Paper ID #8981

What’s in the Soup? Auto-ethnograhies from an Engineer, a Physicist, andan English Professor Regarding a Successful Multidisciplinary Grand Chal-lenge Program

Dr. Anneliese Watt, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Anneliese Watt is Professor of English at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She teaches and re-searches technical and professional communication, rhetoric and composition, medicine in literature, andother humanities elective courses to engineering and science students. Her graduate work in rhetoricand literature was completed at Penn State, and her recent research often focuses on engineering andworkplace communication as well as medical humanities.

Dr. Scott Kirkpatrick, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Scott Kirkpatrick is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Optical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Instituteof Technology. He teaches physics, semiconductor processes, and micro electrical and mechanical sys-tems (MEMS). His research interests include heat engines, magnetron sputtering, and nanomaterial selfassembly. His masters thesis work at the University of Nebraska Lincoln focused on reactive sputteringprocess control. His doctoral dissertation at the University of Nebraska Lincoln investigated High PowerImpulse Magnetron Sputtering.

Dr. Ashley Bernal, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Ashley Bernal is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technol-ogy. She received her PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2011. She was an American Society ofMechanical Engineers (ASME) teaching fellow and Student Teaching Enhancement Partnership (STEP)Fellow. Prior to receiving her PhD, she worked as a subsystems engineer at Boeing on the Joint Un-manned Combat Air Systems (JUCAS) program. Her research areas of interest include piezoelectrics,nanomanufacturing, optical measuring techniques, and intercultural design.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

What’s in the Soup? Reflections from an Engineer, a Physicist,

and an English Professor on an Interdisciplinary Summer Grand

Challenge Program

Introduction to the Summer Grand Challenge Program

Three professors with common interests and goals piloted in Summer 2013 a program focused on

solving one of the fourteen Grand Challenges of the 21st Century identified by the National

Academy of Engineering (NAE).1 These challenges range from providing energy from fusion to

engineering better medicines. The summer program was centered on making solar power cheaper

and locally manufacturable in a less developed region. The program purposefully brought

together humanities, science, and engineering into a single intensively focused experience. The

program was profiled in local front page news coverage,2 the headline story in ASEE First Bell

publication,3 and a US News & World Report article.

4 Following the teaching experience, the

three faculty members sought to reflect on the experience in a structured way. We formulated

questions to probe areas of interest for reflection based on Borrego and Newswander.5 The

questions were answered individually and independently, and then the answers were shared so

that we could engage in shared reflection. After a brief overview of the nature of this program

(objectives, structure, deliverables, assessment), this paper shares some of the notable points and

insights that emerged from the reflection process, which we hope will be of interest to other

engineering educators developing and/or teaching interdisciplinary programs. We follow

Borrego and Newswander in using the term “interdisciplinary” when collaborators work together

to create something new as opposed to a “multidisciplinary” collaboration where colleagues

come together momentarily but then split apart “unchanged by the experience.”5

Course objectives were outlined for the specific courses the program would encompass; Table 1

shows a list of objectives for each of three courses. Students earned twelve credit hours for the

program (four in science, four in engineering, and four in technical writing and communication).

Throughout this paper the word “program” refers to the full twelve credit experience.

Table 1- Course Objectives for the Summer Grand Challenge Program

RH330 • Analyzing contexts, audiences, and genres to determine how they influence

communication

• Crafting documents to meet the demands and constraints of professional

situations

• Integrating all stages of the writing process, ethically and persuasively, to

respond to technical contexts and audiences—from planning, researching and

drafting to designing, revising and editing

• Collaborating effectively within and across teams with overlapping interests

ME497 • Provide strategies and practice for design development

• Applying a systems approach to develop an innovative design for utilizing solar

energy

• Learning to approach design problems and alternatives broadly and creatively;

for example, broadening and deepening concepts and understanding of solar

power

• Utilizing best manufacturing practices in design development, including in the

choice of materials

• Understanding and meeting challenges associated with addressing stakeholder

needs from different cultures/environments, in this case Kenyan

PH490

• Increase understanding of energy and mass principles

• Understanding pressure-volume relationships

• Utilizing heat flow for power conversion

• Understanding energy efficiency and constraints

• Exploring the relationships among heat, light, and electrical and mechanical

energy

Although the objectives are distributed across three different courses in the table above, the

courses were not taught separately but rather as part of a single program. The outcomes and

milestones were overlaid upon a ten week duration, which helped to determine expected due

dates in order to have functioning prototype at the end of the program. Students and all three

faculty met four days per week, following a daily schedule of 9:00-11:30am, lunch break, 1:00-

4:30 pm. As intended, this resulted in more class-time hours for faculty and students than would

normally be expected for the number of credits. This extra time was leveraged so that most work

was done during that scheduled time (rather than as independent homework, class preparation,

and grading). The substantial lunch break of 1.5 hours was often used (by both students and

faculty, sometimes together and other times apart) for less formal conversation while eating.

The major deliverables for the course are shown in Table 2. Student work was assessed using

rubrics/assignment sheets, which can be found on the Summer Grand Challenge website.

Table 2- Major Deliverables for the Summer Grand Challenge Program

Deliverable Name Communication

Medium

Category

Energy Conversion Lab Memo Scientific Knowledge

Steam Engine Cutaway Brochure Scientific Knowledge

System Design Process

Documentation

Memo Teaming/Professionalism

Stirling and Steam Technical

Sales Pitch

Oral Presentation Scientific Knowledge

Peer Performance Evaluation Memo Teaming/Professionalism

Prototype Talk Invitation Email Email Teaming/Professionalism

Problem Description Oral Presentation Design Deliverable

Prototype Electronic Poster

Presentation

Oral Presentation Design Deliverable

Oral Exam 1 Oral Presentation Scientific Knowledge

County Fair Writing Written Reflections Teaming/Professionalism

Press Conference Oral Presentation Design Deliverable

Proposal Written Report Design Deliverable

You-tube video Instructional Video Design Deliverable

Employment Project Cover letter and Resume Resume & Cover Letter

Each deliverable shown in Table 2 was assigned to a category with the grade distribution shown

in Table 3. The design deliverable’s grade for each student was individually scaled based on self

and peer assessment of their teaming behavior using the online CATME software.6 In addition,

the teaming/professionalism category was also scaled based on our interactions with the student

as well as observed behavior.

Table 3- Major Deliverables for the Summer Grand Challenge Program

Category Name Weight Distribution

Teaming/Professionalism 25%

Scientific Knowledge 15%

Design Deliverables 50%

Resume and Cover Letter 10%

The program started with the class with 10 total students with rising sophomore to rising junior

status with the following majors represented: Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering,

Electrical Engineering, and Physics. The class was broken into small groups (three to four

students per team) developing competing conceptual designs. The groups are assigned using an

algorithm provided using the online CATME software program.6 The first two weeks were

allocated towards introduction to the topics required for the students to accomplish their task,

including thermodynamic analysis and heat transfer. This initial period of the program included

labs whose deliverable form varied from a technical memo to a sales brochure. In addition,

students underwent an intensive problem definition phase, determining the target location and

needs of the local customers. The next three weeks were devoted to developing concepts,

building student design skills, and developing an initial design. The best design was then chosen

(together by the instructors and students) and carried forward by the entire class for the

remainder of the program. Thus, during the next four weeks smaller teams worked on individual

subcomponents of the best design, which required the entire class to work together in order for

their components to fit together into a fully functioning and tested device. The final week of the

program was dedicated to their design presentation with the press, a written proposal to

disseminate their idea, developing an instructional video for assembling the device, and building

student résumés incorporating their summer experience and new skills acquired.

The expected institute outcomes of the Summer Grand Challenge program included the

following: engage at-risk students, provide opportunities for advanced students, engage students

in a meaningful cultural experience, and encourage students to explore the engineering Grand

Challenges. These outcomes were accomplished by this program through the enrollment of

students with different disciplines as well as varying degrees of academic success. In addition,

collaboration with a Kenyan college student allowed students to explore the international

dimension of their professions, becoming more aware of the roles engineers and scientists have

in solving complex technological problems. The institute outcomes were far exceeded and the

students ran their own press conference for their prototype.

Summaries of Reflections

As stated previously, three professor’s participated in this program, each with various

backgrounds. Dr. Anne Watt is a Full Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Department. She has been at Rose-Hulman for 14 years and is originally from Ohio. The

courses that she typically teaches include Technical Communication, Rhetoric, and Literature

courses. Dr. Scott Kirkpatrick is an Assistant Professor in the Physics and Optical Engineering

Department and is originally from Pennsylvania. He previously worked at Rose-Hulman as a

Researcher and a Visiting Assistant Professor prior to being hired into a tenure track position.

Thus, he has been at Rose-Hulman for approximately 8 years and typically teaches MEMS and

Nano courses. Dr. Ashley Bernal is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering

Department. She is an alumnus of Rose-Hulman and has been teaching at Rose for 2 years. She

typically teaches classes in the design, manufacturing, and materials realm. The next few

sections summarize our reflections.

Selecting Collaborators

Each summer in recent years, the institute has encouraged interested faculty members to

participate in an innovation workshop, taking advantage of the summertime to explore new ideas

and direct efforts. Last summer, we came together primarily due to our shared interest in the

National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges and exploring ways to integrate the

challenges into coursework. Unlike Borrego and Newswander’s findings where typical cross-

disciplinary collaborators often seek-out experts in another field with a specific purpose of a pre-

conceived idea, this collaboration began more “by chance.” As Kirkpatrick stated,

“A group had been developed in previous years with an interest in the grand challenges. I

was jealous, the grand challenges sound cool and I want to do them. So I walked over to that

group. I was slightly surprised to find the group being represented by Humanities and Social

Sciences faculty (but not too much-- I had friends who had degrees in English that could turn

a wrench far better than I could).”

Model of Collaboration

The model of collaboration in the summer program was an interdisciplinary model.5 Being a

non-engineer, Watt was worried at the beginning that the program would be the “engineer’s

baby,” which Borrego and Newswander pointed-out as one of the potential issues. However,

Watt stated that she learned that “at least some of my colleagues are ready to welcome me in on

equal ground, and won’t just expect me to be a glorified grader if we co-teach.” At the end of

the program, each professor gained new ideas from the program development and

implementation (see Learning and Satisfaction). We also developed a new way to teach and

integrate several sets of class objectives simultaneously. In addition, this collaboration produced

a new form of interdisciplinary education benefitting the students with a set of courses with a

common goal and theme.

Sharing the Workload

The workload for the program development took place in stages from the previous summer

through the school year. At various points each of us found ourselves leading and then following

through the ebb and flow of our available time and specific knowledge. All of us relied on the

others and see the contributions the others have made. Each person gave what he or she could to

further the program and fully appreciated the contribution of the others. The appreciation of

others’ contributions is exemplified in the following from Bernal: “I, myself, struggled to

determine what my role was in the program.” Conversely, Kirkpatrick states, “I saw Dr. Bernal’s

role as administrator as well as a great resource for a different point of view to similar concepts.”

We each saw the strengths in our colleagues and what a great contribution they provided.

Learning and satisfaction

We all agreed that what we learned from our colleagues ranged from observing effective

teaching methods to principles in each other’s discipline. As Watt states, “I can’t list everything

I learned from my colleagues; indeed, I’m sure I’m not even conscious of all that I learned.” In

terms of benefits of collaboration vs. teaching on one’s own, we found reinforcement in our

teaching approaches and expectations. For instance, we gained confidence in assigning grades,

as more often than not we agreed within two percent. As Bernal stated, “It was great to make

sure I was ‘calibrated’ with faculty member’s expectations in other departments.”

We also all agreed that one of the benefits for our students taking the program was their

improved communication and teaming skills. We did diverge slightly, however, as to the other

benefits for our students, which primarily seemed to stem from us being from different

disciplines. For instance, Bernal’s reflection also commented on the fact that “students became

more cognizant of manufacturing difficulties when proposing ideas.…Prior to the program, the

students didn’t realize that caulking shouldn’t be used for structural support.” In addition, both

Bernal and Kirkpatrick also hoped that students “were able to see firsthand how theoretical

analysis should influence design decisions.” Watt’s reflection, however, focused on the ability

of students to “see that professors from different disciplines share overlapping interest” and “[our

modeling] of effective and pleasant teaming behaviors.”

Keys to Faculty Developing an Interdisciplinary Program

After we pooled and read our individually-written reflections on this experience, common

themes emerged about what factors may have contributed to making this a productive

experience. We have grouped these ideas into three categories: Practicalities, Individual Traits,

General Teaming Skills. In addition we will discuss Best Practices in Interdisciplinary Teaching.

Practicalities

As Borrego and Newswander also found, the institutional and logistical setting for our

collaboration was key to the nature of our experience. As previously mentioned, the idea for this

program emerged from the Summer Innovation Workshop offered for faculty at our college; in

retrospect, we see the importance of providing such forums for innovation and collaboration. As

Kirkpatrick wrote in his response, the Innovation Workshop created “one of those rare chances

to interact with colleagues outside of our own department in a professional, yet relaxed

environment, without some other task involved (standing committees).” We also noted that the

summer timeframe aided us both in terms of generating the idea one summer, pursuing the

necessary logistics to make it happen during the next school year, and then actually teaching the

interdisciplinary program the second summer. By using the two summers for the bulk of our

work, we were able to make our Summer Grand Challenge program our top priority, less

distracted by competing obligations than is the case during the academic year.

The logistics pursued during the academic year included meeting with department heads and

administrators to discuss our plans, both to help our own development of those plans and to build

“buy-in” among the administrators. One key decision we made was to use existing course

numbers for the credits students would earn for the program; thus, it was not necessary to

shepherd approval for new course(s) through the Curriculum Committee or develop a description

for the Course Catalog. We (the faculty teaching the course) and the involved administrators

saw our program as an innovative program, and this led to several helpful effects: our sense of

accountability was increased as this was the primary professional development focus and we

strived to make the pilot a success in order to provide a pathway for future variations and

iterations of the Summer Grand Challenge format.

However, as Bernal notes in her response to the reflection question about drawbacks of piloting

the program, there was extra time required to setup the program and recruit students to

participate (as they would need to pay summer tuition for twelve credit hours and relinquish

other potential summer plans). In addition to the time investment was the financial investment:

we had to work out the logistics of how the faculty would be paid, how to fund the purchase of

lab equipment and supplies, and how to fund the Kenyan student to participate in part of the

program.

Individual Traits

The three faculty collaborating have not only different academic disciplines but also different

personalities, as may be evident in reading our reflections—both in what we say directly about

each other, and perhaps in the style of our responses as we respond to the same set of prompts.

Nevertheless, one can also see in reading our responses that our personalities meshed and we

enjoyed working together. For example, we found that Kirkpatrick’s willingness to just dive into

an experiment or build activity was a nice balance to Bernal’s emphasis on effective planning

and preparation. Thus, we agree with Borrego and Newswander that “expertise alone is

insufficient basis for successful cross-disciplinary collaborations” (i.e. personality must not be

ignored when seeking collaborators).

There are multiple traits that we all thought we shared. We believe we are all open-minded

individuals. We all brought strong energy to the effort, and shared a predisposition to do

something (not just consider it). An interesting difference we found in writing our reflections is

that “doing something” was at the forefront of Watt’s mind, a more seasoned professor among

us, who was aware of other groups she’d been involved with that never moved past the planning

stage. Bernal, though--our newest faculty member and an engineer--took for granted that the

program would come to fruition. While the seasoned communication professor was impressed

that “we took the idea from inception to implementation in one year,” the new engineering

professor hadn’t considered one year to be a particularly quick timeframe. A related key trait

that all three share is accepting the need to do things “on the fly”; for instance, we agreed from

the outset that we wanted most of our lecture material to emerge as it was needed by the students

for the current or next stage in the project—a “just in time” instruction. A faculty member who

feels he or she must have all of his lessons for the course slotted and planned in advance would

have been a nervous wreck under this model.

Interdisciplinary Co-teaching as Good Teaming

Upon reflection, not only were individual traits important to our operation but also equally

important is our capability to function as a productive team, following many of the same

behaviors and practices that we teach our student teams. Emerging from all of our reflections is

a strong sense of common goals--for addressing the Grand Challenges of engineering, for

curricular innovation, for interdisciplinary teaching, and for student outcomes (as will be

discussed further below). As we moved from those common goals towards actual decisions and

implementations, everyone felt free to offer ideas and opinions with no fear of ridicule.

Throughout our teaming process, no individual has “hogged the limelight”; conversely, it can be

seen in our reflections that we tend to worry about our own contributions and to value our

teammates’ contributions more than our own, at least at some stages of the process. A related

good teaming behavior that has been evident is that we frequently slip in brief praise and

compliments for each other, to show that we value each other’s talents and contributions.

Keys to Students Experiencing an Interdisciplinary Program

At the end of the Summer Grand Challenge Program, all ten students were asked to reflect upon

the program and provide constructive feedback. When asked via a student survey whether or not

a similar program should be offered (co-taught with one large challenge driving the direction of

the class) all ten students that participated in the program agreed that the program was beneficial

and should be taught again; however one student thought that having one teacher educate

students is a better choice as students wouldn’t have to cope with different teaching styles;

however, nearly all other students thought that this was one of the benefits of the program. A

few students also thought that part of the advantage of the program was the ability of the students

to focus only on this program rather than other courses simultaneously that compete for the

attention of the student. Thus, four students felt that the program should only be offered in the

summer “so there can be more time and energy put into it.”

In terms of the program structure, there wasn’t a single overwhelming answer as to what they

liked most about the program structure; however, several alluded to the fact that they enjoyed the

seamless integration of all three topics (engineering, science, and technical communications) into

one class. In addition, others enjoyed the working with people from different majors and the

hands-on aspect of the program: “starting theoretical, to actuality.”

In terms of what students liked least about the program structure, three students commented that

they didn’t like the lack of the direction during the second half of the program. As previously

discussed, at the beginning of the program, the lectures were “canned” and each day was clearly

specified in terms of the activities and the desired outcomes. During the second half of the

program, the students were required to determine which tasks were necessary in order to

complete deliverables on-time, thus requiring the students to be self-directive. It was clear that

several students were uneasy with having to identify tasks and delegating work among all ten

team members in order to develop a functioning prototype. One student stated, “I think

explaining to the students beforehand that the program lacked structure would be

useful…students were often wondering and looking for direction.” Next year, we will definitely

more clearly state this at the beginning of the program. It is encouraging, however, to note that

some of the students thought this lack of structure was extremely beneficial. “Right now, there is

no class that can help students to ‘grow up’ much like this.” Another student commented that the

“lack of structure was the best part of the program. Letting students figure out group work on

their own for the most part was a great way of learning for me.” Yet another, stated that “I

enjoyed being able to freely learn what was necessary for proper construction and analysis of the

project.” Other students commented that what they liked least regarding the program’s structure

varied from “needing” another vacation during the middle of the program as he was getting

“worn-out” to the hindrance of productivity due to “drama between students leading to

inefficiency and general bitterness,” to disliking writing the mandatory proposal at the end of the

program.

In general, the overall outcome of any course is determined via the skills students learn. When

asked about the area they felt they improved the most, an overwhelming response was their

communication skills, both verbal and written. For instance a student stated, “I improved most

upon communicating effectively with teammates about what was being accomplished and the

next steps that had to be done to ensure that we were on task with whatever had to be completed

that day.” In addition, other students noted their improvement in interpersonal teaming skills. “I

probably improved the most by learning more about how to deal with people. I wish that I had

been more patient and a better listener...I also grew more through having my designs vetoed. It

helped that the manager was also my friend, so now I have learned not to take these things

personal.” The students also stated the same was true in terms of improvements they saw in their

classmates, noting that they “grew stronger in most all teaming/interpersonal attributes

(communication, delegation, task management, accountability, planning, and requesting aid)”

and after several weeks “[classmates] weren’t afraid to voice their opinions and ideas.”

Best Practices: How to Get the Most out of Interdisciplinary Teaching

Although we were largely making it up “on the fly” as we went, our reflections may hint at some

best practices for interdisciplinary teaching.

Be Open-minded: We all came into the experience not only open-minded (or possessing

what Spiro et al. call “cognitive flexibility”7), but also with appreciation for each other’s

disciplines and understanding that all three disciplines are important for our students.

Be United: We spent a lot of time together, not over-relying on the “divide and conquer

method” of teaming. We worked together both outside and inside class. When students

were working in their teams, we were also working in our faculty team, planning the next

day’s content or developing a grading rubric or doing the actual grading. We believe we

benefitted tremendously from this time spent together, learning from each other, as well

as indirectly modeling effective teaming for the students. This may not be the most

efficient model, but we believe the short-term and long-term benefits are invaluable.

Some of the benefits are more common ground being discovered and established, and

each of us feeling more confident about that common ground. For example, a lab is not

just a set of numbers, but also an analysis of the behavior. A quality lab report should

include both good data and well written analysis of the data, communicating the lab to

others. By having all three professors represented, we could hold students to a higher

standard as we were able to more readily know their capabilities in each area and have a

better idea what they were taught previously in classes outside of our own discipline. As

Kirkpatrick stated, “ownership of the whole thing is a big difference between what

happens during a school year where I could consider writing skills or integration

someone else’s job to do, and that I should merely rely on the students to have picked it

up from a set of nebulous classes outside my discipline.” In terms of general pedagogical

strategies, we learned new ones from each other, but also saw how others do some of the

same things we do. For instance, the Socratic method works just as well in physics as in

humanities. As has been posited in the Journal of Engineering Education, “the level of

integration for a collaborative project can be a predictor of the quality of the final

product.”8 In our summer program, we felt we modeled an interdisciplinary approach

rather than a multdisciplinary approach as our interactions influenced the way we now

teach our own individual courses, ranging from changes in the instructional method we

use in class to the overall changes in course structure. For instance, Kirkpatrick has

changed his slide design practice to utlize an assertion evidence approach, Bernal has

incoroporated some Socratic methodology into her courses, and Watt has revised her

teaching of design projects.

Trust Each Other: We also leverage each other as backup, a sort of “tag-teaming” in our

interactions with administrators and students. For example, if a student approached just

one of us in class, whenever possible we would turn to our faculty partners and draw

them into the conversation as well, avoiding contradicting each other or seeming to have

our own niche territories. It was clear that we all three decided and agreed upon, for

example, what the content and structure of a given deliverable should be in order to have

consistent expectations. In terms of administrators, we used each of our “contacts” to

determine the most efficient way to “get something done.”

Integrate: On all deliverables assigned to the students, we made sure each one integrated

science, engineering, and communication elements such that the necessity and overlap of

all three subject areas was further exemplified and was reflected on grading rubrics.

Be Purpose-Driven: We also avoided busywork for both the students and ourselves, with

all material arising in the context of the larger class projects—while still meeting all of

our original disciplinary goals. This allowed the students to be engaged in meaningful,

applied research. As one student stated, “The structure of the program was great because

we got a lot more hands on experience without the useless fluff that comes with typical

courses.”

In conclusion, the keys that we found to develop truly interdisciplinary program are to have a

uniting purpose with certain character traits, mainly personality and attitudes that foster a good

team working environment such as an open mind. This team also formed a united front when

speaking to the students and developed an integrated set of deliverables for the program. This

approach encouraged the whole team to take ownership of the entire project and kept everyone

involved.

Acknowledgment

This work was performed under IR# RHS-0197. The authors wish to thank Rachel McCord and Ella

Ingram for their encouragement and suggestions during the reflection process. We would also like to

thank Bill Kline for offering the summer innovation workshop and supporting our program.

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2. H. Greninger, “H2OH!: Researchers discovering how sun power purifies water for arid lands,” The Tribune-Star,

July 30, 2013.

3. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Students Create Water Purification Device, American Society for

Engineering Education, First Bell, July 31, 2013.

4. M. Loftus, “College Engineering Programs Focus on Hands-on Learning: Large lectures and an ultracompetitive

culture are giving way to high-tech problem-solving.” US News & World Report, Sep. 30, 2013.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2013/09/30/college-engineering-programs-focus-on-hands-

on-learning

5. M. Borrego and L. Newswander, “Characteristics of Successful Cross-disciplinary Engineering Education

Collaborations.” Journal of Engineering Education (2008).

6. CATME Smarter Teamwork, [On-Line], http://info.catme.org/

7. R. J. Spiro, W. L. Vispoel, J. Schmitz, A. Samarapungavan, and A. Boerger. “Knowledge acquisition for

application: Cognitive flexibility and transfer in complex content domains.” Executive Control Processes, eds. B. C.

Britton and S. Glynn. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum (1987).

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symptoms of quality.” Research Evaluation 15 (1) (2006).

Paper ID #9075

Integration of Art and Engineering: Creating Connections between Engi-neering Curricula and an Art Museum’s Collection

Dr. Katherine Hennessey Wikoff, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Katherine Wikoff is a Professor in the General Studies Department at Milwaukee School of Engineering,where she teaches a variety of humanities and social science courses including literature, film studies, po-litical science, and communications. In addition to her teaching at MSOE, she consults and teaches tech-nical communication courses on-site for industry professionals at companies like Harley-Davidson andMilwaukee Electric Tool. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (1986, 1992) and her B.A. in political science from Wright State University (1981).

Dr. Cynthia Wise Barnicki, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Cindy Barnicki is a professor in Mechanical Engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Sheholds a Ph.D. degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the Ohio State University. Cindy teaches coursesin materials, manufacturing processes, and engineering design and is currently the program director forthe Bachelor of Science in Engineering program. In addition to her teaching experience, she has industrialexperience in quality management and production problem solving at Martin Marietta Energy Systems,and later GE Superabrasives. Cindy is active in assessment and accreditation activities at MSOE and hasbeen exploring ways to include on-line education in her classes.

Mr. James R. Kieselburg II, Grohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering

Director and Curator, Grohmann Museum at Milwaukee School of Engineering Adjunct Professor, VisualDesign, Milwaukee School of Engineering

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

Integration of Art and Engineering: Creating Connections between

Engineering Curricula and an Art Museum’s Collection

Within STEM education, a movement called STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art,

and Mathematics) is gathering momentum. Yet, while articles abound with ideas for

incorporating STEAM concepts into K-12 classrooms, the literature on STEAM education at the

university level is scant. Complicating matters is the fact that the “A” in STEAM does not

always stand for “Art”; for example, in one recent ASEE paper that contains the words “STEAM

curricula” in its title, the “A” stands for “Agriculture” [1].

However, reflections on STEAM at the university level can be found in a few papers presented at

the 2013 ASEE convention. One, “Faculty reflections on a STEAM-inspired interdisciplinary

studio course,” offers insights on the opportunities and drawbacks of STEAM as it is currently

understood (i.e., inserting the arts into the STEM curriculum as a way to make students more

creative [2]. Another, “Turning STEM into STEAM,” discusses the role of images in scientific

communication and argues that “teaching the foundational concepts of Art, with disciplinary

rigor and engineering context, would help improve critical and creative thinking, guide and

encourage innovative engineering and visual art; fostering more effective direct and conceptual

communication of scientific ideas and advancements” [3].

The thesis of this paper is that an art museum and its collection can function as a central location,

both physically and conceptually, for STEAM on a college campus. The paper’s authors—a

mechanical engineering professor, a liberal arts professor, and an art museum director—bring

truly multidisciplinary perspectives to the STEAM challenge of coherently integrating art and

engineering education. The paper describes a unique relationship that has developed between

one university’s engineering curricula and the collection of an art museum on its campus. The

paper presents a longitudinal study of engineering students at this institution who engaged with

art as part of their curriculum at both the freshman and junior levels.

Among our findings:

• Students liked the flexibility and freedom, the self-guided discovery that using art as a

starting point afforded. No students were put off by the art.

• The decision to integrate art into freshman-level humanities course and a junior-level

technical course allowed students to make connections with what they learned earlier in

their college careers.

• Not insignificant is the fact that this interdisciplinary project brought together three

people from very different academic areas to exchange ideas.

The Museum - Contributions to the Synthesis of Art and Engineering

While the seeds may have been planted much earlier, the synthesis of art and engineering at

Milwaukee School of Engineering formally began in 2001 with the gift of the Eckhart G.

Grohmann Man at Work collection to the University. Dr. Eckhart Grohmann, successful

Milwaukee businessman and member of the MSOE Board of Regents, began collecting art

depicting working scenes in 1968 with the acquisition of a small Dutch painting of the interior of

a blacksmith’s forge. This began a parallel career in collecting alongside his work in operating a

successful aluminum foundry.

Approaching the turn of the 21st century, as business and art acquisitions came and went, with

Dr. Grohmann divesting himself of various enterprises he held over the course of his career, he

found himself with a growing collection and limited space to house and care for the works. He

considered donating the collection to the Milwaukee Art Museum or a similar institution, but

feared that doing so would not serve the purpose he envisioned; that the collection be used as an

educational tool through which viewers would gain a better understanding of past ways of works,

industrial and engineering principles, and over 400 years of human achievement.

As a result of his connection with MSOE and admiration for the school and its programs, Dr.

Grohmann ultimately decided that it was the best venue for fully exploring the potential of his art

collection. So, in 2001, he made the initial gift of nearly 500 works to the school with the initial

plan being to display the works on campus while researching individual works, artists, and

subject matter. In making this gift, the ultimate goal was to establish a venue that would be a

permanent home for the housing, care, and display of the collection.

The use of the Grohmann Collection began with a major display (some 80+paintings and

bronzes) of selected work in the MSOE Alumni Partnership Center. This exhibition, coupled

with research into the collection, led to the establishment of a docent program whereby students

and members of the community received formal training in the collection, its themes, and subject

matter. The display of the collection, in addition with smaller displays in other campus

buildings, helped to cement the mission and purpose of the collection: that it be first and

foremost a tool for education in art and engineering and second a marketing component for

MSOE and its programs.

The success of this initial foray into art and engineering at MSOE led to the further development

of finding a permanent home for the collection. A number of properties and options were

explored before MSOE (with the funding of Dr. Grohmann) decided on the purchase of the

vacant Milwaukee Branch of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, on the corner of Broadway and

State Sts. in the heart of the MSOE campus. The building was purchased on 2005 and work

began soon thereafter to transform the space into the Grohmann Museum.

As the collection was already in use in a number of campus curricula, the building committee,

led by Dr. Hermann Viets, MSOE President, decided to more fully integrate the missions of

MSOE and the Grohmann Collection. The first step was creating three classrooms in the

Museum where a variety of general studies and engineering classes would be held. Next, it was

decided that the Museum project would also furnish new office space for the General Studies

Department. As a result, the Museum was to become a dynamic space; a laboratory for learning

and a venue for the synthesis of art and engineering.

Following two years of intensive planning and effort, the Grohmann Museum opened in October

of 2007 as the newest and arguably the finest Museum in Milwaukee, in addition to being to only

Museum of its type in the world. Nowhere else will one find as comprehensive a collection

surrounding the themes of art, engineering, and occupation. Subjects included in the permanent

collection displays include iron and steel production, mining, construction, agriculture,

quarrying, craftsmen, and intellectual trades. The Museum also hosts a number of feature

exhibitions exploring many more themes around the central subject of work.

Over the course of the past six years the collection has doubled in size due to Dr. Grohmann’s

continued generosity. Also, the Museum’s mission has been further explored and reinforced

through the use of the collection to enhance a number of campus courses and programs.

Examples include:

• The continued opportunities provided students in the Museum’s docent training program;

educating Museum tour guides and encouraging student involvement.

• Integration of the Museum collection in the HU100 curriculum—the majority of

professors teaching Humanities 100 (a requirement for all engineering students) have

created a collection component in their coursework, in which students explore an artwork

or group of works and write a corresponding essay detailing their research.

• Use of the collection in a variety of classes including Physics, Architecture, Construction

Management, Computer Engineering, Business, and Nursing. The collection has proven

useful in courses dealing with ergonomics studies, aesthetic interpretation, OSHA studies

and ME processes.

• Feature exhibitions that develop synergy with campus programs. For example, a tour of

the photography exhibition Bridges: The Spans of North America prompted a group of

Graduate Students in Civil Engineering and Bridge Design to write research papers on

the bridges included in the photos. The papers were then included as supplementary

didactics in the display.

• Currently, the Museum Director is adjunct professor in Technical Communications, and

TC321 Visual Design Techniques engages engineering students in visual design and

interpretation. The course culminates in a Museum exhibition of the student design work

created over the previous quarter.

• Tours provided to every program and major on campus. Also, the Museum and its

collection has extensive international reach via our web galleries, the loan of the

collection for exhibitions both nationally and internationally, and our 1500 volume

research library, which is available through our Walter Schroeder Library at MSOE.

• The Museum has also become the host venue for a number of professional conferences

and symposia, including those organized by: The Society for Industrial Archeology,

American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Fluid Power Institute, American Society of

Civil Engineers, American Foundry Society, Association for Corporate Growth, Society

for Technical Communications, Thunderbird School of Global Management, Institute for

Urban Agriculture, Association of General Contractors, and many others. The Museum

also supports a number of campus and student organizations.

The Museum has five levels, with a rooftop garden, three classrooms, and a lounge area in the

lower level. Students have found the lounge area to be a quiet study spot, and benches

throughout the gallery spaces are frequently occupied by students waiting for class or discussing

team projects.

Longitudinal Study

In this case study, a cohort of students engaged with the Museum’s collection during the

freshman and junior years. Surveys have been administered to collect feedback from these

students about their experiences with art in a freshman-level humanities seminar and a junior-

level manufacturing processes course. Both courses are honors courses, and their art

components are serving as pilots for possible replication among the general student population.

The freshman seminar has now run four times; the junior course will have run twice by the time

this paper is presented. (That data will be incorporated into this paper’s conference

presentation.)

Freshman-year honors humanities seminar

The GS 1010H Honors Seminar I is subtitled “Reading the City.” In this course engineering

students explore the concept of “City” as a social construct. Students study cultural

understandings of what “City” means by “reading” its portrayal in different kinds of “texts”

(music, art, literature, history, myths, film, assumptions/stereotypes, “urban legends”) as well as

from a variety of perspectives (literary, philosophical, historical, and aesthetic, for example).

Art is an important component of this seminar. First comes a basic grounding in art principles.

Students spend a couple of classroom sessions learning art terminology and practicing their new

vocabulary by discussing slides of city-themed artwork in class. Second, following this

introduction, students spend three class periods in the Museum analyzing the collection’s

sculpture and paintings. In the first class period, the entire class visits 3-4 artworks and

participates at each stop in analysis of works as a whole group. Each student then selects a work

of art to analyze and, in the next two class periods, gives an individual analytical presentation of

his or her piece to the rest of the class.

The third and final art-related portion of the course requires each student to produce an original

work of art that is displayed in a public exhibit at the Museum. The exhibit’s theme is “The

City” (the topic of the seminar). It opens with an end-of-term reception organized by students in

the class and runs for three weeks. Shortly after students return to campus, the exhibit is struck

and the students’ artwork is returned to them.

For this longitudinal study, a link to a SurveyMonkey survey eliciting feedback on the art

experience was emailed to all students who have taken the freshman humanities seminar. Of

those 51 students, 35 students chose to participate in the survey—a response rate of 69%.

Student reflections on their experiences with the art component of this freshman-level course

were favorable.

Every single student recalled creating a work of art for display in the Museum; 88.6% said they

“strongly remember” and 11.4% “somewhat remember.” In addition, a strong majority (77%) of

students agreed that the experience of creating their artwork was largely positive. Over half of

the students said they felt “happy” and “proud” of their artwork, while one in five went so far as

to say they felt “excited.”

A majority (54%) of students felt that their technical knowledge enhanced their ability to

appreciate, interpret and create art. Likewise, 54% of students said that exposure to the

Museum’s collection gave them a different view of technology. Interestingly, their comments

revealed that the art helped broaden and contextualize their understanding of the history of

technology:

“In particular, viewing the artwork describing the progression of medical technology

gave me a much deeper appreciation for how far we've come in such a little amount of

time.”

“It allowed a good look at past technologies and safety precautions.”

“I actually was curious how people managed to produce such quality products with the

older tools and social structures. The art doesn't say MUCH about it, but gives an

impression of work environments of earlier times.”

A question aimed at teasing out whether the art component helps to achieve ABET Criterion 3

(a-k) outcomes revealed only moderate success. Although 40% of students agreed that the art

component of GS 1010 “increased my understanding of the impact of engineering solutions in a

global, economic, environmental, and/or societal context,” another 40% said they were merely

“neutral” regarding this claim. No one “strongly agreed” with the statement—and 20% either

“disagreed” or “strongly disagreed” that the art had helped them see engineering impacts in a

global or societal context.

However, a student who said that the art had helped them understand engineering in a broader

societal context added this comment: “Especially with environmental effects/considerations.”

One of the Museum website’s regularly updated features is a quarterly “sustainability” blog

written by the chair of the Department of Civil, Architectural Engineering, and Construction

Management. It is possible that this engineering/museum blog has contributed to heightened

awareness among students.

Two of the 35 students (6%) did not enjoy the art experience. One of these two students sounded

frustrated in his comments about the slippery definition of “quality” in art:

“Art always has potential, but it can't be taken seriously or people will be unfairly

penalized, and it will never be worth anything if taken lightly. Anybody can write a

sentance [sic] about how their shoelace position is 'artistic' and who is the teacher to

object? It has to be acknowledged as a small, side, relaxing project.”

Both students were dissatisfied with their artwork. Neither felt he had received adequate

instruction and background to produce a piece of art to take pride in. They both expressed an all-

or-nothing view of the course’s art component—either that it should not have been included as

part of the humanities seminar at all or it should have been made a central focus of the course.

Yet one of these students did say that the art component had enhanced his aesthetic judgment and

his ability to learn independently, which provides some evidence of achieving ABET’s Criterion

3 (i). Working on the art project, this student said, “definitely forced me to realize how

inadequate my instruction and practice in visual arts had been, and spurred me to study the

subject further on my own. I have achieved a much better understanding as a result of my

independent exploration.”

Overall 82% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the art component should continue to be

included in the freshman-level humanities seminar.

Junior-year manufacturing processes course

In the junior level Mechanical engineering class in manufacturing processes, the art collection

was used as the starting point for the students to investigate a particular aspect of manufacturing

processes or practices. The class is required in the ME program and a special section was

created for the scholars program and has the designation of ME 323H. The scholars program has

one class per term that is designated as the H section in the junior and senior year for the

students. The inclusion of a class in manufacturing processes (ME 323H) as a junior level class

in the University Scholar’s program was a good opportunity to formally make use of the art

collection as part of the course. The class is the main exposure in the curriculum to

manufacturing processes and typically covers casting, deformation (bulk and sheet metal),

powder processes, machining, joining, an overview of plastic and composite processes and an

introduction to Statistical Process Control. The class has a lab component with a project in

which the student’s design, model, simulate and ultimately produce a cast part. Other lab

activities include an SPC activity, machining, design of experiments and surface roughness, with

at least one open week.

The class provides an overview of many processes, with a focus on process description and

characteristics, terminology, and design aspects. The coverage of many processes has the

drawback of limited depth in those processes. Most instructors have an assignment or project

that allows the students to explore a particular process or aspect of a process in-depth. In ME

323H, the instructor used the art collection as a starting point to provide an opportunity for the

students to explore the relationship between engineering solutions and society in addition to

gaining in-depth knowledge on an aspect of manufacturing.

The specific assignment given to the students was to select a piece of art-work from the

collection as the starting point for an in-depth study of an aspect of manufacturing processes or

practices that related to the art work. The students were given a week to select a piece of artwork

and submit a paper topic. The instructor was rather flexible in how closely tied the paper topic

was to the artwork. In some cases, the paper topic was the process depicted in the art, in other

cases, it was a product illustrated in the art, or the environmental or safety practices shown in the

art. (see Appendix for examples) The students were encouraged to learn and describe the piece

of art they chose, but the main focus was on an aspect of manufacturing processes. A lab period

was used to take the students to the museum in which the museum director gave a guided tour to

the students (and the instructor) of the collection, including what is available on-line and in

books. The deliverables from the assignment included a paper due at the end of the term along

with a presentation to the class given during class in the last week of the term. A small portion

of the final exam (12%) covered material from the presentations. The students were asked to

submit a possible question for the final exam based on each presentation, which allowed the

instructor to gain insight into what the students found useful and interesting and also encourages

the students to pay attention and mentally process the information from the presentations.

The museum director giving the initial tour of the art collection was especially useful in

providing a different perspective on the pieces in the collection compared to the instructor of the

course who is an engineer. The museum director gave insight into the meaning of the work,

some history and context related to the art work and also the difference between art and an exact

representation. This allowed the students to more deeply appreciate the art itself and understand

why they might have a particular connection to a piece of artwork. The instructor also found the

different perspective to be interesting, very useful and thought provoking. The students appeared

to be actively engaged in viewing the art during the tour and made use of the knowledge and

perspective of the museum director. Several students noted the different perspective in this class,

which is technical, compared to the earlier humanities class.

A survey (6 questions plus comments) was given in class at the end of the term requesting

feedback from the student perspective on the project. The entire class of 15 students was present

and all provided feedback. (see Appendix for the survey questions). Student reflections on their

experience with the assignment were favorable with “neutral” being the lowest rating given.

The students were very positive in their reflection on the assignment with the majority of

students in the “agree” or “strongly agree” category on the survey questions.

A majority (60%) of the student felt exposure to the art collection gave them a different view of

technology and 87% of the students felt the assignment increased their understanding of the

impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental and/or societal context.

The students who were “neutral” on exposure to the art collection giving them a different view of

technology all felt the assignment increased their understanding of the impact of engineering

solutions.

The students felt (87%) exploring the art collection increased their interest in manufacturing

processes and all the students felt their technical knowledge enhanced their ability to appreciate

and interpret the art.

While 67% of the students enjoyed learning about the art and using artwork as a starting point

for the manufacturing process paper, 93 % of the students recommended the assignment be used

in the future

The majority of the student comments were mainly positive as well, with the suggestion to have

the introduction to the paper and the tour later in the term than the first week. The students who

commented indicated a desire to have more knowledge of the manufacturing processes before

making a topic selection. The main positive comments were about the flexibility of choosing a

topic and the opportunity to learn about an aspect of manufacturing in more depth. A few

students noted this could be done without the tie to the artwork and were neutral on learning

more about the artwork and using the collection as a starting point. The initial tour by the

museum director was also considered a plus along with presentations to the class.

The instructor’s perspective was the project was a success and will be repeated in the spring

2014 term in ME 323H. The timing of the initial tour of the museum will be modified to be later

in the term as suggested. One potential downside is there are processes that are not depicted in

the artwork and some students may find that limiting for the paper. The instructor noted that 2

specific groups of students really liked the connection to art and were very excited to have the

opportunity to enhance their knowledge and to see the connection between some of the processes

used in art with manufacturing processes. The specific topics were glass blowing/manufacturing

and pattern making/casting. Overall, the Men at Work art collection provides a wonderful

opportunity to make the connection between an engineering class and the humanities and help

the students explore the impact of engineering in a global, economic, environmental and societal

context.

Conclusion

The STEAM movement in engineering education is fairly new. Limited scholarship exists to

date regarding how art may be most effectively integrated into engineering curricula at the

university level. Our institution is a small engineering school and the piloted courses were part

of the university’s honors program. However, we believe the art components of these courses

could easily work in non-honors course sections. One major difference between honors and non-

honors sections would be the number of students per class; the honors sections are 50-75% the

size of regular classes. Managing the museum tour and discussions/presentations of art might

require splitting a class into two groups and taking different groups into the museum separately.

However, one unique feature of our successful mingling of art and engineering is the relationship

the Museum has built with students and faculty. The freshman humanities courses (including

non-honors courses) are often scheduled to meet in the building’s classrooms, where teachers can

easily take students into the galleries to view the art. A history professor whose office is in the

building has begun writing a book about one of the collection’s painters. The museum plays host

to outside events and similarly offers its spaces for faculty meetings, student design

presentations, speaking events, and the annual holiday party. The museum’s physical location in

the center of campus, its classrooms, and its attractive facilities beyond the collection itself make

it a central destination. The museum’s collection has been thoroughly integrated into the fabric

of campus life—socially, physically, intellectually, even spiritually. One student commented in

our survey: “I often wander through the museum in my off time to help clear my head and gain

inspiration.”

Cultivating a relationship between faculty, students, and museum staff has been greatly eased by

the particular circumstances of our institution. Building something similar at a different school

might be more labor-intensive, but with effort and outreach engineering faculty could establish

relationships with art museums on other campuses or with local historical societies and industrial

collections. Here in Milwaukee, for example, Harley-Davidson and Briggs & Stratton maintain

museums documenting the history of their product lines within the larger historical and societal

context. Additionally, the Internet makes it possible to access art work online, including the

collections of most large museums.

REFERENCES

[1] M. Mitra, A. Nagchaudhuri, C. J. Rutzke, “Energizing the STEAM curricula with Bioenergy and Bioproducts,”

ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings, 2013, 120th

ASEE Annual Conference and

Exposition, June 23-26, 2013. [Online]. Available: http://www.asee.org/public/conferences/20/papers/8188/view.

Retrieved January 3, 2014

[2] N. Sochacka, K. Guyotte, J. Walther, N. Kellam, “Faculty reflections on a STEAM-inspired interdisciplinary

studio course,” ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings, 2013, 120th

ASEE Annual

Conference and Exposition, June 23-26, 2013. [Online]. Available:

http://www.asee.org/public/conferences/20/papers/6555/view. Retrieved January 3, 2014

[3] C. Robinson and S.C. Baxter, “Turning STEM into STEAM,” ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition,

Conference Proceedings, 2013, 120th

ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, June 23-26, 2013. [Online].

Available: http://www.asee.org/public/conferences/20/papers/5957/view. Retrieved on January 3, 2014

Appendix A

Campus Reactions to Tours of the Grohmann Museum Art Collection

Students are moved by the Grohmann Museum collection in a number of ways. When first

established, it seemed it may have proven difficult to dovetail a fine art collection with

engineering curricula, but soon it was discovered that the collection, when viewed through the

lens of the student, is provocative, informative, and lends a great deal of historical perspective to

their academic engagement.

Physics students have used the imagery of workers engaged in industrial activities as a

springboard for ergonomics studies. Architectural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and

Construction Management students have delved into a variety of ESHA-related lines of inquiry

pertaining to worker safety and mechanical apparatus. Civil Engineering students are able to

view public works projects, construction sites, and engineering feats and synthesize an historical

perspective on the work they are currently involved in. Comments arising from such student

engagement surround a number of common themes:

“I can’t believe they do that dressed like that!”

“That machine/operation doesn’t appear very safe.”

“Today, we would…”

“That machine/process has been replaced with…”

Etc.

It is in these reactions, the student exploration of the collection, and their personal ‘dialogue’

with the works on display that we regularly witness the impact of the art collection on the

students of MSOE. A few of the most popular works include:

CHARLES CUNDALL, The New Forth Road Bridge, 1960, Oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 40 in.

HANS DIETER TYLLE (After Menzel), The Iron Rolling Mill, Oil on canvas, 62 ½ x 100 ¼ in.

Appendix B

Discussion of art in GS 1010H Honors Seminar I

Engagement with art in this fall quarter freshman honors course begins with learning art-related

vocabulary. Art works are accessed online and discussed in class, using art terminology to guide

our “seeing.”

Following the in-class discussions, students spend two class sessions in the Museum. In the first

session we visit a few paintings as a group and analyze them, again using the art terminology

learned in class. Students are then free to wander the Museum and select an artwork of their own

to analyze and present to the class. In the second session the class walks through the Museum

floor by floor, and students present the analyses of their selected works to each other. The

quarter ends with a reception, to which the university community is invited, opening a month-

long exhibit of students’ original artworks.

Below is a list of art terms that students learn. Following that are a few brief representative art

works selected by students in the Grohmann Museum, along with summaries of their analyses as

illustration of the type of discussion students engage in during their museum visit.

Art Terms (painting):

• Color – hues (primary, secondary, tertiary), value/intensity/brightness, saturation

• Lines – linear, curvilinear, diagonal, zigzag, etc.

• Shapes/forms – biomorphic (living), geometric (nonliving)

• Focal point

• Texturization

• Representation – realistic or abstract

• Rule of thirds

• Light – source, quality (hard/soft)

• Chiaroscuro

• Composition

• Negative space

• Perspective

• Vanishing point

• Bokeh

UNKNOWN, Blast Furnace at Böhler Steelworks, Austria, ca.1920, Oil on canvas, 118 x 53

½ in.

The dimensions of this painting and strongly vertical, slightly tapering lines cause the viewer’s

gaze to sweep upward. The result is a feeling of awe because the viewer is observing the subject

from a low angle. The color of the blast furnace is a dark bluish-gray, a cool hue associated with

non-living elements. Lines are straight; the forms are geometric. The light is natural and

diffuse; the source appears to be directed from the upper right of the painting. The clouds appear

threatening and reminded students of the clouds in El Greco’s View of Toledo (below). Yet

behind the blast furnace, the sky is strangely pink, creating a “halo” effect that makes the blast

furnace appear even more heroic.

EL GRECO, View of Toledo, ca.1600, Oil on canvas, 47.8 in × 42.8 in.

FELIX SENGER, Surface Soft Coal Mining with Electric Power Plant and Industry, 1939,

Oil on canvas, 35 ¾ x 55 ½ in.

The composition of this painting draws the eye to the industrial complex at the center. The open-

pit coal-mining operation is lower and darker, with light cliffs rising to the plain where the

factories lie in the distance. The railroad track in the foreground is curved, and a series of lines

radiate inward from the circle of that track, like spokes of a wheel, within the pit (and ascending

the cliff walls to the plain) to further draw the eye toward the center of the painting. The light is

natural and very diffuse, but the best-lit spot appears to be the light-colored cliff walls and the

expanse of plain leading to the smokestacks in the very center of the painting. An extremely

small train can be seen on the plain, trailing a thin line of steam; the addition of this feature helps

to emphasize the vast scale of the landscape.

MAGNUS ZELLER, Interior of Glass Works, ca.1945, Oil on canvas, 39 ¼ x 36 ¼ in.

These glass blowers resemble musicians performing on a stage. They are standing on a raised

platform, and their posture and arm positions make it look like they are playing some sort of horn

instrument, like a trombone. The shafts of sunlight streaming in diagonally from the windows at

the upper right resemble a spotlight, to carry the theatrical metaphor a bit further. The light is

natural and soft. Colors are blue-gray and cool hued, plus the tan color of wood. Even the

outside light and scenery have a cool blue-green appearance. The only warmth is found in the

orange glowing balls of glass at the end of the pipes.

FREIDRICH NERLY, the Elder, Transporting Marble to the Sculptor Thorwaldsen in

Rome, Oil on canvas, 30 ¾ x 42 ¾ in.

Students noted the how the rule of thirds in this painting helps to emphasize the piece of marble

and the drama of the approaching storm. At center is the marble, the brightest spot in the

painting. The man sitting atop the block of rock is white-bearded, dressed in white, and holding

a staff equipped with a bayonet-type point, presumably for prodding the oxen. Students noted

that he looks like an Old Testament version of God, or maybe Zeus looking down from Mount

Olympus.

The oxen are straining to the point of almost being crazed. Their eyes are wild and bulging, and

their mouths are open, apparently bellowing. The middle pair of oxen has stumbled to their

knees, and the pair closest to the cart paw the road so violently that dust rises from their hooves.

In the right-center area of the painting another cloud of dust rises, illuminated by sunlight, to

highlight a second team of oxen hauling another piece of marble.

In the background at center and right are rocky cliffs, which contrast with the narrow strip of sea

at left. Dark storm clouds dominate the sky, and rain can be seen falling over the sea, made

visible against the pink-orange sky in the far distance. The light source is the sun, almost

directly overhead, and the light is hard, casting clear shadows. This contrast of glare and shadow

adds to the impression of tension in the painting.

Appendix C

Art as a starting point in ME 323H Manufacturing Processes

ME 323H

Paper Assignment

Spring 2013

Dr. C. Barnicki

Assignment:

A portion of the Homework/Lab grade for ME 323 will be a paper and short presentation (5 -8

minutes) on a work of art related to manufacturing process from the Grohmann Museum

collection. The work of art will serve as a starting point for the paper/presentation. The focus of

the paper should be related to manufacturing; the specific process illustrated in the work of art,

the environmental and/or safety aspects of the manufacturing process(s) illustrated in the work of

art, the production methods used to produce a particular product, or how a particular work of art

was produced. If the work of art illustrates a process from the past, a perspective on how the

process (or environmental/safety considerations) have changed to the present is expected with

more weight on the present.

Timeline:

Initial choice for topic/work of art: due Monday, March 18th

. If multiple students/groups have

the same choice, an alternative selection may be needed.

Preliminary topics (short description of the focus of the paper with the title/artist of the work of

art and a minimum of 2 references outside the textbook) are due on Monday April 15th

.

Final papers are due no later than the end of class on Thursday, May 16th

.

Paper:

A minimum of 4 pages and should include flow diagrams and illustrations if possible. The

artwork is a starting point for the paper, with the focus of the paper on the process (or

safety/environmental) as it is today rather than at the time of the historical artwork. An evolution

of process changes with a compare/contrast with the historical process depicted in the art would

be encouraged if appropriate to the topic.

The paper should include a brief description of the work of art, with title, artist, date, location

and subject required along with some insight into why this work of art was chosen. There should

also be a description of the process, which would include steps, materials, equipment along with

the important variables in controlling the process, the relative advantages and disadvantages of

the process along with characteristics of the process (or parts produced by the process).

Note: Questions from the presentations will likely be on the final exam. An overview/summary

should be prepared (1 page) to distribute to the class.

ME-323H Spring 2013 Survey

A. Please answer the following questions about the paper assignment which includes the

presentations:

1. Exploring the Men at Work art collection increased my interest in manufacturing

processes.

Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral (2) Agree (10) Strongly

agree (3)

2. I enjoyed learning about art and using artwork as a starting point for the manufacturing

process paper.

Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral (5) Agree (8) Strongly

agree (2)

3. My technical knowledge enhanced my ability to appreciate and interpret the art

Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree (11) Strongly

agree (4)

4. Exposure to the Men at Work art collection gave me a different view of technology

Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral (6) Agree (7) Strongly

agree (2)

5. The assignment increased my understanding of the impact of engineering solutions in a

global, economic, environmental and/or societal context.

Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral (2) Agree (9) Strongly agree (4)

6. I would recommend that this assignment be used in the future.

Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral (1) Agree (10) Strongly

agree (4)

7. I have used the Men at Work art collection in a previous class.

Yes (14) No (1)

8. Please comment on what you liked, did not like, and would suggest to change in regard to

this assignment.

Suggestions for improvement: Mainly to start later in the term so the students have some

exposure to manufacturing processes

Positive aspects of the assignment: Overall the students enjoyed the flexibility of choosing an

aspect of manufacturing processes to explore in more detail and to learn about what the other

students explored in the presentations at the end of the term. The tie to the art collection was not

considered to be as important as the ability of the students to choose their own topic and to have

the presentations in class and the material part of the final exam. The participation of the

museum director in giving the initial tour was considered to be a positive with a different

perspective from the instructor.

Art work and student paper topics (paintings included for two, as illustration):

The Wheelwright, Walter D. Sadler: Wheel Making

The Perfumier/Herbalist Production of Perfume Bottles

Additional art works and student papers:

The Glass Blowers in Incheville, Glass Blowing

Marie F. Firmin-Girard

Blast Furnace, Erich Mercker: Blast Furnace Process in the Production of Steel

Industrial Plant, Behrens: Safety and Environmental Concerns

The Hop Pickers, C. H. Hart: Making of Steel Blades

Drop Forging, Friedrich von Keller: Forging

Foundry worker with Ladle, Casting Processes and Mold Making

G.A. Janensch

Worker and Boss, G. Oppel: Manufacturing of Porcelain Floor Tiles

Man in Workshop with Armor, Brass Instrument Building Processes

E. K. G. Zimmerman

Paper ID #8653

Integrated 2D Design in the Curriculum: Effectiveness of Early Cross-SubjectEngineering Challenges

Prof. Kevin Otto, Singapore University of Technology and Design

Dr. Otto is an Associate Professor in the Engineering Product Development Pillar at the Singapore Uni-versity of Technology and Design. He teaches the design courses as well as disciplinary courses includingthermodynamics, and is very interested in multidisciplinary education.

Mr. Bradley Adam Camburn, University of Texas, Austin, and Singapore University of Technology & Design

BSME Carnegie Mellon 2008 MSME University of Texas at Austin 2010 PhD, Mechanical Engineering,Design Methods, University of Texas at Austin, 2014 expected.

Prof. Kristin L. Wood, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)Prof. Giacomo Nannicini, SUTDProf. Roland Bouffanais, Singapore University of Technology and Design

Roland Bouffanais is an assistant professor in the Engineering Product Development (EPD) Pillar at theSingapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). He has been a postdoctoral fellow and asso-ciate at MIT and still is a research associate with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.His research group – the Applied Complexity Group – focuses on both fundamental and applied inter-disciplinary problems rooted in the field of Complexity. Depending on the very nature of the problem,experiments, analytical theory and computation are considered and practised.

Dr. Elica Kyoseva, Singapore University of Technology and DesignDr. Jean Wan Hong Yong, SUTD

Given that novel discoveries and industrial applications occur at the interface of traditional disciplines,SUTD is indeed a unique institution where the students are given a greater focus on multi-disciplinaryeducation and research. Dr Yong is part of the SUTD biology team teaching introductory biologicalsciences to all Freshmore students. These students will eventually become a special group of well-roundedengineers and architects for the future. Dr Yong is a biochemist and plant eco-physiologist by trainingand received his BSc (Hons) and MSc degrees from the National University of Singapore (NUS). HisPhD was awarded in 2001 by the Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University.Between 2003 and 2004, Dr Yong was the US Fulbright Scholar with Brown University, USA where hefocused on climate change sciences and policy issues, and science education. As an educator, Dr Yonghad nurtured many students at the two universities (Nanyang Technological University [NTU] and NUS)in Singapore. For his excellent and sustained innovative teachings, he was awarded the 2003 and 2006Teaching Excellence Awards at the National Institute of Education, and the 2006 Nanyang Award forTeaching Excellence.

Prof. Dario Poletti, Singapore University of Technology and Design

I have obtained a double Master degree in Nuclear Engineering from Politecnico di Milano and EcoleCentrale Paris. In 2009 I was conferred a Joint-PhD in Physics from the National University of Singaporeand the Australian National University. I am a theoretician working in quantum many-body systems outof equilibrium. I have a particular interest in ultracold gases and quantum machines and to treat theseproblem I use a variety of advanced analytical and numerical methods.

Prof. Robert E SimpsonProf. Aditya Prasad Mathur ,

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

Integrated 2D Design in the Curriculum: Effectiveness of Cross-Subject Engineering Challenges

Abstract

Multidisciplinary engineering design is difficult in the undergraduate years. It is particularly so in the early Freshman and Sophomore years, since the students have not enrolled in a breadth of subjects. Multidisciplinary problems are often left to latter years, thereby leaving the students with an incomplete picture of how course subject matters relate and fit in a larger view of engineering and design. A novel approach to multi-disciplinary engineering education was instituted in the Freshman and Sophomore years at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. During a particular term, all courses simultaneously attacked a common design problem. The courses stopped coursework for one dedicated week and instead simultaneously worked on the design challenge problem engaging the subject matter of those courses. Herein this is referred to as the 2D design challenge, where the design problem is multidisciplinary, but exclusively restricted to the domains of the courses being taught. This research effort finds that the approach generated highly effective learning on the multidisciplinary nature of design problems. Results also include a statistically significant impact on student perceptions of their ability to solve multidisciplinary design problems. As an example, courses in biology, thermodynamics, differential equations, and software with controls were merged in a design challenge problem of developing a perishable food delivery system composed of unrefrigerated unmanned ground vehicles. It is recommended that successful 2D challenges require instructors to establish a-priori a chain of requirements linking the design activity in each course. Effective execution of a 2D design challenge ensures that the design problem has co-dependent requirements from each discipline. These requirements cannot be independently determined in isolation. This then allows for creative interdisciplinary solutions to be developed.

Introduction: Multidisciplinary Engineering Education

An observed difficulty in engineering curriculum is finding means to educate students in multidisciplinary engineering design problems. Modern-world engineering problems are often described as no longer solely within a single discipline. For example, traditional mechanical engineering designs often now involve software, controls, electronics and perhaps biology, etc.

One primary difficulty in posing multidisciplinary design problems in the undergraduate curriculum is that within the student body of a course there is variety in the past courses and experiences. An instructor can only expect students to have taken the pre-requisite courses, which thereby limits the range of multiple disciplines that a project can cover. Further, instructors from these other disciplines are typically not available during the course project for learning and consulting on issues from these other disciplines. Therefore, most engineering curricula wait until the later undergraduate years to begin exposing the larger multidisciplinary problem space to students, through project courses with instructors from multiple disciplines. Unfortunately, this approach delays big-picture understanding of design and how the subject area materials learned by the students integrate.

This paper presents the approach and data on the positive efficacy resulting when students are provided short, one-week, design challenge problems to exercise disciplinary content from all courses a student is enrolled during a term. This problem type is herein referred to as a 2D design challenge problem. The activity replaces all coursework at the university for an entire week. A literature review was conducted to determine if such an activity is likely to be of value to students.

Introduction:  Related  Work  Others have reported on the need and progress for incorporating design into the engineering curriculum, notably into the traditional engineering courses6,7,11,25,26,31. It is also well established that active learning improves student outcomes as supported here1,2,3,12,15,19,20,21,24,28. Wood et al30 report a survey of global engineering educators indicating 90% seek more active learning in their courses. Knight17 reports on the many factors that explain the increased outcomes from active learning compared to traditional lecture and problem set based learning. These comparative factors include: the observation that lectures are not conducive to good listening given the inability to actively listen (e.g., repeat back what was spoken), critical thinking is not exercised when following the logical progressive derivation approach of lectures, the human limited attention span of 10-15 minutes, the repeated nature of lecture and course book material, and the focus of most lecture materials on the abstraction phase of learning. There are also reports on efforts to integrate multiple disciplines in the early undergraduate years through small-scale projects, similar to the effort discussed here. Roedel et al.29 report on a Freshman year effort to integrate calculus, physics and English through projects lasting over 5 weeks. These include a catapult, a Trebuchet, and a bungee drop mechanism. The pedagogical challenge included keeping the project material difficulty aligned over the time period with student material being taught. Beaudoin and Ollis4 report on efforts to develop short, 3 day design projects on common technical products, including the bar code, photocopier, water purifier and optical fibers. Hussman and Jensen16 report on using a small autonomous vehicle competition as a motivator for designing a UAV to which several courses provide necessary engineering skills and understanding. Material to contribute to the design of the UAV became an integral aspect of the course subject matter. Wood et al30 discuss effective practices in designettes, similar to charettes in architecture studies, or small-scale design problems inserted at arbitrary points in the engineering curriculum. Guidelines are presented for effectiveness, these supported development for the guidelines also use in this effort. The projects aim to engage and motivate students with individual confidence in the learned materials. Gomez-Puente et al13 provide a literature review of design based learning of engineering subjects, and how reports of such courses relate or not to good professional design practice. Hassan et al14 report on a multi-course methodology to coordinate all projects undertaken throughout the undergraduate years to build throughout toward solving industrial problems. Chesler et al.9 report on an introduction to design course where they make use of virtual epistemic games focused on design trade-offs and client conflict management. In groups of 5, they solve the design projects in 11 hours.

The approach here is less ambitious in curriculum coordination and planning structure than any of these efforts; rather this paper discusses a multidisciplinary experience targeting a single term, orchestrated in the courses offered during that term. This is simpler in scope, requiring more limited coordination of four courses rather than an entire sequence of courses.

Introduction:  Pedagogical  Objectives  The pedagogical foundation for the 2D Design Activity rests in the Kolb learning model18, which describes the complete progressive cycle of learning experiences. As shown in Figure 1, this model is based on four fundamental progressive experiences needed for learning: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. In the Kolb model of learning, the goal for any course or teaching activity is to follow this progression of student led learning, and to act as a facilitator in the natural inquisitive exploration that will occur in this progression.

Figure 1: Kolb’s learning model. For engineering analysis courses, the 2D

Design Activity is ideal to provide either the concrete experience or the active experimentation phase in the Kolb learning model of the engineering material.

For such active learning progression, the Kolb model generally starts with a concrete experience in the subject matter. Without benefit of the understanding of the disciplinary course material, the student attempts to solve the design problem anyway. Students usually attempt a trial and error experimental approach, typically with less than ideal results. For example, in the thermodynamics course, students might be asked to design a cooler to keep perishables cold. They can do this by generating concepts using structural and insulating materials, but are unclear how thick to make such elements before being trained in heat transfer modeling. Trial and error is used.

After such an experience, the Kolb model follows immediately with a reflective observation of that experience. In the thermodynamics example, instructors can reflect with the students on the

Concrete  Experience

Reflective  Observation

Abstraction  and  Conceptualization

Active  Experimentation Processing            Spectrum

Spectrum

Perceptio

n

numerous sets of prototypes, which had to be built to achieve the design goal. These prototypes varied in thickness of insulation, and difficulty of building. Sometimes performance may not correlate with effort or time spent building. This motivates the students to want to learn material on heat transfer to do better on this project, and further generates interest in subject matter explanations.

The following progressive phase of abstract conceptualization is to provide the theory and principles needed to understand and work within the domain. This step is often at the heart of most engineering analysis courses. Students are lead through the derivation of the physical balance relationships and application of advanced mathematics to provide new understanding of the problem they previously experienced. In the thermodynamics example, students learn the differential equations of heat transfer modes, and compute solutions to design requirements such as time for a mass of perishables to rise to a maximum allowable temperature for a given insulation thickness.

Finally, the Kolb model asserts the education is not done until the students are given another concrete experience to apply this newly understood knowledge in a new application. After and only after this second active experimentation phase have students begun to understand the learned material. In the thermodynamics example, students are given another related heat transfer design problem, such as determining required insulation to keep a perishable mass warm instead of cold, or a different mass, etc. A key feature in the engineering context, however, is to keep the experiences concrete as real physical projects rather than simply textbook problems. Seeing the design prototype work properly (or not) and being able to do something about it through engineering analysis is the key motivational element of the Kolb learning model.

As a platform for the fourth Kolb phase of active experimentation, integrated design activities are applied and provide a concrete multi-disciplinary problem for using the course subject matter in a much more real world context than a subject textbook problem. This ought to occur late in the term, in the fourth or third final week. Following the same example of the combined biology and thermodynamic design problem, understanding of the biological principles of exponential growth rates and temperature dependency allows the students to define the perished limit. This is accomplished by generating an exponential curve of time and temperature combinations. The learning objectives of this integrated design, as adapted from that proposed by Wood et al30: 1. Ideation and concept generation. These outcomes consider divergent thinking and expansive

idea generation. 2. Opportunity and needs analysis. These outcomes consider analyzing need and context, to

clarify why the problem exists and what the problem is. 3. Quantification of open-ended problems. These outcomes consider convergent thinking,

modeling and analysis, reduction and simplification. 4. Effective resource utilization. These outcomes consider prioritization and trade-offs with

limited or unused resources such as schedulable time, finances, or resources. 5. Reflection, observation and hypothesizing. These outcomes consider reflective practice,

including personal responsibility and professional growth. In summary, the objective is a one-week multi-disciplinary design activity that either motivates or exercises the course subject matters, and also challenges the students on design thinking.

Means for student progress against these objectives can all be incorporated into the 2D Design Activity. Doing so increases the active learning effectiveness of the activity.

 

Introduction:  Curriculum  Context  Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is developing a unique approach to multidisciplinary engineering education. As described by Magee et al22, the pedagogy is technology and design-centric, rather than engineering-science centric. Design, as an academic discipline, cuts across and integrates all curricula. At the individual engineering course level, short design projects or activities are conducted in direct relation with the course’s learning objectives: this constitutes the 1D Design Activity. As was discussed in the related work section, this approach of mini-design projects to exercise course material is not new in engineering education.

The 2D Design Activity using 2D design challenge problems are novel. During the first 3-term Freshmore year (SUTD’s first 3 contiguous terms) all students in a class are required to attend the same four courses together. During each of these 3 terms, a one-week long design activity directly related to the content of the 4 parallel courses that are conducted. This constitutes the 2D Design Activity. The article here focuses on this activity as a platform for multidisciplinary design education. The example discussed in this paper occurred during the student’s third semester, carried out during the 3rd Term of the Freshmore year for the SUTD students of the Class of 2015.

Beyond the 1D and 2D Design Activities, students will pursue more expansive design activities, namely 3D Design Activities that incorporate learning from earlier courses, and finally a 4D Design Activity that asks the student to incorporate design into their experiences outside of their coursework22. They will encounter these in their junior and senior years. Being a new University in its second year of teaching, these 3D and 4D Design Activities are still in the process of being fully incorporated. The pedagogical hypothesis is that the 1-4D framework provides an improved learning paradigm for multidisciplinary engineering; this relative efficacy should be evaluated. This paper here discusses results of an implemented 2D Design Activity within this larger context being developed and implemented.

 The next section introduces technical details of the specific 2D design challenge concept on which assessment herein was based. This assessment provides statistical data on efficacy of the 2D approach from the perception of the students and what they felt they learned. Lastly, a discussion section is provided that expands difficulties encountered in correlating the success at 2D with differences in grades within the core subject courses.  

Assessment: Description of the 2D Design Challenge

This section focuses on the details of 2D Design Activity proposed in the form of a design challenge to an entire Freshmore class (318 students in total). It is worth highlighting that the SUTD Freshmore year is a common core curriculum year for the students of the four undergraduate degree programs offered: Engineering Product Development (EPD), Engineering

Systems Design (ESD), Information Systems Technology and Design (ISTD), and Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD). These constitute the so called four “pillars” of study at SUTD.

In that framework, our 2D Design Challenge takes place at the pivotal moment when students have to declare their future major, i.e. the pillar of their choice. It is quite clear that running this 2D Design activity at such an early stage in the students’ engineering training presented the team of instructors with clear challenges for developing and selecting a problem: • Identity a theme cutting across all three engineering science subjects and biology. • Make the activity challenging despite the limited technical grounding of the students. • Ensure that this engineering design project has a certain level of real-life relevance. • Make the project relevant to engineering, hardware, software, and architecture students.

Simultaneous with these challenges, the pedagogical objectives stated earlier to provide experiential active learning of the subject course materials are applied as well as experiences in design thinking.

The four subject courses in the term included:

• Engineering in the Physical World: a course in thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluids. • Introduction to Biology: a course in biology, from biochemistry to ecology. • The Digital World: a course on circuits, programming and controls. • The Systems World: a course on matrix equations and optimization.

A design project was sought that simultaneously exercised the subject matter of all four courses.

The design problem developed was called “AutoMilk” and asked the students to develop an autonomous personalized delivery system of perishable milk for the city state of Singapore. The problem statement was to provide proof of concept prototypes for several key aspects of this system. The problem statement included that the Government of Singapore was interested in developing an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) transport system for home food delivery, including milk. The system was to be composed of battery powered UGVs operating on dedicated paths throughout the city.

Student teams typically consisted of five members. The teams were highly interactive during the problem solving process. Teams developed a report for each course that highlights the relevant aspect of the multidisciplinary design problem to that course. The same team members worked together throughout the entire project. Teams met during scheduled lecture and recitation periods to work on their projects. There was a high degree of camaraderie, and sharing of test equipment along with other resources between teams. It was expected and observed that the full 12 hours of in class time (3 per course) and 24 hours of individual work time (6 hours per course) were applied to the design activity. This was the typical allotment, although some individual teams spent more or less time.

The students need to demonstrate three key prototypes: 1) an insulated container for holding milk cartons, 2) the software algorithms to dispatch UGVs on deliveries, and 3) the controls software to move a scaled UGV over a scaled course representing the

Singapore city.

In addition, the problem solving process employed by students drew upon theory and practice from design methodology; including systematic brainstorming, and concept selection tools.

Each of these deliverables could not be completed without integrated multidisciplinary thinking. This construction amongst deliverables is key to a successful 2D design challenge. That is, by definition a 2D design project includes requirements from each incorporated course, and to meet that requirement the students must minimally make use of material from at least two subject matter courses. This is shown in Figure 2 for the example discussed here.

Figure 2: Relation amongst key design requirements of the project compared with

the associated subject matter courses. It is critical that each subject matter requirement be codependent amongst at least two courses to ensure multidisciplinary learning.

To complete the first deliverable, one could conceivably isolate this to two subjects, the biology and thermodynamics courses. As shown in Figure 3, the biological shelf life of milk is well established as a function of temperature. Shelf life varies from approximately 2 weeks when well refrigerated, to hours or minutes as warming occurs10. To make a delivery in an unrefrigerated battery powered UGV, a container must be designed with adequate insulation. This presents a thermodynamics and heat transfer design problem. However, to ensure efficient delivery dispatching, the delivery container must be also sized in terms of the number of cartons of milk per container, to permit multiple delivery sites per UGV delivery trip.

Intro.  to  Biology

Eng.  in  the  Physical  World  (Thermodynamics)

The  Systems  World

The  Digital  World

Milk  Shelf  Life  Reduction

Delivery  Time

Delivery  Temperature

Docking  Approach  and  Exit  Time

The  2D  Challenge Maximum  number  of  deliveries

Subject  Matter  Course 2D  Challenge  Problem  Requirement

Shelf  life  depends  on  delivery  time  and  temperature

Shelf  life  depends  on  delivery  time  and  temperature

Delivery  time  depends  on  UGV  docking  algorithm’s  time  required

Number  of  delivery  sites  per  trip  depends  on  allowed  time

Figure 3: Biological Shelf Life of Milk10.

An allowable percentage of the 2 week shelf life lost to the higher temperature delivery must be defined, such as 1% loss. Applying this to the function in Figure 3 defines a maximum time allowed at any elevated temperature for delivery. This set of material was discussed before the 2D week in the biology course. This discussion included the underlying mechanisms of milk spoilage that generate the curve of Figure 3: bacterial growth, and protein-taste changes.

Students can then apply the thermodynamics and heat transfer concepts to analyze their designs. Equations for milk temperature as a function of time can be derived to select and size alternative insulation materials. This set of material was discussed before the 2D week in the thermodynamics course. Using models and equations, the students developed models to trade-off these quantities as part of the project design process. The resulting maximum delivery time and temperature was required to be demonstrated in a thermal prototype of the student crate design. Examples are shown in Figure 4 from the course.

0.05.0

10.015.020.025.030.035.040.045.0

0.0 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0 30.0

Tempe

rature  (C

)  

Life  (days)

Figure 4: Example thermal crate designs, required to demonstrate adequacy of

the insulation material thickness. Note the variety in design concepts given only a single thermal insulation requirement.

The next 2D design deliverable was to develop and demonstrate a set of dispatching algorithms to complete all milk deliveries in minimal time using a minimal number of UGVs. These traveling salesmen optimization problem formulations were discussed in the systems course. Notice, though, the maximum delivery time determined from the thermal crate design has a direct impact on the dispatching problem. This is another example of the multidisciplinary aspects of this challenge.

Providing all of the deliverables therefore required consideration of the materials from all four subject courses, and an approach to structure and sequence the interdependent decisions amongst the deliverables.

Assessment: Evaluation Procedure and Outcomes

The question exists over how effective 2D challenges are at student learning. It is not clear they are more or less effective than not doing the 2D challenge and instead use the historically applied methods of standard lecture and recitations as a means to train engineers. To scrutinize this, several assessment methods of the 2D challenge approach are made. First, the students complete pre- and post- questionnaires of their perceived knowledge and comfort level at solving engineering problems, including multidisciplinary, disciplinary, and problems outside their discipline. Secondly, these results are compared with graded outcomes of the 2D challenge project. For each course included in the challenge, the students received a grade for the constitutive aspects of the total challenge related to that course. Within each course, this independently assessed 2D grade contributed to 10% of each total course grade.

Assessment: Student Self-Efficacy For the first assessment to determine efficacy of the 2D design approach, the students were asked (but not required) to complete identical survey questionnaires before and after the one week activity. Likert scale type questions were posed as to comfort level and interest in combined materials from inside and outside the course. This type of assessment approach has been demonstrated and validated for similar applications by various authors5,8,27.

The first survey question concerned the integration of disciplinary material often considered far from engineering, namely biology. The degree to which the biology subject matter was exercised in an integrated manner with the remaining engineering courses was of particular interest. How comfortable are you solving engineering design problems that ensure biological

requirements? a) They are easier than almost any other design problems. b) A bit easier than almost any other design problem. c) Can't say. d) A bit more difficult than almost any other design problem. e) Much more difficult than almost any other design problem.

This question was designed to detect any change in comfort at working with design problems that incorporate both biology and thermodynamics. The students were given such a problem in the 2D week, and so if the students were capable, their comfort level should increase. The results are shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Comfort level differences in solving engineering design problems with

biology requirements from 1 week of 2D challenge problem solving, where A is the strongest confidence level and E is the weakest.

The results show a clear shift upward in comfort levels in solving engineering problems with biology requirements. After 1 week of 2D activity, roughly 15% of the class shifted up a level from being unsure to realizing they can solve such multidisciplinary design problems as easily as any other single-discipline engineering design problem. Statistically, a paired t-test analysis for mean shift in the data results in a p-value of 0.0092, indicating a rejection of the null hypothesis of no difference between in mean between the pre and post questionnaire. There was a statistically significant improvement in outcome. A second question was asked about how effective the students felt the 2D design challenge would be at creating learning of multi-disciplinary design. The question asked was:

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How much do you think you will learn (did you learn) in this 2D experience on how the course material integrates in real problems? a) Looks to be very worthwhile on understanding how the 4 courses' material

integrates in real problems. b) Looks to be reasonable on understanding how the 4 courses' material integrates in

real problems. c) Can't say. Not clear or unclear. d) Looks to be a stretch to learn how the 4 courses' material integrates in real

problems. e) Looks to be a waste of time, and will provide very little understanding how the 4

courses' material integrates in real problems. As asked before and after the 1 week 2D activity, this question was designed to detect any change in perceived learning about solving multidisciplinary design problems. The results are shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Differences in self-stated ability to solve multi-disciplinary engineering

design problems from 1 week of 2D challenge problem solving, where A is the strongest confidence level and E is the weakest

The results show a clear shift upward in how the students felt the 2D challenge exercised multi-disciplinary engineering problems. Roughly 10% of the class shifted a level up from being unsure about the 2D experience to feeling reasonable that the 2D experience helped them learn about solving multi-disciplinary engineering design problems. Statistically, a t-test analysis for mean shift in the data results in a p-value of 0.013, indicating a rejection of the null hypothesis of no difference between in mean between the pre and post questionnaire. There was a statistically significant improvement in perception that the 2D design challenge provided learning on multidisciplinary engineering design. The students were also asked additional questions as checks on the survey. After one week of 2D, one would not expect a significant change in students’ perceived ability to solve 1D engineering problems within the course subject. Questioning this, there was no statistically

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significant shift in students’ perceived ability to solve thermodynamics problems before and after the 2D experience. This stability is expected. Further, when similarly questioned, there was also no significant shift in students’ perception of how much non-disciplinary expertise is needed by engineers in their discipline. It was high in both cases. This is not surprising and as one would expect, the students are aware of the multidisciplinary need in today’s modern world; they had already given this question a high initial rating. Finally, students were asked if they will enjoy (pre) or did enjoy (post) the 2D challenge.

How much do you think you will learn (did learn) in this 2D experience on how the course material integrates in real problems? a) Very much so. b) Somewhat. c) Can't say. Not clear or unclear. d) Unlikely. e) No way. I hate 2D.

A statistically significant shift in response was observed, with a t-test p-value result of 9.4e-07. The students significantly changed their minds about the 2D challenge, from 23% of the students expecting a neutral or negative experience before 2D shifting down to 10% at the end of the exercise. There was an associated increase of 5% of the student body that rated the 2D challenge in the highest category and really enjoyed the experience. This can also be seen in Figure 7. Overall, the students very much enjoyed the 2D challenge. Forming a one-week multidisciplinary design challenge restricted to the materials from the courses they are currently taking is an effective means to motivate students to learn multi-disciplinary engineering.

Figure 7: Differences in self-stated anticipated and post-facto enjoyment of the 2D challenge problem solving, where A is the strongest confidence level and E is the

weakest

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Assessment: Grading While the survey questionnaires point to students’ perceptions of learning, a question might be to determine the efficacy of the 2D design approach at solving multidisciplinary problems. This is more difficult to assess, and will likely take a much longer time period to assess reflectively in future years of undergraduate education or even in the first years of working practice. On the other hand, subject matter course grading is perhaps a natural first point of assessment. Students with higher grades on the 2D project presumably can express information about the subject more exactly. Our grading approach was based on letting the project itself drive multidisciplinary integration, and to complete the 2D project grading in separate tracks. Each course graded their portion of the 2D project in isolation from the other courses, and in isolation from the remainder of the subject matter course grading activities. For example, the biology course evaluated all student understanding of biological processes of milk spoilage, including sugar breakdown, taste change, and bacterial growth levels. This portion of 2D was graded in isolation of the thermodynamics course, which graded the project on the thermodynamics and heat transfer design. It was noted that over-all team grades (for the activity) were higher than individual grades in other portions of the course. Notice as designed by the instructors, the project allowed for subject matter course grading in isolation from each other course in a natural way using the requirements flow (Figure 2). For example, the biological analysis formed a biological requirement, which then provided constraints on thermodynamic variables, as a shelf life versus temperature equation. The thermodynamics course simply graded the use of this equation to design the thermodynamics and heat transfer properties, without need for much consideration of the biological basis of the equation, and vice versa for the biological course grading. Unfortunately, it must be reported that this isolated grading approach perhaps proved to not be as effective as had been hoped. Individual course contribution grading to 2D perhaps proved a questionable means of assessing understanding of the integrated, larger context of multidisciplinary engineering. To see this, consider if a student understands the integration of the materials of two courses on a design problem. Then presumably that student must have done well on the project in both courses. Similarly, students who did not understand the integrated context would do poorly. Such a distribution of students would be supported by evidence of correlation among the grades of the independently assessed disciplinary course contributions to the project. No such correlation was generated among the 2D grades. The 2D project grades from each course bore near zero correlation, as shown in Figure 8. While some students did well in all courses and understood the project, apparently equal numbers of students understood only the project content of one course well and the project content of other courses not all.

PW = Engineering in the Physical World Bio = Introduction to Biology

DW = The Digital World Sys = The Systems World

r2 Bio

Sys

D W

PW

Bio 1 0.26 0.00 0.13

Sys 1 0.00 0.18

DW 1 0.01

PW 1

a b

Figure 8: Lack of correlation amongst grading of 2D projects across the different subject matter courses when 2D is graded on individual subject matter content of the 2D experiences:

(a) scatterplot, digital world and physical world correlation only (b) correlation coefficients between each course.

This grade-based argument logic would then assert the students did not learn multidisciplinary skills. However, that conclusion is in direct conflict with the student self-assessed results and the opinions of the faculty who observed students effectively engaging materials from multiple courses. Alternatively, another explanation of the lack of grading correlation is the grading does not reflect student understanding of what must be known from the disciplinary course to complete the project. Based on scrutiny of the grading rubrics form each course, this appears the much more likely the case, and reinforces guidance and commentary on methods to grade projects in courses. The grading for the 2D courses typically followed a grading rubric assigning points for various features of the project deliverables. For the thermodynamics course, a report was required for grading purposes. The report was graded on 7 aspects: objectives, performance requirements, design concepts, concept selection, design sizing equations, prototype build results, and experimental validation. While seemingly logical, these criteria are not strictly necessary for an effective thermodynamic design, and only 1 of 7 points ensure the students understand the biological basis for the design requirement. The grading schemes therefore reflected the individual course objectives (learning thermodynamics) and did not reflect the 2D objective of integrated learning. The 2D grading did not grade multi-disciplinary design; it graded the small disciplinary content of the large multi-disciplinary design problem. A score was assigned to each aspect, and the final grade was the sum of these aspects. This was confirmed when studying the correlation of the 2D grades assigned in each subject with the overall final grades in each subject. In the systems course, the correlation was 44%, and in the thermodynamics course the correlation was 30%, which is about what one would expect between hands on laboratory grades and overall subject matter grades. When each subject

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course grades a 2D project alone on the subject matter contribution to 2D, then those grades will not correlate, and do not grade the multidisciplinary nature of the 2D exercise. In hindsight, this result gave pause to the course instructors on grading. All participants felt 2D was worthwhile, and all could point to projects demonstrating the students did well understanding integration amongst the courses. A possible future approach would be to have the instructors jointly define grading rubrics and score the projects together. The need for this joint or integrated grading is clear from the correlation results. Overall, it was found that grading integrated multidisciplinary design courses would require more than the standard approach to grading disciplinary materials applied. Additionally, instructors could formally record observations of students during the procedure. These observations could be used as a tool to compare results between semesters. This will be attempted in the future.

Conclusions

The 2D Design Activities was found to be a useful approach to introducing students to effective multi-disciplinary engineering problem solving early in the undergraduate curriculum. Beyond single course 1D design problems, it allows more difficult problems to be presented that address issues outside of the scope of a single course. Yet, it is not completely open-ended in scope, the design problems must be contained to that within the current enrolled courses. This report described SUTD’S first wave of students. They have explored 1D (single course) and 2D (multi-course) design activities so far in the curriculum. The students, who applied the AutoMilk problem described in this paper, had previously encountered two other comparable 2D projects. The first was a cannon design (linking chemistry and physics), and the second was an intelligent home project (linking circuits, design, and humanities arts and science on Descartes ‘human intelligence’). Those efforts are not described in this paper for length reasons. A second set of students is now going through a similar 2D problem sequence. The results from these other projects appear to be progressing according to the same pattern. Their 2D is not yet complete, data collection and analysis is ongoing. The researchers found that for implementation to be successful, the instructors must create a chain of project requirements amongst the course subject matter. Design requirements from all covered courses must be defined such that accurately fulfilling them requires incorporating analysis from at least one other discipline. The requirements must be co-dependent across disciplines. An example of such a 2D requirement is to develop thermal properties (coolness) such that the biological aspect (freshness) is also met. This was actually one of the challenges for students in approaching the AutoMilk design problem; students discovered that translating the biological health and safety requirements into a thermodynamic design requirement was difficult. This type of design requirement translation is a very real-world scenario and highlights the criticality of 2D type design projects, as this was also a new type of problem for students. The dedicated and contained one-week timeline was also found to be useful. Since more than this allotted time generates excess activity away from the disciplinary courses, and creates a design

problem that is unnecessarily large against the real need for active learning of technical course subject matter.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the International Design Center at the Singapore University of Technology and Design for supporting this work.

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Paper ID #10168

A Sequence of Technology Commercialization Courses for Science and Engi-neering

Dr. Arthur Felse, Northwestern University

Arthur Felse is a Lecturer and the Assistant Director for Research in the Master of Biotechnology Pro-gram. His responsibilities include teaching, student advising, coordinating research training, and man-aging the MBP teaching laboratory. Before joining Northwestern University, Dr. Felse completed hispost-doctoral training at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. He received his BS in Chemi-cal Engineering as well as his MS in Biotechnology from Anna University, India and PhD in BiochemicalEngineering and Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology. Arthur is a recipient of the EPA’sPresidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award and has served as a faculty in the Chemical EngineeringSummer School. Arthur is actively involved in engineering education research with particular emphasison teaching engineering to non-engineers, and including industry practices in university education. Arthuris a member of American Society for Engineering Education.

Dr. Igor Kourkine

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2014

A Sequence of Technology Commercialization Courses for Science and Engineering

Introduction The transition of new products from conception to proof-of-concept to commercialization is the hallmark of technological progress, and it is essential for sustaining competitive advantage. Various business methods and funding mechanisms have been introduced and explored since the implementation of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980 to facilitate technology commercialization1. The federal government has been a leader in promoting technology commercialization through agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense. A number of state governments, universities, non-profit organizations, and for-profit institutions have also played an important role in enabling technology commercialization by offering guidance and assistance to entrepreneurs2. These efforts have helped many new technologies to come to fruition, including life-saving drugs and medical devices, consumer products, communication devices, clean energy, and safe food products3.

In order to succeed, technology commercialization must involve properly trained scientists and engineers not only at the birth of a technology but also during the subsequent phases of its commercialization. The importance of incorporating elements of entrepreneurship and technology commercialization in engineering education has been noted by the National Academy of Sciences 4 and echoed in the “Engineer of 2020” report of the National Academy of Engineering5 and more recently in President Obama’s strategy for American innovation6. Following the lead of the NAS and NAE, several universities have launched a variety of technology commercialization and entrepreneurship programs – short courses, workshops, cross-disciplinary courses, commercialization projects, and others7.

This paper describes a sequence of three technology commercialization courses in the Master of Biotechnology Program at Northwestern University. We developed these courses based on recommendations of our industrial advisory board, our interactions with business development professionals, previously reported research on entrepreneurship education, and advice from faculty members at our School of Business. The implicit challenge in developing technology commercialization courses is the integration and balance of business and technology. Our task was to familiarize students with a host of new business concepts, but also make them comfortable with embracing uncertainty in data and encourage them to make judgments based on incomplete information. The latter two tasks are challenging given the mostly deductive and converging mode of thinking of science and engineering students.

In the end, we believe that we have created a solid foundation for teaching technology commercialization to master’s level students. This course sequence has been offered every year starting with academic year 2011. Thus two cohorts of students have taken this course sequence and the third cohort is currently taking it. This course sequence extends over a period of three quarters – fall, winter, and spring and each course has a credit value of 0.5 units. One unit

corresponds to a course load of four lecture hours per week, so each course in this sequence has a course load of two lecture hours per week.

Throughout the sequence of three courses, we used a variety of pedagogical approaches to engage the students. In addition to teaching business concepts, we managed team dynamics. We also invited a significant number of guest instructors from industry, who brought a truly multi-disciplinary character to these courses. Finally, we gave students numerous opportunities to practice their critical thinking skills by answering non-trivial questions, formulating decisions, and reflecting on their actions.

Motivation for the sequence of technology commercialization courses A recent survey of engineering students showed that 41% of them wanted to start their own businesses, and 66% thought that entrepreneurship education would strengthen their career prospects and improve their learning experiences8,9. Another survey showed that 50% of faculty and administrators believed that access to entrepreneurship programs would improve engineering education10. These statistics show that many people realize the importance of entrepreneurship education in the undergraduate engineering curricula, but, perhaps not strongly enough to require it. These statistics are also mirrored in how universities deliver entrepreneurship and technology commercialization education – by way of optional minors, certificates, or electives. In most engineering curricula, a senior design course is typically the only required experience that includes some aspects of technology commercialization. Although this is a good start, it is far from what is required to grasp the complexity of technology commercialization.

Table 1. Graduate degrees awarded in the USA. Type of degree Number of degrees % international students Refs. Engineering MS* 46, 940 44.4 11 Professional MS# 1, 758 18 12 Engineering PhD 9,582 54.2 11 Our master’s program$ 180 40% NA * Data for the year 2011, the latest available. # Data for the year 2012, the latest available. $ Our program is a hybrid between Engineering MS and Professional MS programs. The situation with teaching technology commercialization is not much different at the graduate level, despite the fact that MS and PhD graduates have more research experience than undergraduate students and, hence, are more likely to be at the forefront of technology commercialization. The situation is further complicated by the fact that about 45% of students in engineering MS programs are non-resident aliens, who are even less familiar than domestic students with the technology commercialization processes in the United States. Given the substantial number of graduate degrees awarded in the USA annually (Table 1), we think that more rigorous education in technology commercialization is not just beneficial, but it is necessary for graduate students’ career growth and the future success of technology

commercialization. This education should be designed to bridge the knowledge gap between researchers and entrepreneurs (the so-called “valley of death” of technology commercialization)13, which has been attributed to several technology failures at the commercialization level. Our version of this education is a three-part sequence of 0.5-unit technology commercialization courses (amounting to a total of 1.5 units) required for all students in our master’s program. A total of 13 course credit units and 7 research credit units are required to graduate from our master’s program.

Our strategy for teaching technology commercialization can be represented in the form of a triple Venn diagram that has three key categories: Technological superiority/uniqueness, a market-driven business opportunity, and regulatory considerations (Figure 1). A successful business opportunity is located in the overlap of these three categories. Each of these elements has their own sub-elements that can influence the business opportunity.

Additional motivation for the development of this sequence of courses came from the opinions of the NAS and NAE, the recommendations of our Industrial Advisory Board to educate engineers with business acumen, and the new focus on learning and innovation skills (collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity) that we adopted in our curriculum. In developing these courses we also sought to capitalize on the diversity of the technical knowledge and scientific background of our students. Our students are almost equally divided between life science majors (primarily biology or biochemistry) and engineers (primarily chemical or biological) plus biotechnologists. This diversity should enable students to learn from each other and enrich their experience in our program.

Figure 1. A Venn diagram representing the three key categories that determine a successful business.

A successful business

Confirm that knowledge gap between science and business is closed

Confirm that best and approved business practices are used

Verify that the product is safe and efficacious

Intent and learning outcomes of the technology commercialization course sequence Our overarching intent was to improve the knowledge of technology commercialization of science and engineering students. The key objective was to teach students the principles involved in transitioning a technology from bench research to an economically viable, market-oriented business. The expectations were that at the end of this sequence of courses students would be able to:

(i) View the scientific background of a technology from a business perspective and answer questions such as “How is the technology scientifically superior to other competing technologies?”

(ii) Assess the nature of a business opportunity (e.g. whether it is sizable, real, immediate, and has a first-mover advantage).

(iii) Develop a business model and strategy for technology commercialization. (iv) Apply the Porter’s five forces analysis14 and SWOT15 analysis to a problem. (v) Identify and rank critical business issues and develop risk mitigation strategies. (vi) Write a succinct business development proposal targeted at either venture capitalist

(VC) or internal corporate venture (ICV) funding.

It should be noted that this sequence of courses was not intended to convert every student into an entrepreneur. Students interested in a more in-depth study of technology commercialization have access to advanced courses in entrepreneurship and related areas offered at our University.

Course content All topics covered in our sequence of the three technology commercialization courses lay at the interface of technology and business. Briefly, the first course focused on technology assessment and feasibility studies, commonly accepted as the initial phases of technology commercialization. The second course focused on business development and product launch, which are the intermediate phases of technology commercialization. The third course involved a team project, in which students unified the knowledge of science, engineering, and business acquired in the first two courses to evaluate the commercialization potential of a product. Comprehensive contents of the courses are given in Table 2.

More specifically, students received instruction on patents, copyrights, trademarks, costing and economic evaluation, and applied the SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) to several business and managerial scenarios. Students also received instruction in project management, regulatory compliance, business strategy, and the use of Porter’s five forces framework. It is essential to note that the courses featured eight guest lecturers, all subject matter experts (SMEs) in their respective fields, who added credentials to the course and provided unique non-academic perspective on the course topics.

Table 2. Contents of the sequence of technology commercialization courses. Course number Topics covered Key skills acquired Instructor

Course #1

Careers in business and management

Ability to understand business career opportunities for science and engineering

graduates.

SME

Intellectual property

Ability to understand patentability requirements, read claims, and perform

patent search.

Course co-instructor who is a patent agent; plus SME in patent

searches.

Project management

Ability to write a project charter; ability to organize a

project and manage risk.

SME in project management

Course #2

Engineering Economics

Ability to calculate costs and revenues; ability to use NPV and IRR to compare projects.

Course co-instructor who has experience in

teaching senior engineering design

courses.

Statistics pertaining to development of

bioproducts

Ability to understand sampling distributions, hypothesis testing, and

randomization techniques.

Course co-instructor who has experience in

teaching probability and statistics.

Business strategy and frameworks

Ability to perform the Porter five forces analysis and

SWOT analysis.

SME in strategy and operational consulting

Regulatory considerations

Ability to understand regulatory constraints during

bioproduct development.

SME in designing and managing clinical trials

Course #3 (team project)

Integration of all topics above

Ability to develop a business proposal and recommend a ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ decision for

the technology commercialization.

Course co-instructors and SMEs

Pedagogical approaches The sequence of technology commercialization courses described in this paper involved a combination of lecture-based, interactive, and project-based instructional methodologies (see Table 3 for more details). As mentioned earlier, the technology commercialization courses featured a substantial number of guest instructors. Since the guest instructors did not have experience in teaching and grading, the course instructors were deeply involved in guiding them through establishing the right learning outcomes for each seminar and providing a grading rubric. The course instructors normalized the grades to account for difference in grading between instructors. However, some subjectivity in grading was unavoidable.

Table 3: Pedagogical approaches used to deliver course contents

Topic covered Instructional methodology

Student assessment method

Contribution to final grade

Course 1

Intellectual property Lectures and seminars Individual and team homework assignments 50%

Project management Workshops Team homework assignments 50%

Course 2 Engineering

economics & statistics Lectures Individual homework assignments 60% Regulatory

considerations Workshops Student team interactions

Business strategy & frameworks

Seminars and case-study discussions Student team presentation 40%

Course 3

Technical assessment of a technology

Biweekly meetings with student teams and

PBL

Weekly student team presentations

0% (Pass/No pass)

Business assessment of the technology using frameworks

Biweekly meetings with student teams and

PBL

Mid-term team presentation to a

consultant from the industry

40%

Economic assessment of the technology,

including risk mitigation strategies.

Biweekly meetings with student teams and

PBL

Weekly student team presentations.

0% (Pass/ No pass)

Cumulative analysis of the

commercialization potential of the

technology

Small group coaching in writing a business

development report and making an investment

pitch.

Final presentation to consultants from the

industry 60%

General format of the 1st technology commercialization course

The intent of the first two courses is formal, first-level education in various aspects of technology commercialization. The first technology commercialization course was taught in lecture and workshop format. The first class in this course was a guest lecture on business career opportunities for engineering majors. This was followed by a three class module on intellectual property (IP) management. The IP module was taught by one of the course instructors who is also a registered patent agent. Students received instruction on tools for patent search, evaluating the strength of patents, and writing patent claims. The IP module was in lecture and workshop format. Students were assessed by way of individual and team homework assignments which tested their ability to do patent searchs and write patent claims.

The IP module was followed by a four class project management module which was taught in workshop format. The broad goal of this module was to learn the steps in planning and running a project. A project management consultant was the guest instructor for this module. Each workshop had a brief lecture followed by hands-on activities by student teams. Students were taught the essential elements of project management such as project charter, communication plan, scope statement, and work breakdown structure. Student teams were assessed through a mini-project which was given out as a homework assignment. Teams were allowed to choose a project that they can relate to and found enjoyable. The guest instructor coached students over a period of four weeks to complete their projects. Weekly presentations and meetings with student teams were used to evaluate team’s progress. The final product of this module was a project management plan prepared by student teams.

General format of the 2nd technology commercialization course The second technology commercialization was taught in lecture, workshop, and case-study discussion format. First part of this course covered topics on engineering economics and statistics related to product development (see Table 3). Three lecture hours were used for engineering economics and two lecture hours were used for statistics. Traditional lecture-homework format was used to teach these topics. Students were assessed through individual homework assignments.

Next in this course was the regulatory compliance module. Many commercial enterprises are required to operate within certain regulatory boundaries and the intent of this module was to make the student cognizant of these boundaries. Three lecture hours were devoted to instruction on regulatory compliance which was done by way of brief lectures and workshops. Student teams were assigned exercises which were completed for the most part in class. If exercises were not completed in class, teams completed it as a take-home assignment. The exercise involved developing a product profile that will conform to regulations that influence the product’s market space. The products chosen were mostly in the areas of drugs and medical devices. Student teams were assessed through interactions and oral evaluation of the product profile.

The last part of this course was the business strategy and frameworks module which was covered in three lecture hours. Lecture and case-study format was used. Students were taught to perform the Porter’s five forces analysis and SWOT analysis. A SME in operational strategy was the guest instructor for this module. Students were assigned cases to read which were then discussed during class. Student teams critiqued the Porter’s five forces analysis and SWOT analysis provided in the cases. Student teams were then assigned business scenarios for which they performed their own Porter’s five forces analysis and SWOT analysis. Student teams were evaluated through a presentation of their Porter’s five forces analysis and SWOT analysis.

General format and framework used in 3rd technology commercialization course The third course in the technology commercialization sequence was taught through project-based learning (PBL). Students worked on projects for a total of 10 weeks in groups of 4-5 people. The topics for the projects were selected by the instructors based on the their perceived impact on society, ease of commercialization, and availability of relevant data. Selected characteristics of these projects are given in Table 4.

Table 4. Characteristics of technology commercialization projects Project Application areas Current state of

commercialization Suggested investment mechanism$

Regulatory considerations

Cardiac stem cell therapy

Chronic cardiac disease

Emerging* ICV High

New breast cancer drug

Metastatic breast cancer

Emerging ICV High

Media storage using DNA

Any place that needs enormous data storage

New# VC Low

Nanopore technology for DNA sequencing

Medical diagnostics and biomedical research

New VC Low to High

*Emerging technologies are defined as those undergoing commercialization; commercialization data of such technologies are not available to the public. #New technologies are defined as those reported in research publications only; no commercialization efforts are known for these technologies. $Instructors’ suggestions; student teams were free to choose a different investment mechanism. ICV = Internal corporate venture VC = Venture capitalist In our implementation of project-based learning, students collected and analyzed data, debated the implications of their findings, and pondered the viability of the selected technology. Multiple iterations of ideas and plenty of opportunities for interaction with the coaches (the course instructors) were implemented. The instructors strove to create a nurturing environment that fostered creativity and gave opportunities to fail and to learn from these failures. Since the very nature of technology commercialization is iterative, the third technology commercialization course included several opportunities for the teams to reflect on the decisions they had made earlier and reiterate.

Student teams and coaches met biweekly – once to review students’ ideas and next for a semi-formal 30-minute project update. Feedback to teams was provided during project update meetings. Minutes of project update meetings including action items for next week and beyond (which was approved by all team members and the team coach) were used as a record of project progress. Outside these scheduled meetings, students met to brainstorm ideas the coaches were available to moderate these brainstorming sessions. Online meeting and document sharing tools

such as Google Hangout and Google Docs were used for student-coach and student-student interactions. However, teams were required to give the weekly update presentation in person to the coach and to other teams working on the same project. It should be noted that one-on-one meetings and the presentations took the instructors 3-4 hours per week per team.

Tentative goals and mid-term milestones were given to students as a guideline, but the students had to come up with the final goals and milestones and document them using a Gantt chart. A broad technology commercialization process template was also provided (Figure 2), but students were given significant freedom to change the template based on process needs. The crucial parts of the technology commercialization process template were the decision-making steps, where the ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ decisions were made.

Figure 2. The technology commercialization template provided to students.

To sharpen their decision-making skills, students received instruction in two widely used business frameworks: the Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threat (SWOT) analysis and the Porter’s five forces analysis. They used these frameworks to organize and analyze patent searches, secondary market research, and economic and clinical trials data. As the name implies,

the SWOT analysis is a tool used to identify strength, weakness, opportunity of a particular technology and threats that it faces. The SWOT analysis helps to place all business aspects of a technology in the form of an easily readable matrix and facilitates greater insights into strengths that can be capitalized on and weaknesses that should be fortified. It can also help in identifying new business opportunities and critical issues for the technology. The five-forces analysis invented by Michael Porter in 1979 provides a simple model for evaluating a competitive position of a business organization, and it is routinely used in conjunction with the SWOT analysis. The five-forces framework stipulates that managers must look broadly at the competition and consider not just their direct competitors (one force) but also buyers, suppliers, new products and substitute products (the other four forces). The combination of these forces determined the profitability of a business organization. Detailed explanation of the SWOT analysis and the five forces analysis can be found elsewhere13-17.

Our experiences and challenges As pointed out earlier, the MS students who took this sequence of technology commercialization courses had backgrounds in life science or engineering. They also had a varying level of interest in entrepreneurship. A recent informal ‘show of hands’ poll indicated that about 50% were very interested in technology commercialization, close to 35% saw some utility in learning it, and roughly 15% opined that it was irrelevant to their plans. Thus, the students were substantially heterogeneous in their perceptions about this course. Given this heterogeneity, our intention was to provide firm foundation to students with a strong desire to become entrepreneurs and build awareness of technology commercialization among those who wanted to pursue other career paths.

Significantly, our sequence of technology commercialization courses gave students an opportunity to practice semi-quantitative and critical thinking, in which decisions must be made based on incomplete information within short periods of time. This modus operandi is much less common in the academia than it is in industry. Due to the analytical nature of their education, science and engineering students tend to struggle when dealing with ambiguous, poorly defined problems that do not have a unique and/or best solution. The differences in operational thinking between science and engineering and business fields are listed in Table 5.

Students were also wary of making wrong decisions, since they did not have many theories, equations, or boundary conditions to rely upon. To remove this pressure, we provided opportunities for the students to fail. Weekly presentations were graded on a pass/no-pass basis. If a decision could be substantiated and defended adequately, a passing grade was given. Otherwise, the team was asked to rethink their decision or further substantiate it. Some decisions required multiple iterations, and we tried to accommodate additional meeting with the students (in person or via videoconferencing) as much as we could.

Table 5. Science and engineering vs. business modus operandi. Process Science and engineering Business

Data collection

• Desire to collect all

• Strong belief that more information will lead to better decisions.

available information. This information is mostly public, and it is available online and in libraries.

• Assumption that all necessary information will be available or can be obtained.

• Desire to collect only the information that is necessary to make decisions. Some of this information is public, but most of it is available only by paid subscriptions.

• Belief that decisions can be made with truncated information.

• Assumption that some information will be unknown or unattainable.

Basis of data analysis

• Analysis is based on sound scientific theories. Some established empirical methods are used.

• Belief that data analysis based on strong theories will lead to the best decisions.

• Analysis is based on empirical methods or experience.

• Belief that due to higher level of complexity and non-quantifiable data, best decisions can be made through established business process methods such as SWOT analysis.

Conclusions and decision making

• Based on established scientific methods.

• Assumption that all parameters, which affect the process, will converge at a single optimum point.

• Based on business frameworks, such as the empirical SWOT analysis.

• Assumption that multiple decisions are possible but the current decision is best at the moment. Iterations are used when new information becomes available.

Consideration of variables that

affect the process

• Start an analysis with all possible variables and scientifically eliminate insignificant variables.

• Start an analysis with a limited set of variables, which obviously affect the business. Add variables as the analysis progresses.

General line of thinking

• Highly quantitative and guided by scientific theories

• Unambiguous results are possible. • Even open- or loose-ended

problems can be fragmented to well-defined problems. Solutions will be unique.

• Semi-quantitative (at best) and guided by empirical methods.

• Ambiguity will exist. Must learn to work with it.

• Problems will always be loose-ended, even at the base level. Multiple solutions will exist.

The importance of finding the successful business opportunity at the overlap of technological superiority, a market-driven economy, and regulatory considerations was emphasized during the project (Figure 1). For example, in the cardiac stem cell therapy project, students initially

proposed that this therapy could become a standard of care (i.e., establish technological superiority) and thus capture much of the cardiac therapy market (around $35 billion). However, further research revealed that regulatory considerations that govern healthcare providers (HMOs, Medicare, etc.) would make this hard despite very favorable clinical trial data. The students then looked for technological uniqueness and discovered that the cardiac stem cell therapy could improve the quality of life for patients who had survived a first heart attack. The clinical outcome was consequently changed from an improved lipid profile to improved quality of life to allow the cardiac stem cell therapy to deliver a unique therapeutic value. While this change resulted in a smaller patient base and reduced market size ($19.8 billion), it also established a niche market with a minimal threat of substitutes.

Further analysis concluded that this technology will be a first mover in the stem cell therapy area and, hence, would require establishing new production facilities. From a business perspective, this requirement would result in a huge input of capital (untested technology). So, the students suggested that a prudent approach would be to either outsource, partner, or enter into licensing agreements with existing cell banking companies to launch the product. Such a step would reduce profit per unit product initially, but also significantly mitigate the risk by lowering initial investments. Through several iterations and taking all three elements into consideration, the team was able to find the best opportunity.

SMEs were given significant autonomy in lecture materials in their area of expertise. But they were only marginally involved in the design of this course sequence. The SMEs were usually receptive to the guest lecture but were cautious in participating in course design, primarily because of the time commitment. The instructors facilitated interaction between SMEs to improve continuity. Since the SMEs were recruited as available, the content of the first two courses, in some instances, was fragmented.

In the two years that these courses have been offered, students had the liberty to choose their own teams. We monitored team dynamics through informal discussions with students, particularly when we had suspicions of negative team dynamics. Students were given the opportunity to do a confidential mid-term peer evaluation. We intervened when there was a problem and in some cases reassigned students to different teams. Though a minority of students had some troubles with team work, many teams functioned very well during the projects course.

Assessment of the technology commercialization course sequence

Assessment of this course sequence is qualitative based on comments from students, and SME and industry personnel who provided feedback on student work and presentations. Our industry partners generally provided a positive feedback on the technology commercialization course sequence. They felt students were more aware of the business models and steps involved in commercializing a technology after taking this course sequence. Students were able to

confidently have a discourse on the commercialization potential of technologies other than the one they studied, such as their research project. The general improvements suggested were: (i) greater depth in topics even if it meant that the number of topics need to be reduced, and (ii) make the course more coherent, and topics in the 1st and 2nd courses should follow the actual sequence in the commercialization process.

Students overall had diverse opinions on this course sequence. About 80% of the free form comments we received from students indicated that they saw some value in this course. The rest indicated that this course did not fit well with what they wanted to do in the future (most of these students have plans to enter a Ph.D. program). About 25% mentioned that this course sequence has positively transformed their thoughts on entrepreneurship and that they are likely to pursue this career path. It should be noted that before this course sequence was offered barely one student from a cohort (in some cohorts none) chose commercialization-related careers, but after offering this course sequence that number has raised to about six students per cohort wanting to start careers in technology commercialization. Several students took advanced entrepreneurship courses as electives after taking this course sequence. Regarding the course itself, student mentioned three areas of improvement: (i) provide customized and easy to understand instructional materials that are different from those used by business management students, (ii) grading rubrics and criteria were confusing, and (iii) provide some formal help to handle team performance issues.

Future plans As we move forward with improving this course sequence, we plan to implement the following changes to address the aforesaid challenges and comments from students and industry partners:

(i) Create a web archive of instructional materials from SMEs. (ii) Implement course management strategies to improve coherence and continuity of topics

covered in the 1st and 2nd courses. (iii) Develop clear grading rubrics and make the grading process more transparent. (iv) Implement peer evaluation among team members to get a better understanding of team

dynamics. Hire consultants to coach students on team work. Use Meyers-Briggs personality type evaluation to develop teams and manage team dynamics.

(v) Collect and synthesize feedback from industrial advisory board.

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