Evolvement of Engineering Profession as described in Noble and Layton

Layton looks at the balance/compromise/influence between business and professionalism in the formation and evolution of engineering societies in America. He talks about the requirements of becoming a member in the engineering society. Layton writes four different tests: 1) technical creativity, 2) ability to design, 3) being in “responsible charge” of engineering work, and 4) company or industrial affiliation for obtaining full membership in engineering society. These four tests of full membership constitute a definition of the term “engineer”. Layton goes on to discuss the complication and controversy that the tests created on who is and is not eligible for the full membership in engineering society. With this the two dominant engineering societies: America Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) and American Institute of Mining Engineers (AIME) in the 1870s are discussed. The ASCE stood for “ideal of engineering as an independent profession” and the AIME embodied the engineering as “an integral part of business”. With both societies having drawbacks, two additional societies were formed known as the America Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). Both of these societies attempted to combine “the professionalism of the ASCE with the industrial service of the AIME”. These four societies were known as the “founder societies”. However, in the later 19^th and early 20^th century new were formed due to “discontent with the particular balance between business and professionalism of the parent societies”. The newer societies were “shaped by the nature of the field of technology that its members pursued”. Layton then looks at the degree of influence the professionals and businessmen are needed for a successful engineering society and its impact on society policy.

In Noble, engineering is defined as technology and capitalism. He discusses how the money always influence and is always involved in engineering. In addition, Noble writes about how engineering profession changes depending on the need of the society, “…and as the business aspects of engineering changed with the expansion of industrial enterprises, so too did the nature of engineering professionalism”. Furthermore, it was found by Wickenden that most engineers in 1884 to 1924 progressed onto management role and thus “reflected the unprecedented demand for technically trained managers in modern industry”. According to Noble, engineering is “applied science”. Noble quotes observation made by Edwin Layton, “unlike science,”, “technology cannot exist of its own sake”. With only the large corporations having the capital to “practice engineering”, engineers were “compelled to enter the employ of industry”. Therefore the discussion focused on “adapting graduates to industry,” changing the schools to meet the “specifications of industry”, and preparing the engineering graduates for “business leadership”.

As ASCE formed in 1852, the mechanical society struggled to define professional autonomy, standards of ethics and social responsibility within a context of professional practice. Similarly, in 1880, despite the formation of ASME, mechanical engineers had difficulty in defining their profession, as their roles consisted of, “primarily short-trained industrialists”, “corporation executives”, and “shop managers” and “school-trained corporate employees on the other”. As for the electrical and chemical engineers, since they had no traditional cultures to contend with, their professionalism was defined by the “position within the corporate hierarchy” and “scientific training”.

The article by Noble shows that engineering profession evolved based on the needs of the industry. Much of the article discusses on the close relationship/cooperation between industry and educational institutions and that engineers need to be trained to be successful in a large company. As for the Layton, engineering profession has been defined by the requirement of membership, which impact who is and is not included in the engineering society.

Summary of the description of design

After reading two weeks’ articles on the topic of engineering, I come across some different approaches to define what is engineering. As I read more, my uncertainty in understanding the word “engineering” grows. When I read a new article, I keep revisiting articles that I read before and try to find some similarities to help me link the fragment of ideas together. The most unfamiliar word in my understanding of aspect of “engineering” is “design”. Now I want to summarize my understanding related to “design” from the articles of Jonassen et al, Seely, Dorst, and Figueiredo.

The paper written by Jonassen et al. talked mainly about the attributes of workplace problem to address the need of redesigning curricula and experiences that better prepare students for workplace. They did mention a bit about “design problems” by saying that they were the most complex and ill-structured problems, which were usually vaguely defined or had unclear goals with unstated constraints. They said “design problems” had multiple solution paths, solutions and criteria for evaluating solutions.

In Seely’s paper, I simply interpret “design experience” to be problem-solving skills and practical experiences, and “design” to be problem-solving and practice.

I find lots of concepts related to “design” in Dorst’s article, which need to be further digested (especially the underlined phrases). He introduced several people’s approaches to “design”. 1. Simon defined the concept of “well-structured problems” as opposed to “ill-structured problems”, and considered “design” to be the solution to “ill-structured problems”. But in his definition, whether a problem was ill- or well-structured depended on the availability of solution methods, not by the property of the problem itself. 2. Dorst and Cross described “design” as a coevolution of the problem and the solution. 3. Dreyfus and Suchman described “design problems” as situated problems - if the designer thought the situation to be problematic, then the problem was a “design problem”. Meanwhile, the problem-solving steps could be logical, routine, and implicit, without any real choice by the designer. 4. Hatchuel illustrated that “design” was not merely problem solving, but it also contained other processes. 5. Dorst described in his article the term “design” without using “design problem”. He used paradox instead. He illustrated that “design” was the resolution of paradoxes between different aspects in a design situation.

When I revisit Figueiredo’s paper, I find he tried to give an all-sided definition of “design”. He said that the epistemology of “design” was related to “wicked problems” – the problems that were so complex and close interdependence with social and organizational factors that could not be handled by traditional scientific approaches. He stated that the evolution of systems design had been described as incorporating four categories: design as functional analysis, design as problem-solving (Simon’s approach), design as problem-setting, and design as emergent evolutionary learning (Dreyfus and Suchman’s approach).

To this point, the concepts of “design” are still fragments in my mind and need to be integrated. I could just figure out some key words related to “design”: problem-solving, ill-structured problem, vague and unclear. I hope that my understanding of the word “design” will get clearer by reading more materials in following weeks.

Week 7 Readings

I apparently forgot to post this earlier, but here it is nevertheless...

The Layton article intrigued me. It seemed to focus almost if not entirely on engineering societies and their definitions of an engineer with specific regard to membership. Essentially the "lens" that he was using to view the definition of an engineer was that of professional societies.

It seems that membership requirements for professional engineering societies is orthogonal to whether or not an individual is considered an engineer. In particular, the fact that some try so hard to include managers who no longer practice engineeringFor a particular example, Layton continually discusses the fact that some societies tried to allow managerial counterparts into their society (individuals that presumably used to hold an engineering position).

The three chapters by Noble seemed to dance with the notion that engineers were at their heart businessmen. The lens he used was more industrial.

Gieryn's paper was particularly odd. He seemed to seriously struggle with the definition of science. I was perplexed by his difficulty in defining it, and establishing its boundaries.

Science is simple - it's the practice of the scientific method, which we all learned it in middle school if not grade school. For something to be considered scientific knowledge it has to be falsifiable, among other things.

I think the three papers combined start to unveil the actual boundaries and definition of an engineer. In that regard, a good set of readings.

Reflection on Charles Bonwell workshop about active learning strategies

Last week on September 30th a few people from our class (including myself) attended the workshop of Charles Bowell PhD, who is a National guru in active learning. There were about 70-80 people in the room. This workshop was the one of the best workshops I ever saw. The event was from 9am – noon, it is the reason why I was late for the half of the class. But I think it is a good idea to share some thought with the class. The author spoke about pros and cons of active learning strategies, which are an integral part of contemporary higher education.
Before this workshop I had some opinion about active learning strategies. I think the term “active learning” is not always appropriate. As a contrast to “active learning” many scholars called classical lectures as a “passive learning” or “passive listening”. First, I don’t understand how the learning can be “passive”. The method when an instructor asks students to work in groups, including different activities, might be effective enough, but I am against of “attacks” towards the lecture method. My impression is that there is a new paradigm in American higher education, which states that: “the active learning is better than lecture”. This fashionable conception is pushed to be employed by schools and many instructors are resistant to change. A range of researchers is trying to prove that “active learning is more effective”. But on the other hand, my question is: why the lectures are not effective anymore?
During the lecture, there is a direct transformation of information from the professor to the student. The main idea of this process (lecture) is: “do this, as I told you because ……it works”. I am making an analogy between the direct transformation of knowledge during the lecture and the relationship of master-pupil. When the master shows to the pupil how to perform the task, he presents to the pupil his knowledge/information and asks to accept it because the master is more experienced and has an authority.
As a contrast of lectures, working in groups, when the instructor employs the active learning techniques, first, students often asked to “guess” , and to learn through the guessing. It looks like: “I (the teacher) won’t tell you what is the first Newton law , you tell me first, or guess…and after you guess…I finally may explain you how the Newton law works… but better if you read this in the book, because I believe that you will learn better through the readings ……because I am the fan of active learning”. It is chaos.
How about (this usually occurs in “classical lecture”) : explain to students what the Newton law is and be sure they heard you and understood you.If a student wants to learn- he will learn, it does not matter what method is used by the instructor. But if the student does not have motivation to learn, nothing will help, even the “active learning” techniques.
My comments might give the wrong impression that I am against of active learning, but it is not true. I sincerely believe that those techniques (including work in groups and active participation in discussions) are extremely important. But the teaching methods and techniques have to be appropriate to the particular situation. If the class size is fewer than 50 people- the group work might be very effective. But in big class (e.g.150 people) when an instructor has to present fundamental theoretical knowledge (in science), working in groups will create extra noise, distraction and frustrations between students. Students won’t be able to get appropriate feedback from the teacher. In this situation, the lecture is probably the best method to transform knowledge to students. Another important point is - cultural backgrounds of students. In many countries (including my homeland), an instructor is still considered as an authority , it is very disrespectful to interrupt him/her during the lecture with “opinions”. If the student has a question, he should ask the teacher after the class or during the office hours.
During the Charles Bowell’s workshop (he is practicing active learning for years) I did not see this separation between “active” and “passive” learning, his teaching method was a very organized synthesis of both techniques: lecture and group work.

Further, I decided to summarize some material, which was presented in the workshop’s handout.
The major characteristics those are associated with the active learning:
1.Students are involved in more than passive listening;
2.Students are engaged in activities (e.g. reading, discussing, writing);
3.There is less emphasis placed on information transmission and greater emphasis placed on developing student skills;
4.There is greater emphasis placed on the exploration of attitudes and values;
5.Student motivation is increased (especially for adult learners);
6.Students can receive immediate feedback from their instructor;
7.Students are involved in higher order thinking (such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation).
The barriers, which prevent faculty from using active learning strategies:
1.You can not cover as much course content in the time available;
2.Devising active learning strategies takes too much pre-class preparation;
3.Large class sizes prevent implementation of active learning strategies;
4.Most instructor think of themselves as being good lectures;
5.There is a lack of materials or equipment needed to support active learning approaches;
6.Students resist non-lecture approaches;
7.The fact that using active learning strategies involves risk.

I guess it is enough for now, I can write about active learning more and more, but it is time to go to class……(before that I have to wake up kids and to drop them to babysitter)……See all of you in class………

Ask an industrial engineer… they know about people

It seems that engineers would not put a boundary around engineering because to put a boundary around such a non-technical thing is not engineering, and thus is someone else’s job, possibly an industrial engineer’s. Well, at least that was largely an impression I got from professors in my undergraduate experience. Some other engineers would not state such a thing… like the ones in this class. Though, my previous professors would put us in a different category as well.

Looking at the boundary of engineering there is a few things that come to my mind. One is that when engineers are training for a problem set, they are told to state the boundaries. Putting the boundaries around a given problem, limits the scope of the problem. I had read one paper by Hauser-Kastenberg et. al (if you want the link ask and I will send) that was stating that engineering philosophy is rooted in Newtonian/Cartesian scientific model. That to problem solve in a way that creates boundaries and this results in unintended consequences, because important aspects of a problem are not included the boundaries. The authors gave the example of nuclear power. That the method of getting power had been in the scope of the ‘problem’ but what to do with the waste was not.

That engineers often are not looking at the whole space, especially not the social dimension of the space.

Within engineering education, students are often get told they can go off and do many other things with an engineering degree, but when students leave university with little writing and communication skills… really… they cant do much else. They still need to learn the other skills. Though they don’t learn it while in university because of so many other constraints… that I think are often made up by the engineering institutions. Professors will state an engineer NEEDS to know _____, with out it their degree will not be complete.

These boundaries on what professors believe are VERY important because they determine what is in the curriculum in engineering. And thus play a large role in defining what engineering is.

I think I am interested in finding the boundary with in that space. Engineering faculty distinguish themselves by discipline and by area of interests. I remember being told in undergrad… “you want to be interdisciplinary… you can get a minor in material science.” – they just don’t get it.

Who is grading whose papers?

Just for y'alls information, Alice is grading:

• Benjamin
• Hadi
• Diana
• Natalie
• Xin
• Xingyu
• Daniel
• Tatiana
• Lorie
• Elizabeth
• Tamecia

Robin is grading:

• Jeremi
• Oluwatosin
• Nichole
• Nikitha
• Corey
• Mariana
• Julia
• Jeffrey
• Evangelia
• Ruth

George will be constructively commenting on a few essays to give him the experience, and to give those folks another perspective.  Talk with Alice or Robin if you have questions.

Belated guiding questions on Noble and Layton

I'm a bit late on getting you these questions, but here they are in any event in case you haven't gotten to your reading yet.

How do Noble and Layton *together* argue how the engineering profession evolved? What were the major signposts each used? What were the different historical steps? How has engineering as a "profession" evolved over time, as described by each?

Gieryn describes the boundary work that goes into the practice of science and technology, and outlines both the characteristics of boundary work itself and gives appetizers to his later chapters of various boundary work cases (which we won't read here, but I recommend you do read at some point, particularly the one on the NSF/NSSF).  How might the tool of "boundaries" be helpful in thinking through Noble and Layton's histories of the engineering profession?

See you Thursday.  We're beavering away on your essays...