Service-Learning Projects in Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Abstract

The College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) has integrated service-learning (S-L) into many of its core required undergraduate courses over the last three years. Projects that meet real community needs and that help students achieve academic objectives in these core courses are percieved to be difficult to create, but, in this paper, projects for 35 different undergraduate required courses are summarized to help faculty, staff, and students develop S-L projects for their own courses. Faculty at UML were encouraged to “start small rather than not at all.” Courses and projects include, for example, a first-year introduction to engineering course in which 340 students, divided into teams, designed and built moving displays illustrating various technologies for 60,000 middle school students that every year visit a history center that is part of a national park. Another example is a sophomore kinematics course in which student teams visited local playgrounds to assess their safety using deceleration, force, and impact equations learned from the course. Junior heat transfer courses focused in analyzing heat loss and making suggestions for heating system savings for a local food pantry, a city hall building, and a community mental health center, as well as for the university itself; these analyses were developed and presented to the stakeholders. Sophomore student teams from the materials course presented findings to the staff of a local textile history museum to help it begin updating its displays on recent developments in materials. Junior fluids, junior circuits, senior microprocessor, senior design of machine elements, and senior capstone design are having students design and build various parts of an automated canal lock opener for a local national park. Many of the projects are low-cost and can be implemented by individual faculty members without the requirement of a formal institutional program. These S-L projects are integrated into a wide variety of core courses (and not just design courses) and represent typically from 10 to 20 percent of the grade.

University Social Responsibility towards Engineering Undergraduates: The Effect of Methodology on a Service-Learning Experience

“…The accommodation of SL to the field of engineering is due to the fact that it can be applied to common engineering problems relatively easily, which enables it to be integrated into courses and curricula [27]. Thus, if the particular service is directly related to the content of the course or courses, it not only enables the academic content of the course to be covered, but also provides a framework in which students can learn about complex social problems while reflecting on their role as engineers in solving them [28].…”

“…SL experiences have proven to be an excellent vector for working on and assessing both specific and generic skills including USR competences, which are difficult to approach through other types of teaching experiences [25,27,31]. On the other hand, it is accepted that the teaching methodology strongly influences the degree of acquisition of competences and their retention over time.…”

Pedagogical Implications of Service-Learning Integration in Engineering Education

“…There are also various service-learning programmes which help to promote as well as facilitate the integration of international service projects into many engineering campuses around the world [11]. The basic aim of these programmes is to improve rural water supply schemes, sanitation system, create local community resource management capabilities, and develop supportive form and multi-functional energy reservation and utilization platforms in both developed and developing nations.…”

Self-Efficacy Development among Students Enrolled in an Engineering Service-Learning Section

“…This may be particularly the case for both undergraduates and K-12 students who are members of underserved populations in engineering, like women and students of color. That is, female engineering students have been found to be disproportionately attracted to SL courses 13 and report more positive assessments of SL than male students 14 15 . Students of color also report similar effects, perhaps because these students are more likely to report personal orientations of social justice that easily align with SL projects that benefit underprivileged groups 16 .…”