Teaching the Global, Economic, Environmental, and Societal Foundations of Engineering Design through Product Archaeology

Lewis Kemper; Deborah Moore-Russo; Omar Ashour; Timothy Simpson; Gül Okudan-Kremer; Xaver Neumeyer; Ann McKenna; Wei Chen

doi:10.18260/1-2--18983

Teaching the Global, Economic, Environmental, and Societal Foundations of Engineering Design through Product ArchaeologyAbstractMany engineering departments often struggle with meeting “the broad education necessary tounderstand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, andsocietal context” (Outcome h) required by ABET [1]. The already packed curricula provide fewopportunities to offer meaningful experiences to address this outcome, and most departmentsrelegate this requirement to an early cornerstone or later capstone design experience as a result,making these courses an ineffective “catch all” for many ABET requirements. Another commonresponse to provide a more global, socially sensitive context is to engage students in studyabroad experiences. While the number of study abroad students historically was increasing,current economic conditions have impacted the ability for students and universities to fund suchexperiences. The challenge is therefore obvious – how to provide opportunities for students toexperience global, social, economic, and environmental issues in engineering?We address these issues in innovative ways using the paradigm of product archaeology, definedas the process of reconstructing the lifecycle of a product – the customer requirements, designspecifications, and manufacturing processes used to produce it – to understand the decisions thatled to its development. By considering products as designed artifacts with a history rooted intheir development, we synthesize concepts from archaeology with advances in cyber-enhancedproduct dissection to implement new educational innovations that integrate global, economic,environmental, and societal concerns into engineering design-related courses using productarchaeology.The concept of product archaeology is not new; it was first introduced by Ulrich and Pearson [2]as a way to measure the design attributes that drive cost through analysis of the physical productsthemselves. Our view is much broader in the sense that product archaeology provides anopportunity to study not only the manufacturing cost (i.e., economic issues) of a product, but alsothe global and societal context that influenced its development. It also provides a context forstudying the environmental impact of a product by considering, for example, the energy andmaterial usage throughout the life cycle of the product. When implemented in an engineeringclassroom, product archaeology allows students to place themselves in the minds of designersduring the time a specific product was developed to try to re-create the global and localconditions that led to its development.In this paper, we present scalable learning materials, strategies, and educational innovations thatwe are implementing to develop students’ understanding of the broader context of engineering.We build upon a product dissection framework in [3] and develop materials that span all fourdissection stages. These stages map to the four primary phases of an archaeological explorationand to the four leaning modes from Kolb [4]: Dissection Stage Archaeology Phase Kolb’s Learning Stage Expose Preparation Reflective observation Inspire Excavation Concrete experience Inquire Evaluation Active experimentation Explore Explanation Abstract conceptualizationWe also present the assessment of our implementation of these materials, including comparingthe outcomes to the national Prototype to Production (P2P) study. These learning materialsprovide representative cross-cultural study experiences to address global, economic,environmental, social issues in developing engineering solutions. Product Archaeology Framework: We build upon a product dissection framework [3], providing scalable educational materials that can be implemented across an engineering curriculum.[1] Engineering Accreditation Commission, 1999, Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs. Baltimore, MD, ABET, http://www.abet.org/eac/eac.htm.[2] Ulrich, K. T. and Pearson, S., 1998, "Assessing the Importance of Design through Product Archaeology," Management Science, 44(3), 352-369.[3] Ogot, M., Kremer, G., Lamancusa, J. and Simpson, T. W., 2008, "Developing a Framework for Disassemble/Analyze/Assemble (DAA) Activities in Engineering Education," Journal of Design Research, 7(2), 120-135.[4] Kolb, D., 1984, Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall.

Teaching the Global, Economic, Environmental, and Societal Foundations of Engineering Design through Product Archaeology

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