A Qualitative Study of Empathy in the Experiences of Students in a First-Year Engineering Service Learning Course

Yeaman, Adetoun; Bairaktarova, Diana; Reid, Ken

doi:10.18260/1-2--34040

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Yet, while scholars have described how power dynamics can im-pact responses and perspectives towards empathy, 5 typically research in STEM on empathy development focuses on the student. 15,28,34,53,68 As such, insight on the faculty perspective remains more limited.…”

Section: Embedding Empathy In Stem Curriculamentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to Care: Faculty Perspectives on Developing Empathy and Inclusive Mindsets in Biomedical Engineering

Lunn

Bell-Huff²,

Doux³

2022

Biomed Eng Education

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While we all have our own circumstances and experiences, being able to empathize is critical to recognizing injustice and considering the viewpoints of others in the community. In the human-centric field of biomedical engineering (BME), empathy is imperative to creating inclusive devices or equipment that are equally accessible to all who need them. To learn more about the importance of empathy in the discipline and the learning activities that can be used to promote it, we leveraged qualitative methods and interviewed six BME instructors and course coordinators. We applied Zaki's framework of empathy as the theoretical foundation for our investigation and analysis, which considers cognitive, emotional, and motivational factors. In this study, we sought to address: (1) The need of empathy for BME students; (2) The need of empathy for BME educators; and (3) How specific learning activities can be used to appreciate and imbue empathy. The analysis resulted in six themes, and the findings illustrated that empathy was considered important for students' personal and professional development. It can promote intercultural awareness, leadership, and may drive students to think and care about others and take action. Faculty perceived empathy as necessary for themselves as well and they described developing it over the course of their careers as they interacted with students and learned about the issues they faced. In turn, they mentioned how their own empathy served to strengthen their approach as educators, their interpersonal relationships, and their awareness of students in distress. We identified multiple learning activities which can foster empathy in students. Examples include writing personas to enhance perspective-taking or allowing students to share their own narrative to strengthen communication for the speaker and active listening and compassion from those hearing the stories. Requiring students to shadow physicians or conduct interviews with those that will use their products can serve to build compassion and help students to think about others. However, to impact values and mindsets such activities should not just be inserted at a single time point, but instead, should be considered throughout the BME curriculum. The findings from this work not only encourage professional development of BME students and their ability to solve problems addressing the needs of real people, but they also speak to the value of empathy for individual growth and considering diverse perspectives.

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Section: Embedding Empathy In Stem Curriculamentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to Care: Faculty Perspectives on Developing Empathy and Inclusive Mindsets in Biomedical Engineering

Lunn

Bell-Huff²,

Doux³

2022

Biomed Eng Education

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“…15. Yeaman, A., Bairaktarova, D., & Reid, K. (2020, June). A qualitative study of empathy in the experiences of students in a first-year engineering service learning course.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…al, 2022). Design experiences have to move beyond achieving epistemic aims to include aims centered around building communities such as through service learning (Yeaman et al, 2020), and situated in global contexts (Bairaktarova et al, 2016) to make empathetic behaviours and mindful attitudes feel authentic and needed.…”

Section: Shifting Design Pedagogical Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Literature Review to Explore a Relationship: Empathy and Empathy and Mindfulness in Design Education

Khan,

Yeaman,

Bairaktarova

2023 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Adetoun Yeaman is an engineering education postdoctoral fellow and part-time assistant teaching professor in the department of engineering at Wake Forest University. She holds a PhD in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech where the studied the role of empathy in the experiences of undergraduate engineering students in service learning programs. She has a masters degree in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering and a bachelors in Biomedical Engineering. Her research interests include empathy, design education, ethics and character education and community engagement.

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“…Experiential immersion and prioritizing community-engagement in Earth Science curricula have also been shown to promote ethical development, even in the absence of explicit discussions on ethics in courses [83]. In general, service learning (SL) experiences were demonstrated to be useful pedagogical tools in developing empathy as a type of understanding, helping students to establish emotional connections with others, compassion, [9,42,54,71,80,[84][85][86] and a type of "critical consciousness" [42]. Direct observation overtly lead to seeing their points view, as well as how designs could be applied in real world contexts [9,80].…”

Section: Experiential Immersionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In general, service learning (SL) experiences were demonstrated to be useful pedagogical tools in developing empathy as a type of understanding, helping students to establish emotional connections with others, compassion, [9,42,54,71,80,[84][85][86] and a type of "critical consciousness" [42]. Direct observation overtly lead to seeing their points view, as well as how designs could be applied in real world contexts [9,80].…”

Section: Experiential Immersionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultivating Inclusivity: A Systematic Literature Review on Developing Empathy for Students in STEM Fields

Lunn,

Bell-Huff,

LeDoux

2022 CoNECD (Collaborative Network for Engineering &Amp; Computing Diversity) Proceedings

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She recently completed her Ph.D. from theKnight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU). Her research interests span the fields of Computing and Engineering Education, Human Computer Interaction, Data Science, and Machine Learning. Previously, Stephanie received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Neuroscience from the University of Miami, in addition to B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from FIU.

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A Qualitative Study of Empathy in the Experiences of Students in a First-Year Engineering Service Learning Course

Cited by 5 publications

References 11 publications

Learning to Care: Faculty Perspectives on Developing Empathy and Inclusive Mindsets in Biomedical Engineering

Learning to Care: Faculty Perspectives on Developing Empathy and Inclusive Mindsets in Biomedical Engineering

A Literature Review to Explore a Relationship: Empathy and Empathy and Mindfulness in Design Education

Cultivating Inclusivity: A Systematic Literature Review on Developing Empathy for Students in STEM Fields

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