IGE: Developing Reflective Engineers

虽然工程提供了基础设施，是技术创新的主要来源，但它的工作植根于复杂的社会、文化和环境背景中。工程专业的研究生教育通常会培养出能力很强的技术人员，但他们可能缺乏理解和成功驾驭这些环境的能力。重要的技能可以帮助工程师将情境视角带入他们的问题解决中，包括跨学科整合的能力，为定义不明确的挑战设计解决方案的能力，以及识别和解决更广泛的社会和全球问题的能力。这项授予德州理工大学的国家科学基金会研究生教育创新（IGE）奖将测试一种方法，该方法旨在改变工程学研究生对其工作的概念化和推理方式，使他们更好地为现实世界的复杂性做好准备。该项目将采用创新的方法，以艺术和人文教育为基础，以学习科学为基础，帮助学生成为更具反思性的思考者，对其工作的复杂、广泛背景有更强的认识。该项目将在工程课程中采用艺术和人文知识的学习活动，帮助学生更好地理解工程的社会和社区方面，成为更多的反思者。课程将包括一些活动，如培养观察技能的视觉思维策略，为现实世界的复杂性做准备的计算机模拟伦理/道德困境，以及练习反思工程的团队项目。这些技术的目的是增强反思推理，并将推理与工程联系起来。该项目将评估课程如何改变学生的反思能力，课程如何改变学生对工程师在社会背景下的角色的看法，以及哪些因素限制或增强了学生从课程中受益的能力。将采用混合方法来评估干预措施的有效性，包括调查、形成性同伴评估、访谈、叙述性调查和文本分析。将确定和改进在建立反思推理方面最有效的教学和学习技术，其结果将用于加强和扩大课程的影响。将利用为其他教员和助教举办的出版物和讲习班来传播项目的主要发现，并协助将研究成果翻译到其他环境和机构。该研究项目的最终目标是创建一个有影响力的，以证据为基础的课程，培养未来的工程师，他们不仅具有技术工程技能，而且还具有影响其工作的复杂社会，文化和环境背景的正念。研究生教育创新（IGE）项目专注于研究生教育的研究。IGE的目标是试点、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛的社区所需的知识。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。

While engineering provides basic infrastructure and is a major source of technological innovations, its work is embedded in complex social, cultural, and environmental contexts. Graduate education in engineering typically produces engineers who are highly competent technicians, but who may lack the ability to understand and successfully navigate those contexts. Important skills that may help engineers bring contextual perspectives into their problem solving include the ability to integrate across disciplines, to devise solutions to poorly-defined challenges, and to recognize and address broader societal and global issues. This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to Texas Tech University will test an approach designed to change the way graduate students in engineering conceptualize and reason about their work to better prepare them for real-world complexity. The project will use innovative methods, informed by arts and humanities education and grounded in the learning sciences, to help students become more reflective thinkers who have greater awareness of the complex, broader contexts of their work. The project will employ arts- and humanities-informed learning activities within the engineering curriculum to help students better understand the social and community aspects of engineering by becoming more reflective thinkers. The curriculum will include activities such as visual thinking strategies to develop observational skills, computer-simulated ethical/moral dilemmas to prepare for real world complexity, and team projects to practice reflective engineering. The purpose of these techniques is to enhance reflective reasoning and connect that reasoning to engineering. This project will assess how the curriculum changes the student's ability to think reflectively, how the curriculum changes the way the student thinks about the role of engineers within a societal context, and what factors limit or enhance the ability of the student to benefit from the curriculum. A mixed-methods approach will be used to assess the effectiveness of the intervention including surveys, formative peer assessment, interviews, narrative inquiry, and textual analysis. The teaching and learning techniques that are the most effective in building reflective reasoning will be identified and refined and the results will be used to strengthen and broaden the impact of the curriculum. Publications and workshops conducted for other faculty and teaching-assistants will be used to disseminate the key findings from the project and aid translation of the research to other settings and institutions. The ultimate goal of the research project is to create an impactful, evidence-based curriculum that educates future engineers who are committed to serving the public not only with technical engineering skills but with a mindfulness of the complex social, cultural, and environmental contexts impacting their work.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.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.