Engineering Your Community: Experiences of Students in a Service-Learning Engineering Design Course

One of the significant issues facing engineering over the past several decades has been the recruitment and retention of students, particularly minority and female students. One method that has proven fruitful in attracting these groups is to utilize a service-learning approach to show the applicability of course content and the ways that it can positively affect others. Many programs, such as Engineers Without Borders, target service opportunities for engineers in a developing country and typically attract a higher percentage of female and minority participants than the national averages for engineering. Opportunities such as these are wonderful, but there are vast opportunities available within one’s own community as well. At the University of Cincinnati, a course was piloted with a group of honors students based on the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) framework to allow vertically integrated and multidisciplinary student teams to work on projects to aid the residents and staff of a local, inpatient facility catering to individuals with debilitating neurological diseases. The class was open to any student in the university’s honors program, and drew students from engineering, art and design, and the sciences. In this paper, a description of the curricular structure and the student projects are presented. In addition, a subset of the students in the course present their own experiences with the course and how their participation has affected their view of engineering and their future careers. These students first reflected on their own unique experiences with the course, specifically focusing on working in a multidisciplinary and vertically-integrated team, the development of teamwork and technical skills, and the impact of the course on their view of engineering. After reflecting, each student analyzed the reflections of the other participating students and the commonalities and differences in the experiences were identified and are presented, with implications for similar courses/programs. Background: One of the significant issues facing engineering over the past several decades has been the recruitment and retention of students, particularly minority and female students 1-3 . As a result, many programs have been developed over the years to attract female and minority students to STEM disciplines. These programs range from programs at the college level to provide academic and social support, often associated with the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), to high school, middle school, and elementary school initiatives designed to excite women and minorities about engineering when they are first forming their ideas about their futures. However, once students from these populations have been recruited, efforts must be made to retain them within engineering. One method that has proven fruitful in helping to retain these groups, especially women, is to utilize a service-learning approach, which demonstrates the applicability of course content and the ways that it can positively affect others 4-7 . Many programs, such as Engineers Without Borders, target service opportunities for engineers in a developing country. Other programs, such as the EPICS program founded at Purdue University, focus on service opportunities in the community around the institution. Regardless of the venue, these programs typically attract a higher percentage of female and minority participants than the national averages for engineering. At its foundation, service-learning is the marriage of service within a local, regional, or global community with academic learning 8 . More precisely, Hatcher and Bringle 9 define service learning by the following: We view service-learning as a credit-bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of the course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility. In order to fulfill each of the requirements expressed above, a service-learning experience must utilize each of the following four components 10 : 1. Service – Service must be provided to an underserved group or area. In engineering, this often takes the form of providing engineering skills and services to address a problem facing the underserved group. 2. Academic Content – Given that a service-learning experience requires the participants to gain a broader understanding and appreciation of disciplinary content, the experience must be associated with some type of academic content. Within engineering, this may be content from a specific disciplinary course or may be more general engineering skills, such as problem-solving and design. 3. Partnerships and Reciprocity – In any service-learning experience, there are a number of entities involved. In the majority of experiences, there are three main players: the students, the faculty or mentor, and the community. Each of these groups must form a relationship with the others. In a well-executed service-learning experience, these relationships become partnerships, in which each entity contributes to the project and receives a benefit from the experience. 4. Analysis and Reflection – One of the critical components that makes service-learning such an effective pedagogy is the use of reflection throughout the experience. Reflection is essential because it is the primary method for connecting the curricular content to the service experience. For many students, this will be the first time they are applying their disciplinary knowledge to a real-world problem, and thus they will need guidance in understanding how the work they are accomplishing on their projects relates to the course content. Reflection also allows for the opportunity to connect the course content and students’ disciplines to broader societal issues. Curricular Structure: At the University of Cincinnati, a course was piloted during the fall 2014 semester with a group of honors students based on the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) framework to allow vertically integrated and multidisciplinary student teams to work on projects to aid the residents and staff of the Beechwood Home, a local, inpatient facility catering to individuals with debilitating neurological diseases. Students were required to register for a 3-credit hour course that met once per week for 3 hours, and received a letter grade at the end of the semester. The class was open to any student in the university’s honors program, and drew a total of 17 students from engineering, art and design, and the sciences. A breakdown of the student participants is shown in Table 1. Table 1: Breakdown of Participants in Course Major Number Year Number Biology 1 First-Year 2 Biomedical Engineering 4 Sophomore 7 Chemical Engineering 3 Pre-Junior 3 Computer Engineering 1 Junior 0 Computer Science 1 Senior 5 Electrical Engineering 2 Industrial Design 1 Gender Number Mechanical Engineering 4 Female 7 Total 17 Male 10 During the regularly scheduled meeting time, instructors led discussions on a variety of topics, including engineering design and problem-solving, brainstorming, team dynamics, and background information on the types of illnesses faced by the residents at the partner facility. Each project team updated the class on their progress over the past week, their plans for the next week, and discussed any problems they were facing. The remainder of the time was devoted to working on the projects. Students were also expected to work on their projects outside of class, as necessitated by the project. In addition to the work on their projects, students were also required to complete several other assignments throughout the semester. Each week, students were required to answer several reflection questions related to the topics discussed during class or to the status of work on the projects. Also, at the beginning and end of the semester, students completed a form where they outlined their goals for the semester (both academically and from a project standpoint) and how well they felt they did in accomplishing those goals. In addition, three presentations were made during the semester. The first occurred during the third week of the semester so that the student teams and community partner could agree on the goals of the projects. The second presentation took place in the middle of the semester to provide the opportunity for students to receive technical feedback on their projects. The final presentation took place during finals week, in which students presented their progress on their projects to the community partner and their plans moving forward. Overall, 5 projects were undertaken by the students: a physical therapy device to aid in maintaining hand strength and flexibility, an interactive game table to allow for residents to interact and exercise cognitive functions, a wheelchair mounted remote to interface with a system installed in the elevators to allow residents more independence within the facility, a wheelchair mounted system that would track the location of residents and would alert staff members in the event of a tip, and a device mounted in a resident’s room to aid in calling for assistance through vision tracking. In the following section, three of these projects will be discussed in more detail. Exemplar Projects: Euchre Game Table One of the goals of the Beechwood home is to allow residents to live their lives as independently as possible. Many are still capable of eating lunch without help and navigating around both the facility and in their individual rooms. However, one of the shortcomings at the facility was activities for the residents to engage in when official programs are not running. Socializing and having fun are essential parts to keeping a sharp and healthy mind amidst circumstanc