Invention in Engineering Design: An Undergraduate Model for Summer Immersive Workplace and Academic Learning Experiences

• In Event: Creating Innovative Learning Environments Through Community and Interdisciplinary Connections for Invention Education

Abstract

This presentation highlights a university, community college and industry stakeholders’ collaboration of an eight-week undergraduate, summer immersion program in engineering design. The school-to-career program is framed on workforce development centered on building the skills capacity of prospective engineers, recruited from diverse populations to form a future workforce pool of experts responsive to global, emerging, real-world industry challenges. Each stakeholder’s disciplinary perspectives informed on capabilities that undergraduates need to attain – in order to imagine and invent solutions to issues impacting the everyday lives of home-based or deployed Naval personnel – and to develop as professional engineers. Invention education spaces included project-based learning (Lehmann et. al. 2008), entrepreneurship and innovation education, professional skills development, communications training, tiered-mentorship (Caragianis-Broadbridge et. al. 2006; Fowler and Muckert, 2004), symposium presentation, and design competition for interns to learn experientially in situated contexts (Johri et. al, 2011; Stevens et. al., 2008; Lave and Wenger, 1991). These invention education spaces in this engineering context prioritizes individual contribution to group problem-based learning and decision-making in design innovation. Examples of interdisciplinarity collaboration or disciplinary literacies “boundary crossing” (National Academies of Sciences, 2018; National Academies of Sciences & Medicine, 2018; Perez-Breva, 2016; Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 1999) include: stakeholder and field representations, intern group member’s or mentor knowledge base, engineering and technician expertise, as well as academia and industry panelist perspectives.
Through an interactional ethnographic (IE) study of three cohorts, the following summarizes the data collection and analysis processes. Particular attention was foregrounded on the IE principles, grounded in anthropology (Green and Bridges, 2017; Heath and Street, 2008; Agar, 2007):
• To understand the learning and decision-making processes from the perspectives of interns
• To learn with, rather than about, the participants as they develop a frame for understanding and operating in invention spaces
• To conduct research in a cyclical, reiterative, non-linear, complex process of interpretation, application, revision, and dissemination of work in action
• To apply abductive reasoning to minimize bias or fixed frames


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This program showed that 1) students of differing preparedness levels can be fully engaged 2) hands-on and workplace learning uncovered knowledge beyond academics and 3) the role of mentor and team member relationships provided a depth of understanding interactions in invention. These findings promote learning beyond traditional content, curriculum and school formats. It also enhances understanding of diversity, professional, peer, and group support when interacting in invention or engineering spaces.

Author

• Pablo Bendiksen, Boston College