Benefits of the Human-Technology-Organization Concept in Teaching Ergonomics – Students Perspective

Abstract

The human-technology-organization (HTO) concept has been used for creating systems understanding of ergonomics in three engineering educations at the School of Engineering in Jönköping. Students from courses given in two undergraduate and one graduate program (n=122) participated in the study, which involved a course evaluation questionnaire to assess the understanding of ergonomics as discipline and HTO as a means for creating systems understanding. The questionnaire included both ranking and personal comments to the questions. The results show that the students in general considered knowledge of ergonomics and HTO as beneficial for their future work and that the HTO concept did contribute to their understanding of workplace ergonomics. However, there was a significant difference between undergraduate and graduate students in all these aspects where undergraduates ranked all these aspects lower than graduates. This was also reflected in personal comments on the questions. Conclusions that can be drawn are that understanding systems is generally difficult and the HTO concept can assist in helping students to overcome these difficulties. However, the differences between the student groups must be explicitly considered as well as increasing students' awareness of the relevance of ergonomics for engineers.