This research WIP paper explores how differences in instructors' facilitation affect the development of engineering students' entrepreneurial mindset within the context of story-driven learning classrooms. We collected data from four sections of the undergraduate course, “The Art of Telling Your Story” at a large public university in the United States. We collected and analyzed (a) self-report surveys of teaching characteristics administered to four instructors, (b) four instructors' facilitation approaches evidenced by their classroom discourses, and (c) students' entrepreneurial mindset assessed by their narrative-based semester-long writing assignments. Preliminary findings indicate that: (a) instructors facilitated student learning through either instructor-student interaction or student-student interaction, or a combination of these; (b) facilitation approaches predominantly involved instructor-student interactions over student-student interactions; and (c) these facilitation approaches positively influenced the development of students' entrepreneurial mindset.

While learning from personal, non-fictional stories (i.e., story-driven learning) is beneficial for student learning, there is a dearth of studies exploring how instructors use stories to promote learning in classrooms. We used an exploratory single-case design to investigate how an instructor used stories to promote student learning in a higher education engineering classroom. The study aimed to identify specific instructional practices that promote story-driven learning within the context of biomedical engineering education. We identified 15 categories of instructional practices that corresponded to three broad dimensions: (a) an instructor's affective/interpersonal interactions with students, (b) the methods used by the instructor to elicit students' personal stories and experiences, and (c) the guidance provided by the instructor to help students frame the meaning of their stories. This study identifies, and underscores the use of, student-centered practices in a story-driven learning engineering classroom.

This research full paper describes the development of a rubric to assess students’ empathy through their coursework. Engineering departments are increasingly striving to not just foster technical competencies but to also encourage professional skills like empathy and an other-centered service orientation. In this work, we apply Zaki’s model of empathy — which conceptualizes the construct in terms of its cognitive, affective, and action-oriented components — to guide the creation of a rubric to assess students’ empathy using artifacts produced. While existing tools to measure empathy typically rely on self-reports, we instead focus on a standardized approach to external evaluation. We describe the justification for the decisions made as well as the pilot assessment conducted in February of 2022. In this pilot, we applied the rubric to students’ assignments from four undergraduate biomedical engineering courses seeking to cultivate empathy at a large public institution in the Southeastern United States. These assignments include: 1) user stories from a problem-based learning class; 2) empathy maps from an introductory design class; 3) user needs assessment reports from a senior capstone experience; and 4) personal narratives submitted in a non-traditional storytelling course. Through understanding of the learning activities within our department, we hope to encourage others to explore the effects of their own curriculum on the multi-dimensional development of empathy as part of engineering students’ professional formation. We propose that the rubric developed in this investigation could be a useful tool applied to artifacts from other courses looking to promote empathy and to evaluate the presence of its different components.

It is essential to educate a generation of the engineering workforce that considers human values such as human welfare, freedom from bias, universal usability, and equity in all the stages of engineering product development. These values should be included alongside conventional technical requirements (e.g., performance effectiveness, reliability and resilience, compliance with technical standards and protocols). One approach to address the need for incorporation of human values in the design is to provide students with frequent learning opportunities to practice adopting an inclusive mindset in their interpersonal interactions as well as in their engineering analytical problem-solving and design practices. We designed an intervention to foster student awareness of non-inclusive designs in engineering and medicine, their own tendencies towards these biases, and the impacts of these biases on neglected demographics. An important component of this intervention was embedding it into the teaching of analytical content: we implemented it in a middle-year analytical course with a heavy focus on model-based learning and mathematical modeling, as opposed to a separate unit or course on inclusion or ethics, or a senior design course. Although we created this intervention in a biomedical engineering course, it could be used in any science and engineering class. In this paper we focus on the intervention’s rationale, its implementation process, and how our approach was guided by the concepts of entrepreneurial mindset and value sensitive design. We report what medical fields were included in students’ brainstorming of flawed designs. We also investigate whether the identity of students (gender, ethnicity) has any relation with the affected stakeholders in the flawed designs in brainstorming examples of biased designs, developing a personal experience story, and a team exercise in developing a case study and proposed solution. Also, we summarize an investigation of whether exposure to classmates’ direct experiences of non-inclusive designs (in contrast to hypothetical experiences) affected their choice of a stakeholder in their project’s topic. Finally, we explore whether students focused on a case study topic which created value for themselves or whether they focused on a topic which benefitted others (and thus, whether empathy resulted from this intervention in inclusive design).

This special session is based on work we are undertaking in our NSF-funded Revolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) project. We will share our innovative and ongoing efforts to construct an inclusive curriculum, motivated by two goals: to help students develop their knowledge, skills and dispositions to engineer inclusively and to embed inclusive practices in our department, courses, and research labs. Participants will be exposed to new ways to think about, measure, and increase inclusion in engineering departments, classrooms, and research labs. This workshop is intended for a broad audience of engineering educators (e.g., faculty, academic advisors, curriculum designers, instructional developers, etc.). Given the breadth and importance of interpersonal interactions that engineers encounter in their educational and professional careers, the topics central to this session are of significance to engineering education. Material for this session is based on our NSF-funded project, Transforming for Inclusion: Fostering Belonging and Uniqueness in Engineering Education and Practice1.

Student-centered learning environments, including flipped classrooms, are becoming increasingly common in engineering education. Numerous advantages have been ascribed to these approaches, including that they increase student engagement and achievement. Unfortunately, not all students respond favorably to student-centered courses. To understand why, we are studying how students perceive their experiences in the Problem-Solving Studio (PSS). PSS is a cognitive apprenticeship learning environment that heavily emphasizes student-student interactions. In this work-in-progress paper, we describe the results of the first phase of a two-phase mixed-methods study that seeks to answer the question “How do students perceive the various features of PSS, and how do these perceptions affect their motivation and approach to learning?” The purpose of this phase of the study was to identify participants whose perceptions of PSS varied widely. We prompted students in an entry-level biomedical engineering course that used the PSS approach to reflect on their motivation for the course and their approach to learning. We coded the students' responses, quantized them, and used cluster analysis to identify groups of students with similar response profiles. We identified four groups of students whose perceptions of their experience in PSS differed with respect to their motivation and approaches to learning, but whose demographics (with respect to age, gender, grades, and minority-status) were similar. We used these results as a guide to determine who to invite to participate in the second phase of our study. We successfully recruited thirteen participants with proportional representation from each group, which supports our phase two goal of interviewing students with a wide range of perceptions and experiences in PSS. Phase two of the study is currently in progress.

This panel will address the challenge of promoting dispositions towards and mastery of model-based reasoning and modeling practices. Free-body, circuit, and multi-unit process diagrams are fundamental engineering tools for transforming poorly articulated and ill-constrained problems into manageable, solvable problems. For engineers in industry or research, free-form sketches commonly inform back-of-the-envelope estimations and calculations, while more formal diagrams and computational models are essential to design decision-making. This panel will explore the cognitive dimensions and learning challenges associated with modeling as a way of engaging and understanding the world. The panel will start with unpacking the cognitive demands/loads associated with transforming a text to a diagram. We will then present research on student modeling across a spectrum of first year courses to capstone design and across three sub-disciplines - biomedicai, chemical and aerospace engineering.

This miniworkshop focuses on diagramming as a problem solving tool. Unfortunately, many students enter engineering without valuing the use of diagrams in model-based reasoning. Too often, they see diagramming as something which is superfluous and disconnected from "real problem solving." Students often come to their first engineering course with a well-practiced strategy that uses a rote problem solving approach in which they 1) write down the known and unknown variables they find in the problem statement, 2) search for a formula or equation that uses these variables, and then 3) enter the numbers into the formula and calculate an answer. Our first goal is to share our major research findings and our second goal is to share the learning activities we have developed and tested in our classroom. These activities increase students' motivation to use diagramming as a "tool for thinking" when solving complex problems. Our research shows that students can be taught to improve their diagramming skills and be more successful in both problem solving and conceptual understanding. Participants in this mini-workshop will receive a packet of materials, including full lesson plans for 5 different activities, an example diagram assessment matrix, and copies of mini-lecture slides. This activity-based mini-workshop will include mini-lectures, whole group discussion, paired work, and problem solving which will give participants the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to adapt and implement the lesson plans in their courses. Faculty who attend will be better equipped to incorporate direct instruction in diagramming as a "tool for thinking" and as an "engineering habit of the mind".

The main goal of this special session is to foster a continuing conversation within the FIE community about model-based reasoning in general and the essential role of diagrams in engineering education in particular. During this session, small groups of participants will develop categorization schemes using a collection of student diagrams. Groups will share their categorization schemes and ideas through a gallery walk.