个方面取得成果：学生学习成果：该项目正在开发提高学生在多学科团队中有效工作能力的工具。由于他们的经验，学生应该能够：识别和阐明自己学科的贡献领域；运用他们的学科知识来推进团队的目标；尊重其他学科个人的贡献；描述不同的学科如何提高团队的效率；在完成团队目标的过程中享受与其他学科的互动。EPICS /项目成果：学生团队效率的提高提高了团队满足社区合作伙伴需求的能力。教学方法成果：该项目正在从多个领域的研究和实践中汲取经验，并重新定义研究结果，将其应用于学术环境中本科生团队面临的具体问题。通过开发结构和流程，将EPICS转变为一个真正的多学科项目，潜在的影响将超越学生、项目和教学成果。EPICS为教师研究和本科教育的情境整合提供了一个框架，来自多个学科的教师将为团队提供建议，将全方位的研究带入课堂。工程、科学、教育和文科的合作有可能打破制度障碍，改变我们对大学的看法。学生团队和社区之间的伙伴关系使学生和与他们一起工作的人对大学有了新的看法，有可能改变科学和工程的形象。

Over the past ten years, it has become widely recognized that engineering students need skills that go beyond their technical strengths: skills in communication, project planning, and teamwork, as well as an awareness of the customer in an engineering design project, of ethical and professional issues, and of the social and global context in which their engineering is employed. A key component of this broader education is experience in collaborating with people from many disciplines. At the same time that engineering students are faced with the need to learn "soft skills," students from essentially all other disciplines are faced with a need to understand and appreciate technology. A powerful vehicle for enhancing the technical fluency of non-technical students is participation on design-oriented project teams with students from technical disciplines. The PI is leading a faculty team from education, organizational psychology, organizational communication, and engineering to address the issue of fostering effective multidisciplinary student teams. The EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) program provides the framework for the proposed work. EPICS students earn academic credit for long-term, multidisciplinary, team-based projects that solve technology-based problems faced by not-for-profit community service agencies, K-12 schools, museums, and municipal organizations. Founded at Purdue in 1995, EPICS programs are in progress at six universities and planned at two more, with over 500 students participating on over 50 project teams paired with community partners. Although EPICS projects are engineering-centered, effective real-world solutions rarely depend on a single discipline. The quality of the teams' solutions and the breadth of the students' educational experience will therefore be profoundly affected if the institutional and educational challenges to creating well-functioning multidisciplinary teams can be addressed. Outcomes of the project are anticipated in three areas: Student learning outcomes: The project is developing vehicles to enhance students' ability to work effectively on multidisciplinary teams. As a result of their experience, students should be able to: identify and articulate areas of contribution from their discipline; apply their disciplinary knowledge to advance the team's goals; respect the contributions of individuals from other disciplines; describe how different disciplines add to the effectiveness of the team; enjoy the interactions with other disciplines in accomplishing the team's objectives. EPICS / Program outcomes: The increased effectiveness of the student teams enhances the ability of the teams to meet their community partner's needs. Pedagogical Methods outcomes: The project is developing a body of experience that draws on research and practice from several fields, and recasting the findings to apply them to the specific problems faced by teams of undergraduates in an academic setting. By developing structures and processes that transform EPICS into a truly multidisciplinary program, the potential impact extends beyond the student, program, and pedagogical outcomes. EPICS provides a framework for the in-context integration of faculty research and undergraduate education by the faculty from the many disciplines who will advise teams, bringing the full spectrum of research into the classroom. The collaboration of Engineering, Science, Education, and Liberal Arts has the potential to break down institutional barriers, transforming the way we think about the university. The partnership between student teams and the community gives both students and the people with whom they work a new view of the university, with the potential to transform the image of science and engineering.