Empathic Design in Engineering Education and Practice: An Approach for Achieving Inclusive and Effective Community Resilience

Afroogh, Saleh; Esmalian, Amir; Donaldson, Jonan Phillip; Mostafavi, Ali

doi:10.3390/su13074060

Cited by 25 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Researchers have previously suggested that to establish community awareness, ideologies, and actions aimed at social justice, all three components of empathy are needed. 2 In this research, Zaki's framework served as the lens that informed our research questions, protocol development, analysis, and the interpretation of the results. Below, we describe each component separately as well as the role they play in cultural development, understanding, and communication.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

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: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

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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“…At the societal level, empathy has been highlighted as an essential fabric to a civil society with collective resilience (de Waal, 2009), especially in traumatic events (Afroogh et al, 2021; Taylor et al, 2020) due to the well-established corresponding relationship between empathy and prosocial behaviors (Bohns & Flynn, 2021). High empathy levels, for instance, could positively predict altruistic responses and prosocial behaviors to others, which in turn foster prosocial moral reasoning (Paciello et al, 2013).…”

Section: Theoretical Foundationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, perceived social support has been found a positive contributor to collective resilience, especially in public crises. It is well supported that social support not only enhances individual resilience (Afroogh et al, 2021; Taylor et al, 2020) but also helps individuals to remain empathetic to each other in difficult times (Park et al, 2015).…”

Section: Theoretical Foundationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empathy Not Quarantined: Social Support via Social Media Helps Maintain Empathy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Qin

Yang

Jiang

et al. 2022

Social Media + Society

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The Covid pandemic had turned the world upside down, but not much is known about how people’s empathy toward others in difficult situations might be affected by the pandemic. Based on a nationally representative sample ( N = 943) from China, this study first let participants read three real scenarios and then measured: (1) how empathy toward others might be influenced by the perceived social support people obtained by using social media (i.e., WeChat); and (2) how different demographics such as age and gender as well as lockdown situations may affect preserving empathetic during the Covid outbreak. Results show that perceived social support via WeChat not only positively impacted empathy but also interacted with anxiety in influencing the degree to which participants could maintain empathy toward others. Those living in cities or towns with higher incomes were more empathetic to others. While anxiety does not necessarily decrease empathy, those who reported gaining more social support on social media showed more empathy toward others despite their elevated levels of anxiety. Age negatively predicted empathy, but gender and lockdown conditions did not impact empathy. This study contributes to the literature by identifying the critical role empathy plays in people’s affective response to others during a public health crisis.

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“…The size of the required subsidy is remarkably small and well within reach of individual countries, or even companies that would stand to benefit from the existence of air capture technology, or private foundations that choose to develop a solution to the climate problem and sustainable energy systems. 98,99 ■ ASSOCIATED CONTENT * sı Supporting Information…”

Section: ■ Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Buying down the Cost of Direct Air Capture

Lackner

Azarabadi

2021

Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.

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Direct air capture (DAC) shows exceptional promise for carbon dioxide removal on the scale required to fulfill the Paris Agreement. Even though planetary limitations do not constrain the scale of DAC, the currently high cost puts its feasibility in question. By observing cost reduction pathways of similar technologies, this paper explores the cost reduction opportunities that result from learning-by-doing. We developed an analytical buy-down model to investigate what it would take to lower the cost of DAC to $100/ton CO2. Our goal is not to accurately predict future costs, but our analysis demonstrates that if DAC follows a path similar to that of comparable, successful technologies, a capital investment of several hundred million dollars could buy down the cost of DAC. This buy-down effort at a relatively low cost will quantify the learning potential of DAC and show whether its costs can be reduced (like solar photovoltaic modules) or whether despite the investment it remains expensive (like nuclear power generation).

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Empathic Design in Engineering Education and Practice: An Approach for Achieving Inclusive and Effective Community Resilience

Cited by 25 publications

References 75 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

Empathy Not Quarantined: Social Support via Social Media Helps Maintain Empathy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Buying down the Cost of Direct Air Capture

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