This research-to-practice pre-conference workshop brings insights and approaches to equitable syllabus development to college-level instructors. The organizers synthesize their experiences and research on the structures, culture, and equity initiatives of US engineering education. The first half of the workshop presents participants with frameworks for thinking about equitable engineering syllabi and a technique for actualizing those values (i.e., the organizers' syllabus toolkit). In the second half, participants apply and reflect upon their insights and techniques with a sample syllabus and then participants' own instructional materials. Participants will leave the two-and-a-half-hour workshop with skills and methods for evaluating their syllabi in addition to concrete revisions of their own materials.

This is a work in progress paper focusing on student experiences. Ratios and statistics without context can mask issues such as the student experience within the department and persistence rates within the major. As we aspire to address these issues and others, we engage with students to formally characterize the current culture of our department by learning about student experiences within the department. The goal of this engagement is to understand if/how harm is perpetuated towards students, particularly marginalized students who do not fit normative social constructions of identities like gender, race, sexuality, socioeconomic class, and ability. While centering marginalized student voices is critical when enacting change, we as researchers wanted to also ensure that we were not perpetuating harm in the ways we conduct research and engage with students. To achieve this goal, we developed a new methodology to engage with students using an anti-racist, trauma-informed protocol. Understanding potential student trauma through an intersectional lens, as in relation to structural and systemic oppression, was the foundation of our protocol. This lens is particularly critical when marginalized peoples are disclosing their experiences. When thinking about research ethics, or the ethical principles and values that researchers commit to, we decided to base our methodology on the Design Justice Principles outlined by the Design Justice Network and incorporate the values of Participatory Action Research. These foundational values center the care and well-being of participants while still working towards institutional change. This work in progress paper discusses preliminary findings from interviews and focus groups with students about their experiences within the department utilizing our methodology. The data and analysis yielded from this protocol informs our department’s effort in developing interventions and resources to better support students and create a culture and community of diversity and belonging.

This Special Session paper introduces participants to constructivist listening strategies. As educators, we encounter institutional power and hierarchical systems as we work to affect educational change. Simultaneously, we navigate the effects of internalized conditioning and oppression from living within these systems particularly for those who are marginalized. These effects may be unseen and many of us feel there are not venues for discussing them and moving towards healing. We argue that different creative structures are needed to provide such venues and this session aims to begin to do so. Deepening authentic relationships both within a supportive community and across ideological divides are necessary to enact and sustain true change. We are proposing in this session an opportunity for educators to come together to build community and interrupt structures that result in isolation and inaction.

During the 2014-2015 academic year, engineering faculty members and students at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) met monthly in a collaborative inquiry dialogue group to discuss the role of reflection in transforming engineering education. This project is part of the larger Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education (CPREE) headed by the University of Washington. In this paper we describe the activities of the Cal Poly group involved with CPREE and how these activities have transformed the thinking and actions of participants. Collaborative inquiry dialogue involves self-organizing individuals into a small group to address a compelling question through repeated cycles of experimentation and reflection on the results of that experimentation. In this context, the faculty members involved (including the authors of this paper) have been meeting to discuss how use of reflection in the classroom and/or in a collaborative inquiry dialogue amongst colleagues might lead to transformation in engineering education practice and outcomes. The dialogue group serves as a safe container that allows for the possibility of transformational insights by participants - insights that change their view of themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. Using a qualitative self-report methodology in the tradition of an action research paradigm, we (the authors) reflected on what we believed we had gained from the collaborative inquiry dialogues. Broadly we have noticed that participation in the collaborative inquiry dialogue has led us to reconsider what reflection is and what it could be, to develop a greater appreciation for the role of reflective practices in engineering education, and to better recognize when reflection is occurring (and when it might not be) such that reflective behaviors can be encouraged and practiced. We also began to challenge assumptions we had made about our teaching practices and have noted that the collaborative inquiry provides an environment in which development of new thinking is possible.

This paper presents the design, implementation, and reflections of students and faculty of an innovative integrated course (taught in Spring 2012) that combined seemingly disparate topics from engineering and the humanities. The primary goal of the course was to promote the growth of intrinsically motivated students who internalize the value of their technical work, connect their technical work to societal contexts, and cognitively engage in their own learning process. The faculty designed a high-level framework for the new integrated course on embedded systems and social movements by implementing an autonomy-supportive, context-rich engineering educational experience. This framework focused on several elements of course design: (1) identification of broad, competency-based learning goals for the integrated course block, (2) development of learning activities that supported broad goals such as communication, contextual awareness, and self-directed learning, and (3) selection of assessment methods aligned with broad competency goals and supportive of cross-disciplinary collaboration. Students were attracted to the self-direction designed into the course and reported greater awareness and understanding of the societal impacts of technology.

Eight innovative senior level capstone engineering projects were completed at California Polytechnic State University (2008-present) involving (n=28) students (23 male/5 female). All projects involved the design of equipment to facilitate physical activity for people with disabilities. The effects on: (i) learning design, (ii) attitude towards people with disabilities, and (iii) motivation to complete team design projects were analyzed through eight one-hour focus groups. This paper presents focus group findings using a constructivist approach and grounded theory to explore the overall student “learn by doing” experience. Results: (1) Approximately 19 (70%) of the students claimed the adapted physical activity project was their “first choice” given 60+ projects to rank; (2) Prior to the project only ten (35%) had experience working with people with disabilities and of those students the majority were women; (3) Twenty-six (92.8%) of the students were able to define `inclusion' when asked and viewed the field of engineering as a `natural fit' with project design for adapted physical activity. Students reported high levels of motivation for learning design as evidenced by the majority of engineers getting their “top” choice of projects; (4) Twenty-three (82%) of the engineers would `definitely' consider a future engineering job in this sector and (5) Project challenges included: budget constraints, group communication, fabrication delays, detachment from client, and a desire for increased product testing time. Although students reported high levels of learning and motivation to complete their project; attitudes toward people with disabilities did not change significantly.