Faculty members are stewards of academic engineering cultures and drivers of the ethical formation of our future engineers. To develop better ethics training tools we need to understand the diversity of faculty experiences and perceptions of ethics. In this study, we seek to unpack the experiences biomedical engineering faculty members have related to ethics in engineering research. We address the research question, “What are the features of research experiences that biomedical engineering faculty members discuss in the context of ethics in engineering research?” Sixteen biomedical engineering faculty members participated in this study. Faculty participants varied with respect to type of faculty position (tenured, tenure-track, non-tenure track), rank, gender, race/ethnicity, and geographic location. We utilized content analysis of semi-structured interviews to characterize the experiences these faculty members discussed. This analysis involved iterative cycles of open and axial coding to identify relevant categories and their constituent elements Faculty members described experiences that differed in context (physical setting, research phase, their current academic rank, their role in the experience), ethical topic area, ethical challenge, and characterization of ethical action. These findings will enable us to better consider how extant approaches to developing ethical engineering researchers in biomedical engineering align with the experiences of current biomedical engineering faculty members.

This Innovative Practice Full Paper describes case studies from an instructional design process based on design thinking, illustrating tools used during stages of design. Instructional teams investigated the potential relevance of design thinking in engineering course design in electrical and computer engineering. Two teams of educators used a design thinking process in the redesign of two computer engineering courses, one in embedded systems and one in computer organization and architecture. The process of applying design thinking methods and tools was led by a facilitator with expertise in design thinking and electrical and computer engineering. The process leveraged specific tools and collaboration. This paper presents examples from each course, focusing on the design thinking tools used by the instructors and team members, highlighting what design thinking looks like when applied in this setting, and giving specific examples. The purpose is to suggest strategies and provide information and guidance for educators to use tools in their own course design efforts.

This WIP paper describes the development, implementation, and preliminary lessons learned from co-creation workshops with engineering design instructors. Co-creation is a generative process to collect and integrate diverse perspectives and offers a novel approach to engineering education research. Empathy is also a relatively new concept in engineering education, but literature has shown empathy can lead to improved engineering design outcomes. The primary objective of our study is to use co-creation to develop a model that depicts how empathy manifests in engineering design. We engaged in co-creation with instructors at universities across the United States to generate a collective understanding of how empathy manifests across engineering design contexts, and we will use these findings to iterate on an extant empathy in design model. The model will inform instructional assessments and pedagogies for integrating empathy in engineering design, which will enable (1) instructors to understand the extent to which their students empathize in ways that instructors hope they will and (2) have needed strategies to respond effectively to promote empathy's use in design.

While it is commonly held that debugging is a critical activity for engineers, particularly computer engineers, it is rarely a core component in engineering curriculum. Often it is either considered an innate skill or one to be developed indirectly through coursework. We argue that debugging is more authentically a constellation of mindsets or intrinsic beliefs, values, and dispositions that orient behavior. We define the debugging mindset, describe a series of activities to support the development of such a mindset, and offer evidence of a debugging mindset among students in two computer engineering project courses.

This Research-to-Practice Full Paper describes the implementation of integrated reflective activities in two computer engineering courses. Reflective activities contribute to student learning and professional development. Instructional team members have been examining the need and opportunities to deepen learning by integrating reflective activities into problem-solving experiences. We implemented reflective activities using a coordinated framework for a modified Kolbian cycle. The framework consists of reflection-for-action, reflection-in-action, reflection-on-action, and composted reflections. Reflection-for-action takes place before the experience and involves thinking about and planning future actions. Reflection-in-action takes place during the experience while actively problem-solving. Reflection-on-action takes place after the problem-solving experience. Composting involves revisiting past experiences and reflections to inform future planning. We describe the reflective activities in the context of the coordinated framework, including strategies to support reflection and increase the likelihood of engagement and success. We conclude with an analysis of the activities using the CPREE framework for reflection pathways.

In the present day, most engineering programs are focused on imparting highly detailed technical knowledge to their students. Some of the forward-looking programs and faculty are bringing socio-technical perspectives to engineering education, but to- date they are not the majority. Though the students remain interested in technical content, oftentimes they face difficulty connecting what they learn to practicality. Consequently, students resort to learning through memorization and example-based learning implying that students quickly forget what they have learned. It is well documented that students can retain more about courses where they have participated in team activities, problem solving, etc. Since they can work on connections and sharing ideas as a community. In recent years, it is also becoming apparent that a lack of attention to human values and the human side of engineering will create disconnects between the social responsibility of engineers and their place as technical citizens and leaders. However, if a connection exists between the students’ education and their personal learning goals, would there be an improvement in how they learn? Through our work, we seek evidence that when a student engages personally and is socio-technically aware they are more receptive to learning. We would like to know if incorporation of a human sided approach to engineering (through an inquiry classroom), enables engineering students to be more engaged and involved in their learning and eventually towards societal issues. Additionally, we will perform a content analysis of student reflections to investigate if an inquiry-based environment is suitable for students to engage in the human side of engineering.

This Research-to-Practice Full Paper presents the redesign of a course project to promote student professional formation in engineering in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Iowa State University. This is part of a larger effort to redesign core courses in the sophomore and junior years through a collaborative instructional model and pedagogical approaches that promote professional formation. A required sophomore course on embedded computer systems has been assessed and revised over multiple semesters. The redesign of the project was initiated with the purpose of promoting student professional formation, interest, autonomy and innovation, and it was undertaken using a collaborative process. This paper describes the course, final project, redesign process, assessment, results and future work. Several conclusions from the research may be useful to other educators. A small change to the course project yielded positive effects in interest and autonomy and may influence longer term effects of the project. There was evidence of difference in engagement with the project. The difference observed was not only due to option selected by students but why students selected the option.

Literature from neuroscience and educational psychology are continuously underscoring the importance of emotion in learning, which brings considerable implications for education. While some areas, such as design thinking, have embraced empathy as a technique for better connecting design with user need, empathy as a construct still remains ambiguous. In addition, many course design theories and frameworks focus heavily, if not exclusively, on cognitive processes; apprenticeships of the head and hands. Educators hoping to intentionally and systematically engage in empathetic strategies, or apprenticeships of the heart, have little guidance from traditional course design models for doing so. The special session will introduce one tangible method to engage in and integrate empathy into course design.

This Work-in-Progress Research paper describes (1) the contemporary research space on ethics education in engineering; (2) our long-term research plan; (3) the theoretical underpinnings of Phase 1 of our research plan (phenomenography); and (4) the design and developmental process of a phenomenographic interview protocol to explore engineers' experiences with ethics. Ethical behavior is a complex phenomenon that is complicated by the institutional and cultural contexts in which it occurs. Engineers also have varied roles and often work in a myriad of capacities that influence their experiences with and understanding of ethics in practice. We are using phenomenography, a qualitative research approach, to explore and categorize the ways engineers experience and understand ethical engineering practice. Specifically, phenomenography will allow us to systematically investigate the range and complexity of ways that engineers experience ethics in professional practice in the health products industry. Phenomenographic data will be obtained through a specialized type of semi-structured interview. Here we introduce the design of our interview protocol and its four sections: Background, Experience, Conceptual, and Summative. We also describe our iterative process for framing questions throughout each section.

While prior studies on student innovation have examined cognitive and social aspects, recent studies have demonstrated the important role motivation plays in the engineering student experience of innovation, particularly in dealing with the unique challenges innovation presents. However, motivation can be observed in diverse ways and at diverse levels. Using Deci & Ryan's Self-determination Theory, this study examined five levels of motivational regulation (external, introjected, identified, integrated, and intrinsic) that engineering students experienced during innovation projects. The results suggest that students overall expressed more instances of intrinsic and integrated regulation compared to introjected and external motivation. Individual students experienced a variety of regulation types, often developing towards higher level regulation over time. These results suggest that innovation projects trigger complex modes of motivation among engineering students.

Today's engineers' needs are evolving rapidly as the information and technologies that compete for their attentions. At the same time, our institutions and systems are stretched to their limits to keep up with the changing demands of the times. There is, especially, a need to sustain reflective integration of social and technical knowledge into the future generations of engineering, to make engineers more humane, in order for them to generate technological solutions that are more human-centric. Addressing such needs requires new approaches to teaching and designing engineering courses. Any advancement in the education sector from here forward requires a new thinking paradigm that can be applied in large-scale systematic reform of education: design thinking. This paper outlines means to use design thinking as the foundational methodology for transforming a traditional electrical and computer engineering department into an agile department where design thinking, systems thinking, professional skills and inclusion are promoted, and collaborative, inquiry-driven processes are stimulated to create and sustain new ways of thinking, interacting, teaching, learning and working.

Engineering is inherently an innovative profession with design at the center of its core practices. Over the last decade, its importance for engineering students has heightened with the emergence of policy efforts and the rise of collegiate programs developed to support student innovation. Yet, research on how engineering students approach and experience innovation has been limited. During this special session, our goal is to present a framework for engineering student innovation along with research findings that informed the development of this framework. We will engage the audience in discussion of how this framework and related studies can inform teaching and student learning.

Phenomenography has been increasingly used to explore important questions and complex phenomena in engineering education. However, as a relatively new research method (it was introduced in 1981) with unique and nuanced methodological underpinnings, it is not always well understood. In this special session, we will provide an overview of phenomenography methodology. In addition, participants will gain experience in conducting phenomenographic analysis and interacting with real data. Finally, participants will discuss implications of phenomenographic analysis and potential applications in their teaching and research activities.

This work in progress continues an ongoing project to understand and document engineering students' innovation identities. Prior studies have reported on how students separate their engineering and creative identities, on demographic differences in students' ideation processes, and on students' description of barriers that prevent them from practicing engineering more innovatively. Using process maps drawn by 32 undergraduate engineering students, we perform an inductive qualitative analysis of students' innovation process maps. We look specifically at features and characteristics that are common and different across the process map artifacts produced by students. The result is a coding protocol that researchers can use to characterize process maps or explanations of the innovation process. Future work will extend the coding protocol as a tool for assessing students' conception of innovation.

The primary goal of engineering education is to prepare students to work as productive engineers in society. This preparation traditionally focuses on developing students' discipline related technical and analytical knowledge, skills, and abilities. However, recent initiatives to develop a more holistic engineer have shed light on an aspect of engineering education that is largely lacking - the development of essential nontechnical knowledge, skills and abilities. In this paper, we propose a framework for considering the people part of engineering to organize these other kinds of knowledge, skills, and abilities that need to be addressed in engineering education. Informed by scholarly literature on development and learning, the framework presented in this work argues for people as central to engineering. We offer a framework on engineering for, with, and as people. Engineering for people requires a sense of the influences, constraints, and criteria people impose on the design and development of engineering solutions. Engineering with people emphasizes working collaboratively with a diverse group of people. Engineering as a person has one recognize the values, beliefs, knowledge, and skills driving the development of engineered solutions. We present examples of pedagogical strategies to integrate the various "people" skills into engineering courses and programs.

Innovation has received particular emphasis in engineering education due to implications of global challenges, diverse human needs, and economic competitiveness. As such, many instructors explore new methods to help engineering students develop innovation-related competencies and researchers seek to understand how students connect with and learn about innovation. This study adds to that growing knowledge base by investigating the ways engineering students in different disciplines view and approach engineering innovation. Nine students in chemical, civil, and mechanical engineering participated in a two-hour laboratory protocol consisting of an idea generation task, a process mapping task, and a semi-structured interview. This qualitative study used a multiple case analysis approach to compare student perspectives in each discipline. Analysis revealed that students in each discipline demonstrated different perspectives along nine aspects of innovation: context, criteria, stakeholder involvement, teamwork, design process, iteration, knowledge, challenges, and personal motivation. These differences link to core aspects of each discipline. Since a qualitative approach with a localized sample was used, this work does not explain all differences or the extent to which they manifest, but this paper contributes to an emerging understanding of how work in different engineering disciplines can connect with innovation from a student perspective.

Innovation is defined in diverse ways in the literature and often assessed in ways synonymous with creativity. As these arguments continue it is also important to identify student perspectives. In this pilot study, we examine how engineering students define innovation. Fifty-four first-year engineering students were asked to define innovation in an open response survey. Their answers were first reviewed to identify emerging patterns and then a detailed coding method was used to categorize students' responses. The analysis examined students' focus on feasibility, desirability, and viability as well as other important aspects of innovative design. The findings from this open-ended survey will be used to develop an assessment tool that is easy to administer and score.

Conflict is a common subject of research on engineering teams. While some conflict may improve team creativity and productivity, it can also detract from team member satisfaction, perceived team efficacy, and overall team performance. In this paper, we present a preliminary framework for identifying conflict within engineering design dyads using a case study approach. Using this framework, we identified instances of conflict in one male-male and one female-male engineering dyad performing a brief engineering design task. We identified more instances of conflict in the male-male dyad than the female-male dyad; however, this conflict appeared to be productive. An implication of this research for educators is to encourage argumentation within the teamwork occurring in their classroom. Students should understand that conflict can be constructive and improve their team's ability to move iteratively through the design process.

Design teams are commonly formed in engineering courses with the assumption that diversity leads to more innovative solutions. However, the literature indicates that this assumption is conditional, based on factors such as team effectiveness and how diversity is defined. Additionally, prior research has focused on expert teams, rather than the novice teams typical of many engineering courses. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between team diversity, as a function of gender and race, team effectiveness, and innovation within novice engineering teams. First, we examined the relationship between diversity and team effectiveness. We used an established peer evaluation system to measure the team effectiveness ratings of 275 four-person teams. Gender heterogeneous teams were more effective than gender homogenous teams, but there was no significant difference between racially homogenous and heterogeneous teams. Second, we analyzed student team project reports for innovative design solutions. There was no correlation between team effectiveness and innovativeness, nor did gender heterogeneous teams produce more innovative solutions than gender homogenous teams. These results suggest diversity, defined by gender or race alone, may not increase innovation within novice engineering teams.