As students face communication challenges in team settings, some may feel marginalized because of their identity. Educators play an important role in creating an equitable learning environment. However, there are rhetorical issues in the infrastructure of the learning environment that may hinder the educator's capacity to intervene in meaningful and impactful ways. We integrate frameworks from the domain of engineering education with the domain of technical and professional communication to facilitate ways to foster educational equity in engineering education. Our study seeks to gain first-hand insight from both marginalized students and faculty. We present the analysis method and preliminary results in this paper. Our study sheds light on how institutions can enhance classroom interaction to benefit diverse groups.

We present an integrated framework to explore innovative spaces that enable communication and collaboration in diverse settings. We are interested in exploring how the physical space transmits a culture of innovation. The underpinning assumption of our work is that setting the stage for innovation, through communication and collaboration, requires more than just creating a physical environment. There are seamless features which provoke behavior in the innovation environment in academic contexts. We develop a survey instrument that is substantiated in literature to identify these features. The items inquire about the malleability of infrastructural elements and gather quantitative data about self-efficacy in innovation and items related to expectancy-value to change the work environment for better collaboration and communication. Implementation of this instrument will support innovation as defined as the application of creative new ideas which are original and feasible. In addition, the implementation will show the interaction between the physical space and the other infrastructural elements of the innovation environment.

This work-in-progress, research-to-practice provides a typology for content for case studies that are developed as part of the Design the Future Activities (DF A) framework. This work is based on the understanding that the nature of engineering design education and practice is changing due to the emergence of intelligent, autonomous objects. Traditional ways of teaching design, which are based on teaching design as a process of creatively solving problems, are not sufficient. Complementary to previous teaching practices is the need to provide design content to address the need for designing for the future, where intelligent objects act as a stakeholder in the design problem. In this paper, a typology of content is proposed to develop case studies that address the need for developing and delivering the DFA framework; that is engineering design education with the core of the technology of artificial intelligence.

Prototyping in design provides ways to navigate ambiguity in the design problem, gain insight through the refinement of ideas, and aid in communication between team members. However, while designing, students often underutilize prototyping and do not consider it as an integral part of the design process. To facilitate the scaffolding of design activities, it is necessary first to understand students' conceptions of prototyping. In this study, we use artifact elicitation interviews as a method to elicit students' conceptions by moving from the specifics of the artifacts they brought with them to the interview, to their general understanding of prototyping. Participants in the study are students in an undergraduate sophomore design-oriented, project-based learning course in a large southwestern university. Students were invited to participate in a screening survey. After potential participants suitable for the purpose of this study were identified, some were selected for a follow-up interview. The findings of the study describe students' conceptions of “what counts” as a prototype; what is valued in a prototype; the benefits of, and challenges associated with prototyping; and differences between in-class and out-of-class prototyping activities. The findings of this study improve our understanding to effectively scaffold prototyping activities in design and experiential learning.

Designing for others is a paramount focus of teaching user-centered engineering design. This paper presents a novel engineering design brief presented to undergraduate engineering students to design for extra-terrestrials scheduled to visit their collegiate campus. Through this alien-centered design approach, students are pushed to develop empathy for a group of users quite different from themselves and to conceive and design within such an given context. A detailed plan of action is described for both cases with detailed deliverables aligned to course learning objectives. Examples of the interactions students make with their extra-terrestrial users are listed and examples of student work and final deliverables are highlighted. Reflections from the end of project are also included from students and instructors alike. The work presented here may serve as a building block to these types of successful engineering design projects in the classroom.