The National Academy of Engineering recently outlined twelve Grand Challenges for Engineering (e.g., Reverse Engineering the Brain) that collectively constitute the largest and most pressing real-world issues facing engineering research and practice. Solutions to these problems require engineers to have a broad skill set that includes communication abilities, team-based interactions, ethical reasoning, and contextual analysis as well as technical expertise.
This project creates a multiple-stage Grand Challenges framework that guides students progressively from consideration of the overarching societal and technical context of a problem, through the discipline-focused exploration of a related application, and ultimately back to the broad problem context to analyze both the contributions and limitations of an engineering approach. Instructional modules will be created that replace traditional abstract modes of topical presentation with a stepwise progression from problem context through potential solutions. By emphasizing the real-world constraints and opportunities presented by a specific problem, the framework forces students to place traditional concepts into a more realistic context, which has been shown by recent educational research to improve educational outcomes. Furthermore, students conclude each module with explicit reflection on the limitations of their planned solution, so that they see the connection of the engineering principles to the relevant societal issues.
The Grand Challenges framework is being incorporated into courses from several engineering disciplines and engages students at different points in their undergraduate education. The framework is being evaluated in terms of its impact on student motivation and learning through psychologically rigorous measures and on its transferability to other courses.
