Laying the Foundations of a Learning Platform for Humanitarian Engineering: Methodological Approach and Results

Mazzurco, Andrea; Jesiek, Brent K.

doi:10.18260/1-2--28606

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Research in HE education has, in fact, mostly focused on the development of HE curricula (e.g., Smith et al, ) or on evaluating how HE courses help students develop technical and professional skills (e.g., Litchfield, Javernick‐Will, & Maul, ). A recent scoping review showed that most studies have used only self‐report Likert scales to assess key competencies (Mazzurco & Murzi, ), which are useful in evaluating students' self‐concept and confidence but limited in determining whether they have actually acquired such skills. Therefore, there are still many opportunities to further investigate the development of key attributes relevant to HE practice, especially including socio‐technical thinking.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio‐technical thinking of students and practitioners in the context of humanitarian engineering

Mazzurco

Daniel

2020

J of Engineering Edu

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Background Humanitarian engineering (HE) is rapidly emerging in universities and professional workplaces worldwide. In HE, socio‐technical thinking is fundamental as HE projects exist at the intersection of engineering and sustainable community development. However, the literature still lacks an understanding of the key features of socio‐technical thinking. Purpose/Hypothesis The purpose of this article is to investigate the key characteristics that distinguish the socio‐technical thinking of an expert from a novice in the context of HE projects. Design/Method We distributed the Energy Conversion Playground (ECP) design task to students starting their engineering degree (n = 26) and practitioners (n = 16). We iteratively and inductively analyzed the responses to develop a rubric characterizing the key features of expert socio‐technical thinking. We then scored participants' responses and compared them to identify differences between students and practitioners. Results The analysis showed that expert socio‐technical thinkers can provide high‐quality considerations across three domains: technology, people, and broader context. The comparison of the participants' scores showed that both students and practitioners scored highly in the technology domain. In contrast, students scored poorly in the people and broader contexts domains, identifying only simplistic considerations in these non‐technical areas, if at all. Conclusions This study provides novel insights into the development of socio‐technical thinking and further validates the ECP as a trustworthy measure of socio‐technical thinking. Implications for engineering educators and multiple lines of future research are also discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio‐technical thinking of students and practitioners in the context of humanitarian engineering

Mazzurco

Daniel

2020

J of Engineering Edu

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“…Finally, after further iterations, we looked for commonalities amongst the themes and merged them to obtain our framework of five guiding principles. This process also led us to develop an initial classification of design methods, as presented in more detail in related publications (Mazzurco, 2016;Mazzurco & Jesiek, 2017).…”

Section: Qualitative Content Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To address this gap, we have undertaken a research project with three main goals: 1) identifying principles that can enable meaningful community participation, 2) classifying design methods that allow community members to influence engineered solutions, and 3) investigating the experiences of humanitarian engineers to provide lessons learned and real-life examples of their partnerships with community members (Mazzurco, 2016;Mazzurco & Jesiek, 2017). This paper reports results from the first phase of the research project that aimed to create a framework of principles by integrating findings from the extant HE literature.…”

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confidence: 99%

Five Guiding Principles to Enhance Community Participation in Humanitarian Engineering Projects.

Mazzurco

Jesiek²

2017

JHE

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Humanitarian engineering (HE) is a very complex endeavour that requires addressing technical problems whilst concurrently engaging the community members who will ultimately benefit from the engineers’ solutions. Community participation is particularly important because it is directly linked to the sustainability of projects. Whilst many strategies have been proposed to engage partner communities, the HE literature lacks a comprehensive framework of guiding principles for more effectively engaging community members. The goal of this study is to develop a framework of principles that can support humanitarian engineering professionals and educators to enhance the participation of community members. In this study, we used a qualitative systematised literature review to collect 49 journal articles focused on humanitarian engineering projects and strategies. The analysis of the collected papers led to identification of five guiding principles: 1) collaborating with local champions (NGOs and similar), 2) harnessing local resources and expertise, 3) integrating ethics and social justice, 4) building trusting and equitable relationships, and 5) creating competent multi or inter-disciplinary teams. The identified principles provide a framework that can enable humanitarian professionals and educators involved in small-scale HE projects to enhance the way they interact with community members. We conclude the paper with a series of questions based on the five principles that may allow humanitarian engineers to reflect on the way they interact with community members and thus enhance their relationships. We also invite other humanitarian engineers to further expand concepts related to the suggested principles, and to explore ways to best apply these principles in practice.

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Laying the Foundations of a Learning Platform for Humanitarian Engineering: Methodological Approach and Results

Cited by 2 publications

References 20 publications

Socio‐technical thinking of students and practitioners in the context of humanitarian engineering

Socio‐technical thinking of students and practitioners in the context of humanitarian engineering

Five Guiding Principles to Enhance Community Participation in Humanitarian Engineering Projects.

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