Project Motivation

Our world currently faces grand challenges ranging from to addressing climate change to improving infrastructure to providing clean water. Addressing such complex and global issues requires the collaboration of diverse teams from across cultural and national boundaries who are able to consider the needs of those in different contexts. Many leading engineering organizations, including the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), call for engineers to develop intercultural skills, but few engineering programs communicate the importance of these skills to students or integrate them into the curriculum. Several barriers impede progress towards integrating intercultural learning in engineering. First, many assume that one must study abroad, which can be challenging for engineering students. Second, existing models of intercultural competence do not account for the unique skills required for global engineering work, collectively termed global engineering competency (GEC) and we do not know how GEC is developed. Finally, engineering educators often lack training, resources, and motivation to integrate intercultural topics into the curriculum.

Project Overview

This project will address the barriers listed above by 1) Characterizing the process of GEC development; 2) Studying both travel and non-travel experiences; and 3) Developing resources and training to support faculty in integrating global learning in engineering. Within the concept of professional formation of engineers, we use the term global formation to describe the underlying processes and mechanisms that support engineers development of GEC.

This project will address the following research questions (RQ) 

• RQ 1: What significant events can initiate the process of global formation for engineering students during an intercultural educational experience?
• RQ 2: How do engineering students interpret and respond to significant events in their intercultural educational experiences?
• RQ 3: How do personal, program, contact, and context factors inform engineering students’ processes of global formation during intercultural educational experiences

This project will address the following educational objectives (EO)

• EO 1: To develop two online training modules that teach students to reflect during experiential education programs and connect these experiences to their engineering work
• EO 2: To introduce the reflection training modules to a range of audiences and educate them about the importance of reflection in experiential education.

The project aims to characterize the process of global formation for engineers. To do this, we will use a longitudinal video reflection technique to collect data from engineering students while they are participating in intercultural educational experiences both at home and abroad. As part of the education plan we will develop two online training modules to teach students to critically reflect and connect their intercultural learning to engineering. We include these modules in the IRB submission because we may choose to use the data from these modules to inform the research study, however, studying the impact of the modules is not the intent of the research study. All research study participants will complete the reflection training modules to improve the quality of the research data collection.