Engineering Students’ Empathy Development through Service Learning: Quantitative Results From a Technical Communication Course

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Technical Communication ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Communication Course ◽  
Empathy Development ◽  
Quantitative Results

scholarly journals DESIGNING RUBRICS FOR COMMUNICATION COURSES IN ENGINEERING: A Work in Progress

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Parker ◽  
Aidan Topping
Keyword(s):  
Technical Communication ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Individual Performance ◽  
Learning Objectives ◽  
Communication Course ◽  
Design Elements ◽  
Course Content ◽  
Capstone Design Courses ◽  
Capstone Design

This paper will focus on the rubrics that we have developed for the technical communication course and the senior (capstone) design projects. As part of the C.E.A.B.’s and our own Faculty of Engineering’s mandate to more clearly define the goals of each course, the learning attributes associated with course content, and how these are assessed, we first developed rubrics that would help us track and assess students’ communicative competence. However, we soon learned that our presentation of the information impacts how well students assimilate it. Consequently, in our rubrics for the senior (capstone) design courses, we began to phrase the assignment requirements as action items, as something that must be done; for example, a document’s “layout and document design” must use “clear markers to create a visually appealing document,” and the illustrations must “communicate design elements and results.” In this way, students are encouraged to reflect on their individual performance, and one outcome for them is the opportunity to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the professor. One outcome for the professor is having the means to indicate a student’s position on a spectrum of performance. Finally, although linking attributes to learning objectives and determining “competency levels” can be very challenging, we hope to show how the rubrics we have designed may indeed make the task less daunting and more manageable for all stakeholders in the education of our engineering students.

Teaching Technical Communication at the Graduate Level: An Interdisciplinary Approach

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet H. Potvin ◽  
Robert L. Woods
Keyword(s):  
Technical Communication ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Opportunity To Learn ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Foreign Student ◽  
Team Approach ◽  
Graduate Level ◽  
Communication Course ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
Technical Writer

Native and international science, engineering, and humanities graduate students at The University of Texas at Arlington experience real-world communication situations in an interdisciplinary, projected-oriented technical communication course team-taught by a technical writer and a mechanical engineer. The course simulates the writing requirements of industry and helps students prepare theses and dissertations. A special feature for international students is a supplementary weekly laboratory session devoted to intensive review of writing fundamentals. The course, which has been offered three times since 1976 with enrollments of eleven, five, and nine students, has been received well by science and engineering students for whom it was initially designed and by humanities students who now also enroll. Even though in some cases the progress that a foreign student makes in one semester is limited, all students have found the course of great benefit. The interdisciplinary team approach is an effective way of teaching graduate-level technical communication, providing engineers an opportunity to learn to express ideas to humanists and providing humanists an opportunity to learn to communicate effectively with engineers and scientists.

scholarly journals THE SELF-REPORTED CONFIDENCE AND PROFICIENCY LEVELS OF UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN AN ENGINEERING TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION COURSE

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Parker ◽  
Kathryn Marcynuk
Keyword(s):  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Technical Communication ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Communication Course ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Personal Strengths ◽  
Personal Skills ◽  
Initial Survey

We have conducted surveys at thebeginning and the end of semesters in an EngineeringTechnical Communication course, surveys that aredesigned to determine how confident our students feelabout “Communication Skills” and personal skillsdevelopment, or “Lifelong Learning” (defined here asthe ability to devise ways to develop broader knowledgeand to identify personal strengths and weaknesses). Ourobjective is to see whether students’ confidence levelsincrease and then compare these levels with wherestudents believe they should be once they graduate. Inthis paper, we report on the data obtained from thesetwo surveys conducted from Winter 2013 until Winter2015. Normally, one section of the class completed thesurveys, although two sections (A01 and A02) completedthe surveys in both the Winter 2013 semester and in theWinter 2015 semester, for a total of 9 classes thatparticipated.. So far, we have found that students doindeed feel more confident in all the surveyed areas atthe end of the semester.Yet, regardless of their growing confidence,many students also feel they have not yet achieved thelevel of proficiency expected of them once they graduate.For example, for “personal skills” (such as applyingcritical inquiry and analysis to engineering problemsand doing the communications that support theengineering work), 5 represents an ability to lead orinnovate in a particular area, and 3 indicates an abilityto understand and explain. In our surveys the aggregatewas 3.4 for the initial survey (n=450 students) and 3.5for the end-of-term survey (n=378). Most telling,however, is the level students feel they must achieve bythe time they graduate (4.5). In other words, byacknowledging that lifelong learning is an importantattribute, one that they will have to continue to developif they are ever to achieve the level expected of them,students demonstrate a remarkable level of selfawareness.

Not Good Enough? Exploring Relationships Between Students’ Empathy, Their Attitudes Towards Sustainability, and the Self-Perceived Sustainability of Their Solutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Prabhu ◽  
Mohammed Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Elizabeth Starkey
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
The Self ◽  
Empathy Development ◽  
Concept Evaluation ◽  
Trait Empathy ◽  
Evaluation Stage ◽  
Future Work

Abstract Empathy plays an important role in designers’ ability to relate to problems faced by others. Several researchers have studied empathy development in engineering design education; however, a majority of this work has focused on teaching designers to empathize with primary users. Little attention in empathy development research is given to empathizing with those affected in a secondary and tertiary capacity. Moreover, little research has investigated the role of students’ empathy in influencing their emphasis on sustainability, especially in the concept evaluation stage. Our aim in this paper is to explore this research gap through an experimental study with engineering students. Specifically, we introduced first-year engineering students at a large public university in the northeastern United States to a short workshop on sustainable design. We compared changes in their trait empathy and attitudes towards sustainability from before to after participating in the workshop. We also compared the relationship between students’ trait empathy, attitudes towards sustainability, and the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions in a design task. From our results, we see that students reported an increase in their beliefs and intentions towards sustainability and a decrease in their personal distress from before to after participating in the workshop. Furthermore, students’ trait empathy correlated negatively with the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions. These findings highlight the need for future work studying the role of empathy in encouraging a sustainable design mindset among designers.

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