Developing DEIJ Sample Assignments for ENGR 100

Developing DEIJ Sample Assignments for ENGR 100

Grant:
Gilbert Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching
Academic Year:
2021 - 2022 (June 1, 2021 through May 31, 2022)
Funding Requested:
$5,886.80
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
snyderkl
Overview of the Project:
In 2021, the College of Engineering (CoE) developed new guidelines for teaching ENGR 100: Introduction to Engineering. This course is co-taught by engineering and technical communication faculty and focuses on developing communication and professional engineering practices while working on a design-build-test project. It also fulfills the first-year writing requirement for engineering students. A manual for ENGR 100 instructors offers guidelines, recommendations, and sample assignments and outlines four learning outcomes:
• Employ the Engineering Design Process
• Communicate Effectively as an Engineer
• Practice Professional Engineering Values
• Collaboration in Diverse Teams
Engagement with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is included as a subsection in the professional engineering values outcome. The instructor manual offers suggestions for teaching DEI. However, it does not provide sample assignments as it does for the other learning outcomes. Further, while the guide includes case examples to consider justice in engineering design, it does not include assignments that faculty can use to help students apply this topic in their coursework.

Thus, the purpose of this project is to develop a set of sample DEIJ-focused assignments that ENGR 100 faculty can adapt and integrate into their courses. Given that engineering faculty may not have an educational background in DEI content and technical communication faculty may not have experience teaching DEI in a design-build-test course, sample assignments are much needed. These assignments would provide students an expanded view of engineering work, making diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice central to engineering practice. In addition, they would help advance current College-wide DEIJ initiatives.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

This project featured the following four objectives: 

1. Develop 3-5 DEIJ-inspired assignments for use in ENGR 100 courses. 

2. Test these assignments in 2-4 sections of ENGR 100. 

3. Gather feedback and revise the assignments as needed

4. Share assignments with ENGR 100 faculty 

Project Achievements:

All four project objectives were met and some were exceeded. Currently, the DEIJ assignment folder contains seven assignments and one alternative approach to grading. I developed five assignments and the grading scheme; two of my Tech Comm colleagues have also contributed assignments from their courses. I hope that many more faculty will contribute their work as well to build a wide-ranging and useful resource for faculty. For several assignments, I also included supplemental readings that might be incorporated into the assignment or provide background information for students and/or faculty (if needed). A link to the Google Folder is included below. 

Several of assignments were tested in three or more different sections of ENGR 100 and I made some revisions based on student feedback and recommendations from faculty who used them. The primary recommendations (across all assignments) were to make the instructions clearer and to build in longer timelines for project completion. 

Continuation:
The DEIJ assignment Google folder will be available to all ENGR 100 faculty to access or add their own assignments as desired. Hopefully, this folder will be a resource for faculty as they develop new sections of ENGR 100 or revise current sections when needed. The assignments may also be useful beyond ENGR 100, depending on the scope and context of the course.
Dissemination:
In May 2023, I shared the folder shared with ENGR 100 Tech Comm faculty at Brown Bag Talk on Zoom. Several assignments were highlighted during the talk, and faculty were invited into discussion following the presentation. The DEIJ assignment folder was made available to all Tech Comm faculty, who were invited to share the assignment folder with their ENGR 100 co-instructors. Anyone with a link to the folder can gain access.
Advice to your Colleagues:
It was very helpful to talk with other faculty about their sections of ENGR 100 and learn about how they are approaching DEIJ topics in their course. I received good early feedback from several colleagues that helped me improve the framing language for some of the assignments. It has been a challenge to constrain this task to just ENGR 100 sections. Other CoE faculty are doing great DEIJ work in their courses, too. Already, we have one assignment in the folder that was not designed for ENGR 100 but could certainly be adapted to meet course requirements.
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