With the rate of technological change growing rapidly and technological systems becoming increasingly complex, engineers capable of designing adaptable systems from both a systems level and a component level are needed for the US to remain competitive. Addressing this problem requires a transformative change in engineering education. Thus, a long-term goal of this project is to make this transformation a reality across the nation. Short-term goals of the project include the development of Technology Leaders, a transportable interdisciplinary program that will prepare engineers and technicians to lead geographically-distributed teams in the designing and building of multiscale agile systems. Building on prior work at the University of Virginia, Central Virginia Community College, and the Learning Factory at Penn State, the Technology Leaders program will integrate three elements: a new interdisciplinary, design-focused undergraduate curriculum; the hands-on Multiscale Agile Systems Technology Lab (MAST Lab); and applied summer educational experiences for students.
The primary impact of this work was the development of an interdisciplinary engineering program, the Technology Leaders Program (TLP), that engages students in both system level and component level design. Students from both the University of Virginia and Piedmont Virginia Community College participate in the TLP, with the community college students being able to transfer to the University of Virginia to complete their Bachelor’s degree. Demonstrating such a program is a significant impact in that a) in being interdisciplinary, it aligns more closely with real engineering work experienced after graduation than traditional engineering programs and b) in focusing on both systems and components, addresses the development of high level knowledge and skills normally acquired only after graduation through experience. Unfortunately, most engineering graduates still have little if any experiences working with students from other disciplines on real projects. The status quo is for students to gain few if any real world engineering design experiences through classes and, when they do, to work on such projects with other students from their own discipline and only in their senior year. The Technology Leaders Program changes this completely, engaging students in interdisciplinary design experiences during every academic year. Furthermore, typical undergraduate engineering education focuses solely on teaching component level design skills. Systems level skills – skills focused on integrating components into larger systems – are left to be developed through experience. The Technology Leaders Program is designed specifically to engage electrical, computer, and mechanical engineering students in systems integration as they are developing their component level design skills within their majors. At the same time, the TLP exposes systems engineering students to component level design while they are learning system integration skills within their major. We are able to create such a unique educational program due to the availability of low cost technologies that enable hands-on design opportunities for students. Electrical prototyping with microcontrollers and sensors, mechanical prototyping with motors, actuators, and 3d printing, and systems and information prototyping with information and analytics systems are all accessible at low cost. To this end, we have developed an integrated systems design studio outfitted with all of the equipment and resources necessary for the rapid development of integrated electromechanical systems. In addition to the development of the Technology Leaders Program, we also conducted engineering education research related to student learning of interdisciplinary engineering design knowledge and skills. Among the key findings to date are:Interdisciplinarity means something different to engineering than it does in the humanities (where the majority of the prior work in interdisciplinarity has been conducted). The single largest difference is that interdisciplinarity within engineering engages a team of specialists who need to know how to work together; with the humanities, interdisciplinary skills have mainly been studied within individuals where, for instance, one person is able to use the language and theories from multiple disciplines to analyze an issue. Conceptions of leadership among female students are different than those of their male counterparts, with males associating leadership with directing teamwork, running meetings, and project oversight and females associating leadership with facilitating collaboration among team members, being responsible, and contributing to the team. These findings align with the larger literature on this topic. Given that engineering is male-dominated in the United States – and that interdisciplinarity in engineering is inherently linked to teamwork (see first bullet) – this discrepancy of leadership perspectives impacts the experience of females. This impact could potentially provide opportunities for females but also could pose challenges as their leadership strengths are not that of the dominant identity in classes and on projects. An important research effort currently underway is providing insights about how interdisciplinary teams of students both from the Technology Leader Program (TLP) and not from the TLP approach a design project. While findings are still being developed, early results indicate that a) prototyping and implementation play a large role in the design process, b) disciplinary specialists’ domain knowledge is important throughout, but leads to teams splitting into subteams particularly during prototyping and implementation, and c) students are able to contribute in areas outside of their discipline and that these contributions are important. Last Modified: 01/01/2014 Submitted by: Robert R Bailey The primary impact of this work was the development of an interdisciplinary engineering program, the Technology Leaders Program (TLP), that engages students in both system level and component level design. Students from both the University of Virginia and Piedmont Virginia Community College participate in the TLP. Such a program is significant in that a) in being interdisciplinary, it aligns more closely with real engineering work and b) in focusing on both systems and components, it addresses the development of high level knowledge normally only acquired through experience after graduation. Unfortunately, most engineering graduates still have few experiences working with students from other disciplines on real projects. The TLP changes this completely, engaging students in interdisciplinary design experiences during every academic year. Furthermore, typical undergraduate engineering education focuses solely on teaching component level design skills. Systems level skills –focused on integrating components into larger systems – are left to be developed through experience. The TLP is designed specifically to engage electrical, computer, and mechanical engineering students in systems integration as they develop their component level design skills within their majors. At the same time, the TLP exposes systems engineering students to component level design while they are learning system integration skills within their major. We are able to create such a unique educational program due to the availability of low cost technologies that enable hands-on design opportunities for students. Electrical prototyping with microcontrollers/sensors, mechanical prototyping with motors/actuators/3d printing, and systems and information prototyping with information/analytics systems are all accessible at low cost. To this end, we have developed an integrated systems design studio outfitted with these capabilities. Beyond developing the TLP, we also conducted educational research on student learning of interdisciplinary engineering design knowledge and skills. Key findings are: Interdisciplinarity means something different to engineering than it does in the humanities. The largest difference is that interdisciplinarity within engineering engages a team of specialists who need work together; with the humanities, interdisciplinary skills have mainly been studied within individuals where, for instance, one person is able to use the language and theories from multiple disciplines to analyze an issue. With interdisciplinary engineering requiring teams, the different perceptions that female students have about leadership compared to their male counterparts, could provide opportunities for females but also could pose challenges as their leadership strengths are not that of the dominant identity in classes and on projects. Our work showed that males associate leadership with directing teamwork, running meetings, and project oversight while females more often associate leadership with facilitating collaboration among team members, being responsible, and contributing to the team. These findings align with the larger literature on this topic. Given that engineering is male-dominated in the United States – and that interdisciplinarity in engineering is inherently linked to teamwork (see first bullet) – this discrepancy of leadership perspectives can impact the interdisciplinary engineering experiences of females. Prototyping and implementation of ideas play a large role in the design process. Based on our studies where we videotaped teams of engineering students designing a system, 60% of the time designing is spent prototyping and testing. This is important on many fronts. For constructing courses, a design class that ends in a "report" and does not involve implementation misses a large part of design. For constructing curricula, we are not educating engineers well if we do not explicitly include experiences in their curricula where they must transition their ideas from paper to reality. For research, findings from studies of engineering designers that end with conceptual drawings and ideas are missing a key component that influences how engineers behave. Disciplinary specialists’ domain knowledge is important throughout a design project, but leads to teams splitting into subteams particularly during prototyping and implementation. Teams used the entire group more often in defining the problem and conceptual design, but divided the work of implementation. We particularly saw this with software coding, where students who knew more about coding became "the coders" while the rest of the team worked on other areas of implementation. Students with more interdisciplinary design experience were more comfortable working in subteams while those with less kept their entire team together more often. The ability to work in subteams while remaining focused on common systems objectives is important. In this context, this finding strengthens the case for the importance of integrating interdisciplinary design experiences into a student’s education. Long term impacts start with the better preparation of engineering graduates through an interdisciplinary engineering design program at both the University of Virginia and Piedmont Virginia Community College. In addition, contributions to the literature on interdisciplinary design education have and will continue to influence our understanding of how students learn this material and how to best design curricula to support such learning.
