Ergonomics Service Learning Project: Implementing an Alternative Educational Method in an Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Ergonomics Course

Abstract

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the Engineer of 2020, an engineering education initiative, have recommended that engineering students be provided with opportunities to participate in real‐world projects to supply them with the skills they will need in the workplace. Service learning is a pedagogical approach where students apply skills they learn in a classroom to a real‐world problem identified by a community organization. In 2009, a service learning project was introduced in an undergraduate Ergonomics Industrial Engineering course composed of engineering and nonengineering students at Montana State University (MSU). Its integration and development in the existing course required creating a detailed project description and finding a partner organization. Students worked with clients or staff at the partner organization to develop ergonomic solutions for workplace health and safety issues and manufacturing productivity. At the end‐of‐semester presentations, the community partners, instructor, and other students assessed each solution's effectiveness. These assessments found that students, compared to the partner's feedback, undervalued their prototypes with regard to how they improved worker and process efficiency, and they overvalued their solution's creativity, cost, and implementation feasibility. In addition, the service learning course's technical and professional skills ranked above the average ABET course outcomes of MSU's Industrial Engineering fall courses. This demonstrates how the service learning project and the intended goals from ABET and Engineer 2020 come together—service learning exposes students to real‐world situations that better prepare and inform them of the skills that will be needed after graduation.

Exploration of Practical Teaching with Digital Technology for Industrial Engineering Education in Local Universities of China

“…Realistic industry resources play an important role in the practical education of IEs. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology and Engineer 2020, an engineering education initiative, has recommended that engineering students be provided with opportunities to participate in real-world projects to supply them with the skills they will need in the workplace (Page & Stanley, 2014). Therefore, we collect the practice engineering problems related to IE from local companies to construct the materials library.…”

“…One of the responsibilities of universities is to develop a quality graduate who will be armed with the knowledge needed after graduation and to expose students to real-world situations. For example, Page and Stanley presented a service-learning approach for ergonomics in which students apply the skills they learn in a classroom to a real-world problem identified by a community organization (Page & Stanley, 2014). To improve the training quality of IEs with realistic engineering problems that reflect the current needs of the industry, the material library is constructed.…”

Tactics for Improvement of Combination between IE Education and Engineering Practice by Exploring Historical Employment Statistics

“…The objective of Engineer 2020 is to provide students with opportunities to participate in real-world projects to provide them with skills they will need in workplace [3,4]. Throughout the IE education in America, the main characteristics can be summed up as follows:…”

Teaching Strategies in Industrial Engineering Programs in Brazil: Benchmarking in North American Universities

“…There are different factors to observe when replacing traditional methodologies with active learning strategies. A professor support team is essential, allowing academic support and company relationships to bring real and unstructured problems [15], [16]. Still, the infrastructure must provide subsidies for group activity, allowing interaction between students and, simultaneously, the possibility of explaining content by professors [9].…”