Research: Collaborative Research: Changing the Conversation with Humanitarian Engineering Context

具有强烈工程身份的本科生将自己定义为工程师，认为自己属于工程，对工程和工程师有积极的感觉，并认为其他人对工程和工程师有积极的感觉。 工程身份是很重要的，因为有证据表明，缺乏识别与工程激励学生离开学科，尽管证明技术技能。 这一问题对女学生的影响不同，她们更有可能认为自己与工程师之间存在身份不匹配。 这是一个全国性的重要问题，原因有很多，包括工业对工程师的强烈需求，研究表明不同的团队产生更多的创造性成果，以及对社会正义的关注。 这项研究测试了人道主义背景下解决这种感知的身份不匹配的潜力。 人道主义工程的特点是侧重于弱势群体或在其他方面得不到充分服务的群体;例如，这可能包括灾后恢复或国际发展背景下的基础设施设计和建设。 有有限的证据表明，人道主义问题不成比例地激励女学生坚持工程。 因此，本研究实证措施是否人道主义背景下支持工程身份的形成在本科生，特别注意性别。 如果研究结果合理，该项目将为全国大学的建筑工程教育工作者创建并广泛传播开源教科书。 这本教科书的同伴将在人道主义背景下框架学科内容，并将使这一课程创新在全国范围内提供。在这项研究中，650名本科工程专业的学生将体验技术工程内容的人道主义，工业，或没有上下文框架。 学生工程身份的前测试和后测试将通过现有的，经过验证的调查工具进行测量，并将通过描述工程师活动和反思活动的定性数据进行补充，旨在帮助学生从研究经验中建立意义。 这些数据将通过亲自，在线和基于课程的干预措施收集。 这项研究将建立新的理论，桥梁工程教育文献的背景下，社区参与/服务学习，工程身份。 通过在人道主义成果方面重新构建工程内容，我们为学生提供了工程师和工程工作的性质或身份的替代理论。这可能使我们能够增加能够认同工程学的学生人数，从而为更广泛和更多样化的人口打开工程学的大门。 最终，通过提供人道主义背景下的工程教学法的影响的经验证据，这项研究是一个更具包容性的工程courses.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命的一步，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Undergraduate students with a strong engineering identity define themselves as engineers, feel that they belong in engineering, feel positively about engineering and engineers, and feel that others feel positively about engineering and engineers. Engineering identity is important because there is evidence that a lack of identification with engineering motivates students to leave the discipline despite demonstrated technical skills. This issue differentially impacts female students, who are more likely to perceive an identity mismatch between themselves and engineering. This is a nationally important problem for a variety of reasons, including strong industrial demand for engineers, research that indicates diverse teams produce more creative results, and concerns of social justice. This research tests the potential of humanitarian context to address this perceived identity mismatch. Humanitarian engineering is distinguished by its focus on vulnerable or otherwise underserved populations; for example, this could include infrastructure design and construction in disaster recovery or international development contexts. There is limited evidence that humanitarian issues disproportionately motivate female students to persist in engineering. As such, this research empirically measures whether or not humanitarian context supports engineering identity formation in undergraduate students, paying particular attention to gender. If justified by the research results, this project will create and widely disseminate an open source textbook companion for construction engineering educators at universities nationwide. This textbook companion will frame disciplinary content in humanitarian context, and will make this curricular innovation available nationwide.In this research, 650 undergraduate engineering students will experience technical engineering content framed by humanitarian, industrial, or no context. Pre- and post-tests of the students' engineering identity will be measured by existing, validated survey tools, and will be complimented by qualitative data from Describe an Engineer activities and reflection activities intended to help students build meaning from the research experience. These data will be collected through in person, online, and course based interventions. This research will build new theory, bridging the engineering education literatures in context, community engagement/service learning, and engineering identity. By reframing engineering content in terms of humanitarian outcomes, we are providing students with an alternate theorization of the nature of - or, the identity of - engineers and engineering work. This may enable us to increase the number of students who can identify with engineering and thereby open the gateway of engineering to a wider and more diverse population. Ultimately, by providing empirical evidence of the impact of humanitarian context in engineering pedagogy, this research is a step towards a more inclusive engineering curriculum.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.