Building Global Learning into the Engineering Curriculum Through an Interdisciplinary Case-Study Based Course
Session Th2: Nov 11, 10:40 AM
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has created new obstacles for international engineering education. One obstacle is the inability for students to practice engineering skills in international, in-person settings, limiting development of systems thinking skills in diverse, global settings. Systems thinking requires interdisciplinary understanding of the intertwining forces and relationships that impact a system (Grohs et al., 2018; Senge, et al., 1994). Enhanced systems thinking allows engineers to consider problems and solutions from a wider-range of perspectives, and is therefore important for engineering work in an international context. In response to the current absence of engineering study abroad and internships abroad, a team of professors from engineering and the humanities developed an innovative course in which students practice engineering skills while considering the local context of specific global communities. The course is designed around a series of case studies that represent engineering problems and solutions in specific places (e.g., energy systems in an indigenous community in Colombia; transnational transportation system in Asia and Europe). Students examine the unique contexts by building on interdisciplinary content from disciplines such as history, religion, sociology, language and culture, mathematics, science, and engineering. This conference presentation will describe the design of this course in detail and report assessment results related to systems thinking skill development for the first cohort of students. The students’ systems thinking skills will be measured using a pre–post study design with a scenario-based assessment activity that has been used in prior research. The Village of Abeesee assessment provides students with a short scenario followed by a series of open-ended questions that elicit their analysis of the problem and potential solutions (Grohs et al., 2018). The students’ responses are then scored using a rubric, which will allow us to compare students’ responses from before and after taking the course. This conference presentation will present data from the first cohort of 20 second-and third-year engineering students who are taking the course in Spring 2021.This presentation will contribute to the ongoing conversation about approaches to incorporating intercultural learning and systems thinking into the engineering curriculum. Many engineering students are unable to study abroad, making it essential that such learning is offered on-campus to improve access. The course design presented in this presentation offers a unique approach in combining engineering and humanities content through a case study-based course and will offer an early assessment of the effectiveness of this approach.
References:
Grohs, J. R., Kirk, G. R., Soledad, M. M., & Knight, D. B. (2018). Assessing systems thinking: A tool to measure complex reasoning through ill-structured problems. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 28, 110–130.
Senge, P. M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R. B., & Smith, B. J. (1994). The fifth discipline field book: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. Crown Business.