Engineering Studies最新文献

{"title":"Interdisciplinarity in Practice: Reflections on Drones as a Classroom Boundary Object","authors":"E. Reddy, G. Hoople, A. Choi-Fitzpatrick","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2019.1614006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2019.1614006","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In an interdisciplinary project-based course, the topic of ‘drones’ served as an essential boundary object both for the students themselves and instructors. Instructors developed the course to facilitate productive exchanges between students from schools of engineering and peace studies involved. In this critical participation paper, we use an experimental reflection and analysis method to explore the instructors’ experience with this class. We demonstrate how this boundary object both facilitated some of the most desirable outcomes related to interdisciplinary partnerships and interfered with them by making collaboration without consensus – or explicit disagreements – possible. The kinds of troublesome surprises that instructors reflect on might be understood as indicative of ecologies of ideas, priorities, and practices that students and instructors bring to the classroom. We suggest that other instructors might also benefit from reflecting on their experiences with interdisciplinarity in the way that we have here.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"51 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2019.1614006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43911486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Design Thinking as a Complement to Human Factors Engineering for Enhancing Medical Device Usability","authors":"T. Saidi, C. Mutswangwa, T. Douglas","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2019.1567521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2019.1567521","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Medical devices are indispensable in the diagnosis, treatment and management of disease. To enhance the usability of medical devices, human factors engineering (HFE) has been widely applied. While it takes into account human capabilities and limitations, the use of HFE in the design of medical devices has challenges that render its implementation incomplete, resulting in its potential not being fully exploited. This study examines the literature on HFE to identify gaps and review recommendations with regard to its application in the design of medical devices. The literature reveals that HFE tends to place emphasis on the reduction of errors at the expense of medical device usability, that it has challenges in drawing on multiple perspectives, that it provides limited space for creativity and innovation, that it does not give adequate attention to contextual factors, and that communication barriers interfere with its implementation. The literature suggests that the shortcomings of HFE are methodological. To fill the gap, we propose the use of design thinking in HFE, not as a substitute but as a complementary approach, for enhancing usability. Design thinking, by virtue of being a human-centered approach, has the potential to add value to HFE by incorporating the subjective components of usability.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"34 - 50"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2019.1567521","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49431462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial","authors":"Cyrus C. M. Mody","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2019.1613070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2019.1613070","url":null,"abstract":"Greetings for a new year and a new volume of Engineering Studies. Issue 11.1 has some exciting content, all broadly concerned with how to educate interdisciplinary engineers who will be more attuned to societal context in their design practices. Yet despite that common thread, this issue’s two articles, one Report, and one Critical Participation piece approach the topic from very different directions. That diversity in striving toward a common aim is one of the strengths of this field and its journal. The most personal of this issue’s contributions is our Critical Participation piece, ‘Interdisciplinarity in Practice: Reflections on Drones as a Boundary Object’, by Elizabeth Reddy, Gordon Hoople, and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick. The authors describe a course at the University of San Diego created by Hoople (a faculty member in USD’s School of Engineering) and Choi-Fitzpatrick (a faculty member in USD’s School of Peace). The point of the course was to foster an interdisciplinary environment in which engineering and peace studies students would teach and learn from each other and cause each other to question their own assumptions. Reddy, as a postdoctoral fellow and cultural anthropologist supported at USD by the National Science Foundation, approached the course as an ethnographic field site where she could interact with the students and facultymembers participating in one of the projects funded byNSF’s Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments program. Hoople andChoi-Fitzpatrick assigned the students to develop a ‘drone thatmight have a positive social impact’, on the theory that ‘drones’ (a popular rather than technical category) are a controversial technology thatwould nudge the students toward frank and productive interdisciplinary debates. Unfortunately, the interdisciplinary ideals of the course fell somewhat short in practice. Instead of the peace studies students prompting the engineering students to take amore critical stance, in practice the presence of the engineering students seems to have given the peace studies students leeway to take a less critical stance. Fortunately, the authors take that setback as an opportunity to reflect on what happened, draw some lessons, and put their experiences in front of the engineering studies community for further discussion. One thing I like about this article is that it reinforces the long-standing ties between peace studies and engineering studies; these are fields that ought to be natural allies.1 But intellectuallywhat I find exciting here is the intersection of two forefront topics in engineering studies and related fields. On one side, there is now a fast-growing critical literature on interdisciplinarity. For many years now, ‘interdisciplinary’ has been used as a synonym for ‘good’ on many university campuses, especially but not only in North America. And interdisciplinarity can be a force for good, as this journal tries to demonstrate. But it is not an automatic good, and it s","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"1 - 4"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2019.1613070","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45443378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Engineering Manager: Constitutive Elements of this Profession","authors":"J. Fischer, M. Pečujlija, Djordje Cosic, B. Lalic","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2019.1567522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2019.1567522","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With a sample of 358 students of engineering management and 195 engineering managers, using an ad hoc questionnaire, the paper examines the importance of professional ethics as a constitutive element of the engineering management profession in Serbia. The results indicate that professional ethics is an essential element of constituting this relatively young profession in Serbia.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"65 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2019.1567522","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45002655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Connecting Engineering Processes and Responsible Innovation: A Response to Macro-Ethical Challenges","authors":"Rider W. Foley, B. Gibbs","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2019.1576693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2019.1576693","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT If it is understood that engineers are ‘turning dreams to reality,’ then educators share the responsibility for supporting engineers in developing the capacities to consider the future impacts of their decisions. Yet even the most competent engineer's decisions can contribute to macro-ethical failures that arise from narrow problem framing, unevenly distributed risks and benefits, or design solutions unfit for their intended social and cultural contexts. This paper describes how macro-ethical failures can arise at different points in engineering design processes, and considers how competences associated with responsible innovation might assuage those vulnerabilities. To build those competences among future professional engineers, examples of pedagogical approaches are presented at three scales: activities, courses and curricula. For scholars and educators interested in engineering ethics, this article challenges approaches that favor individualistic understandings of responsibility, instead seeking to support learners’ awareness of, and ability to, ameliorate macro-ethical failures. For scholars and educators interested in operationalizing responsible innovation as a learning outcome that aligns with engineering practice, we offer an entry point for that conversation.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"33 - 9"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2019.1576693","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45826070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In Memoriam Chyuan-Yuan Wu (吳泉源) 1961–2018","authors":"G. Downey","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2019.1613760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2019.1613760","url":null,"abstract":"We in engineering studies have lost a valued friend and colleague. On November 8, 2018, Chyuan-Yuan Wu died of liver cancer. A joyful life filled with irrepressible energy, laughter, and care for o...","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"5 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2019-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2019.1613760","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47614239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial for Engineering Studies Issue 10.2/3","authors":"Cyrus C. M. Mody","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2018.1546728","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2018.1546728","url":null,"abstract":"Welcome, readers, to volume 10, issue 2–3 of Engineering Studies. As you might infer from our combining the final two issues of volume 10, the journal is looking for additional content. We have a n...","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":"85 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2018.1546728","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48599228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Power and Politics of Engineering Education Research Design: Saving the ‘Small N’","authors":"A. Slaton, A. Pawley","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2018.1550785","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2018.1550785","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For decades, American researchers have brought intellectual, financial and labor resources to understanding minority underrepresentation in engineering, including through studies of persistent racial and gender discrimination in higher engineering education. This paper considers prevailing standards for legitimate and significant research in this area and the persistent stigma associated with the study of small populations. The preference among many engineering education research producers and consumers for the ‘large-n’ brings with it presumptions about human differences including ideas of race, gender, disability and other categories by which subjects are customarily sorted for analytic purposes. This paper asks how such epistemic preferences enact power, showing how taxonomic inclinations may prevent incisive understanding of demographic privilege in U.S. higher technical education. We offer an illustrative contrast to such studies, describing a qualitative research project on underrepresented minorities in U.S. engineering schools, called ‘Learning from Small Numbers’. This project shows the analytic value of intersectional, Queer, and Disabilities Studies theories to interrogate inequity in engineering education. We argue that the reflexivity and indeterminacy supported by these theories illuminates the ruling relations of academic social sciences overall, while also reflecting on our own research preferences. There is no feature of an investigative project, including definitions of subject populations and choice of research methodology, that is not actively chosen by researchers, and it is the profound social consequences of these choices in equity-focused engineering education research that we want to consider.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":"133 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2018.1550785","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44143754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Backbone: Construction of a Regional Electricity Grid in the Arabian Peninsula","authors":"Gökçe Günel","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2018.1523176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2018.1523176","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article studies the production of a power grid across six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, known as ‘the backbone,’ which has been conceptualized as an answer to power outages. First it analyzes how experts working with and around the GCC Interconnection Authority (GCCIA) advance claims to a regional territorial imagination. Second, it shows that the construction of the grid not only indicates a shift in the material arrangement of wires and substations, but also necessitates new understandings of transparency and a new formula for the electricity price, facilitating the cutting of government subsidies along with additional price increases. Third, it interrogates how electricity is consumed in the region. Policy-makers expected that electricity price increases would lead to lower rates of consumption. Yet after price hikes were instituted, analysts reported how they had no impact. Users behaved in ways that the grid’s engineers did not anticipate. Overall the article shows how various actors conduct ‘boundary work,’ that is, how they set limits between the political, the financial and the technical while producing the backbone. The article explores how this boundary work helps stabilize a particular sociotechnical imaginary of energy security in the GCC, masking anxieties associated with a future beyond oil.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":"114 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2018.1523176","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42944568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Principles and Practice of Engineering Exam Pass Rate by Gender","authors":"J. Keen, A. Salvatorelli","doi":"10.1080/19378629.2018.1485024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2018.1485024","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In many disciplines of engineering, the professional engineering license is an important credential for career advancement. To attain an engineering license, one must pass the Principle and Practice of Engineering (PE) exam after a set amount of time in practice (defined by the state granting the license). While the national pass rate for the exam is available to the public, pass rates based on gender is not collected as most states do not track this demographic. The purpose of this study is to determine the PE exam pass rates for men and women. Pass rate information by gender was requested from each state’s licensing board. When gender information was not available, a list of all individuals who sat for the exam and their results were requested. From this list, gender was assigned based on individual names and a pass rate by gender was determined. These data enable a conclusion to be drawn as to whether women are passing the PE exam at a similar rate as men.","PeriodicalId":49207,"journal":{"name":"Engineering Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":"158 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2018-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/19378629.2018.1485024","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42945078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}