Uncovering the Layers of Design Processes of a Global Engineering Course: An Interactional Ethnographic Approach

• In Event: 56.058 - The Discursive Construction of Learning Opportunities: Developing an Interdisciplinary/Interprofessional Ethnographic Research Agenda for Postsecondary Education

Abstract

Purpose
The poster presents an ethnographic study of an instructor’s design logic underlying a multi-country undergraduate engineering design course. The study analyzed how, in what ways, and for what purposes, he continually defined and reformulated what counted as (Heap, 1991) “new” learning opportunities/outcomes for engineering design thinking in the 21st century, through his interactions with globally distributed groups of students and teaching teams (i.e., US, India, Israel, China and South Korea). By examining what was discursively made present to students, I identified the processes and practices that members of the class needed to know, understand, produce and engage in (Heath & Street, 2008) to develop their capacities to work in intercultural contexts on local design problems.

Theoretical Perspectives
Central to Interactional Ethnography (IE) is a conceptualization of the situated and constructed nature of social events/institutional contexts (Author, 2015). By examining interactive dimensions among actors, across times, spaces and contexts, and by exploring their consequences for participants, this epistemological perspective supports analysis of the developing ways in which participants propose, acknowledge, recognize and interactionally accomplish individual and collective academic and social life in particular educational spaces (e.g., Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993; Duranti & Goodwin, 1992).

Modes of Inquiry
Discourse analysis guided by an IE logic-in-use, grounded in a social construction of knowledge perspective (i.e., Castanheira, Crawford, Dixon and Green, 2001), framed the ways in which I examined the work of participants, what they oriented to, were held accountable for, and how what counted as this “new” instructional approach was socially constructed (Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993, Castanheira et al, 2001). This inquiry process required consideration of multimodal texts available to students in different technology-enabled educational contexts, public (re)presentations of this developing program as well as the construction of transcripts.

Data Sources
The main representative data included publicly available information as well as the video records of the focal course and course syllabi. Throughout the investigation, I consulted with the program manager to obtain additional resources and receive confirmation on my analyses.

Findings
The analyses made visible how the instructor’s discourse focused students on taking a problem-oriented approach to resolving challenges of working interculturally. Three inter-related challenges that impacted the collaborative work and opportunities for learning for students were identified that influenced how the course was designed. The first related to the necessity to address unique institutional and socio-national contexts of each participating institution. The second involved the instructor’s desire to engage each site in face-to-face opportunities from their national sites. The third, led to the need for the instructor to adapt the planned program to address unanticipated differences in participation due to the holidays in each country.

Scholarly Significance
This study demonstrates how designing a global course created unanticipated challenges not only for students but also for the instructor, a factor not considered in discussions of innovative design initiatives in higher education. Additionally, this study makes visible how undertaking an IE approach made possible an iterative, recursive and abductive process for constructing warranted understandings of emerging curricular design processes in particular interdisciplinary/intercultural contexts.

Author

• Jenna Joo, University of California - Santa Barbara