Not Good Enough? Exploring Relationships Between Students’ Empathy, Their Attitudes Towards Sustainability, and the Self-Perceived Sustainability of Their Solutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Prabhu ◽  
Mohammed Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Elizabeth Starkey
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
The Self ◽  
Empathy Development ◽  
Concept Evaluation ◽  
Trait Empathy ◽  
Evaluation Stage ◽  
Future Work

Abstract Empathy plays an important role in designers’ ability to relate to problems faced by others. Several researchers have studied empathy development in engineering design education; however, a majority of this work has focused on teaching designers to empathize with primary users. Little attention in empathy development research is given to empathizing with those affected in a secondary and tertiary capacity. Moreover, little research has investigated the role of students’ empathy in influencing their emphasis on sustainability, especially in the concept evaluation stage. Our aim in this paper is to explore this research gap through an experimental study with engineering students. Specifically, we introduced first-year engineering students at a large public university in the northeastern United States to a short workshop on sustainable design. We compared changes in their trait empathy and attitudes towards sustainability from before to after participating in the workshop. We also compared the relationship between students’ trait empathy, attitudes towards sustainability, and the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions in a design task. From our results, we see that students reported an increase in their beliefs and intentions towards sustainability and a decrease in their personal distress from before to after participating in the workshop. Furthermore, students’ trait empathy correlated negatively with the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions. These findings highlight the need for future work studying the role of empathy in encouraging a sustainable design mindset among designers.

Are you feeling me? An exploration of empathy development in engineering design education

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-57
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Christopher McComb ◽  
Jessica Menold ◽  
Jackie Huff ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Empathy Development ◽  
Trait Empathy ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Having empathy in the design process can help engineers relate to the end user by identifying what and why certain experiences are meaningful. While there have been efforts to identify the factors that impact empathic tendencies in engineering, there has been limited evidence on how a students' trait empathy or empathic self-efficacy develops over a design project or what factors impact this development. The current study was developed to explore the development of students' trait empathy and empathic self-efficacy development and identify the underlying impact of the design project's context and course instructor through a study with 103 engineering students. Students' trait empathy and empathic self-efficacy were measured across each of the four design stages (problem formulation, concept generation, concept selection, and final conceptual design) during an 8-week project. The results highlight that students' trait empathy and empathic self-efficacy did not increase across design stages and the context of the design problem did not impact students' empathy development. Meanwhile, the course instructor negatively impacted students' empathic self-efficacy in one of the three course sections studied, and two of the three interviewed course instructors reduced the role of empathy in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. These insights call for future research that could empirically assess the impact of trait empathy and empathic self-efficacy in driving design outcomes in the later design stages, which could increase engineering educators' awareness of the role of empathy in the engineering classroom.

Complex Solutions for Complex Problems? Exploring the Role of Design Task Choice on Learning, Design for Additive Manufacturing Use, and Creativity

2019 ◽  
Vol 142 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Prabhu ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson ◽  
Nicholas A. Meisel
Keyword(s):  
Additive Manufacturing ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Educational Interventions ◽  
Problem Statement ◽  
Design Task ◽  
Complex Solutions ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Am Processes

Abstract The integration of additive manufacturing (AM) processes in many industries has led to the need for AM education and training, particularly on design for AM (DfAM). To meet this growing need, several academic institutions have implemented educational interventions, especially project- and problem-based, for AM education; however, limited research has explored how the choice of the problem statement influences the design outcomes of a task-based AM/DfAM intervention. This research explores this gap in the literature through an experimental study with 175 undergraduate engineering students. Specifically, the study compared the effects of restrictive and dual (restrictive and opportunistic) DfAM education, when introduced through design tasks that differed in the explicit use of design objectives and functional and manufacturing constraints in defining them. The effects of the intervention were measured through (1) changes in participant DfAM self-efficacy, (2) participants' self-reported emphasis on DfAM, and (3) the creativity of participants' design outcomes. The results show that the choice of the design task has a significant effect on the participants' self-efficacy with, and their self-reported emphasis on, certain DfAM concepts. The results also show that the design task containing explicit constraints and objectives results in participants generating ideas with greater uniqueness compared with the design task with fewer explicit constraints and objectives. These findings highlight the importance of the chosen problem statement on the outcomes of a DfAM educational intervention, and future work is also discussed.

Feeling the Heat! Exploring the Relationship Between Students’ Empathy, Attitudes Towards Sustainability, and Their Identification of Problem Requirements

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Prabhu ◽  
Mohammed Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Elizabeth Starkey
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
Primary User ◽  
Design Tools ◽  
Trait Empathy ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Tools And Techniques ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract As global resources deplete, there has emerged a need for designers to emphasize sustainability in engineering design. Towards this end, several researchers have presented design tools to support sustainable design; however, designers must be encouraged to adopt a sustainable design mindset and actively utilize these design tools and techniques in the design process. Prior research has identified the need for interpersonal skills such as empathy among individuals to encourage an active sustainable mindset among them. While several researchers have demonstrated the relationship between designers’ empathy and their identification of problem requirements in engineering design, little research has explored this relationship in the context of sustainable design. This direction of research is particularly important as environment-focused decisions in engineering design do not always benefit the primary user of a solution, but often affect secondary and tertiary stakeholders. Our aim in this paper is to explore this research gap through an experimental study with undergraduate engineering students. Specifically, we compared the relationship between participants’ trait empathy and their attitudes towards sustainability, in the context of environmental sustainability. We then investigated the relationship between their trait empathy, attitudes towards sustainability, and their identification of problem requirements in a design task. From the results, we see that students’ intentions towards sustainable actions positively correlated with their identification of environment-focused requirements. On the other hand, students’ perspective-taking — a component of their trait empathy — positively correlated with their identification of user-focused requirements. These findings provide an important first step towards understanding the relationship between designers’ individual differences and their adoption of sustainability in engineering design.

scholarly journals Perspectives on the role of materials in sustainable product design education

2018 ◽  
pp. 104-115
Author(s):  
Karen Marie Hasling
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Broad Perspective ◽  
Design For Sustainability ◽  
Sustainable Product ◽  
Educational Perspective ◽  
Speculative Design

This paper discusses present and future roles of materials in sustainable design with a focus on design education. With a multifaceted understanding of materials, from an educational perspective, the challenge is to ensure that students are able to navigate within the materials in the design field and to reflect on its potentials and limitations in the process. Moreover, when further targeting materials within a design for sustainability agenda that is complex in itself, it has been observed that students find it overwhelming. Accordingly, the paper unfolds ways of understanding the role of materials in sustainable design education as a way to demonstrate the positions they can take as future designers. Based on a study conducted during a materials course in a sustainable design engineering program, research was done on how students perceive the role of materials in sustainable design. This was done by extracting statements from students’ final assessments that were framed as essays on the topic. The statements, clustered into categories, illustrated the diversity of approaches students take. For teaching, this underscores the necessity to not only apply a broad perspective in the field of materials in sustainable design, but also to emphasize the large degree of entanglement and interdependency between perspectives. To further discuss this in an educational context and to facilitate developing teaching within this topic, a space unfolding two frameworks, one that considers key competences in working with sustainability and another that discusses the increasing number of approaches embracing design for sustainability, was introduced as a means to describe the complexity in the field. The space was first used to position categories of students’ approaches from the empirical study, then expanded to propose four future roles of materials: as environmental impactors, as re-establishing connections, as moderators for social innovation and as media for critical and speculative design.

The role of the self in creative expression

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Donnelly ◽  
Radmila Prislin ◽  
Ryan Nicholls
Keyword(s):  
Creative Expression ◽  
The Self

The role of the self in organizational justice

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Ramona Bobocel ◽  
Russell E. Johnson ◽  
Joel Brockner
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Justice ◽  
The Self

The role of egocentrism in estimating social evaluations of the self

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Chambers ◽  
Nick Epley ◽  
Paul Windschitl
Keyword(s):  
The Self

From Container to Claustrum: Projective Identification in Couples

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Health ◽  
Projective Identification ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intimate Partners ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If

This paper is a contribution to the growing literature on the role of projective identification in understanding couples' dynamics. Projective identification as a defence is well suited to couples, as intimate partners provide an ideal location to deposit unwanted parts of the self. This paper illustrates how projective identification functions differently depending on the psychological health of the couple. It elucidates how healthier couples use projective identification more as a form of communication, whereas disturbed couples are inclined to employ it to invade and control the other, as captured by Meltzer's concept of "intrusive identification". These different uses of projective identification affect couples' capacities to provide what Bion called "containment". In disturbed couples, partners serve as what Meltzer termed "claustrums" whereby projections are not contained, but imprisoned or entombed in the other. Applying the concept of claustrum helps illuminate common feelings these couples express, such as feeling suffocated, stifled, trapped, held hostage, or feeling as if the relationship is killing them. Finally, this paper presents treatment challenges in working with more disturbed couples.

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