Week 9 Readings

I think the following statement more or less summarizes the first paper...

"Social scientists tend to see the process of knowledge acquisition as inherently difficult. In contrast, AI people clearly believe that it can be done much more efficiently and look forward to the day when automation will accomplish this goal."

The author is trying to draw a contrasting point here, but I think is failing. Knowledge acquisition, ie learning, can be done much more efficiently. We just have to be able to get systems (not necessarily computers) to "learn." I think AI researchers would agree this is very difficult and it is something that people have been unsuccessfully trying to accomplish for decades.

Just because AI "people" believe that it can be done more efficiently and in an automated fashion doesn't mean they think it is easy by any stretch of the imagination.

The main focus of this paper seems to be "AI researcher's definition of knowledge and their approach to knowledge acquisition doesn't match mine! (and is probably wrong)." Big surprise. The expert systems of the 80's, which this article is based on, are largely considered failures and modern AI researchers are engaged in relatively if not drastically different approaches today. The date on the paper is 2001, but google seems to imply that the actual text is from 1993. That would make more sense to me.

The second paper made me want to get out my buzzword bingo set. Nevertheless it was relatively interesting. I think the design notebook idea is fairly ingrained with engineering, at least the program I experienced, at this point.

The final paper was quite interesting. I particularly enjoyed the section where the author classified statements made in a paper into 5 distinct types. I found this intriguing.

Nevertheless, I was a little squeamish about the belief that the laboratory was merely a system for literary inscription. I think that is an unfair oversimplification. Unquestionably publishing is a large part of research. However, there is a lot more going on and not all of it will be directly published.

The author seems to state almost with pride "By remaining steadfastly obstinate, our anthropological observer resisted the temptation to be convinced by the facts." I'm still not sure what I think about that.

Week 9, Reflection on readings

Svarovsky & Shaffer (2006) argued that the main purpose of learning environment in engineering design courses is to “allow novice professionals (students) to be engaged in realistic, messy and ill-structured problems under the supervision of more experienced mentors (instructors)”. The aim is to help novices learn how to reflect-in-action, answering question “what if”, which can arise as a result of various constraints. Svarovsky & Shaffer described an ethnographic study of Biomedical Engineering design course. The main goal of this study was to “examine two activities: the weekly design meeting and the student design notebook. The purpose was to closely evaluate the best practices in order to better understand why and how these participant structures are so effective”(p.1).
Fortsythe (2001) discusses the nature of knowledge and the idea of artificial intelligence. Opinions of engineers about “what is and what is not knowledge and expertise” were compared to opinions of social scientists. The author argued that between those two categories of professionals there is a big difference in thinking, analyzing , and problem-solving approaches. For example, on the page 52, Fortsythe states that “knowledge engineers seem to conceive of reasoning as a matter of following formal rules. In contrast, social scientists – especially anthropologists – tend to think of it in the terms of meaning and to note that the logic by which people reason may differ according to social and cultural context”. The author noticed that the cultural context can significantly influence on perception and evaluation of knowledge: “many engineers are white and middle class, Western men; most designed “experts” come from the same background. The knowledge in expert systems inevitably reflects the interests and perspectives of these individuals. It is much less likely to represent the interests and perspectives of individuals from other backgrounds in our increasingly diverse society” (p.58).
Latour & Woolgar (1986) described an observation of the science lab by a newcomer anthropologist. The authors discussed the differences in perception of the same environment by scientists and anthropologist. For example, a newcomer anthropologist was surprised that “a vast body of literature emanates from within laboratory. How is it that the costly apparatus, animals chemicals and activities of the bench space combine to produce a written documents, and why are these documents so highly valued by participants” ?(p.48)
After reading Forsythe (2001) and Latour & Woolgar (1986), I thought that these readings completely fit in the constructivist theory, which states that humans generate knowledge and meaning from their previous experiences. The same concept might be recognized differently by people who have a core focus in their education on scientific fundamental knowledge, comparing to people, which education is more orientated to engineering, or for example, social sciences (like anthropology). In short, professionals from different fields might perceive the same task, concept or phenomenon in different ways.

It is time to go to class,
See all of you then………

From Frames to Discussions

Reflecting on this weeks reading brought back to mind a thread from last week's reading. It seems that the epistemic frames discussed in Svarovsky and Schaffer have a connection with the discourses Dorst talks about. Epistemic frames are composed of skills, values, knowledge, identities and an epistemology of some profession (Svarovsky and Schaffer 2006).Discourse is the way people talk about some topic, but also their understanding of the words used in that discussion. Discourses are somewhat resistant to change; in these understandings values and goals are highly entwined. The skills, knowledge, identity, values and so forth contained in an epistemic frame will likely have a good deal of influence about how that person talks about and understands the terms of their discussion--their discourse--about their profession and matters relating to it.

But Dorst suggests that when it comes to design problems, the paradox an engineer has to deal with is balancing the different discourses of the people involved in the design of some project. However if epistemic frames leads to discourses, and particular frames lead to particular discourses (that is the skills, identity, knowledge and so on from epistemic frame lead to particular ways of talking about and understanding the terms of discussion about some topic), then how can epistemic frames prepare engineering students for addressing multiple discourses in their design work?

To meet the paradox Dorst suggests, engineering education could remove some of the values in the epistemic frame so the discourse is more neutral and less value laden. But in removing some of the values in the epistemic frame the discourse becomes dispassionate and harder to maintain; instead of having a distinct discourse to bring to the design project the engineering discourse is easily molded and redirected by other discourses and the end result is that their contribution to the project is diminished.

Another way to meet the paradox might be changing the epistemic frame so its more aligned with epistemic frames in other professions. However, if the epistemic frame is changed so it is closer to one or some of the other discourses typically relevant to design projects (like business/industry) then again the engineering discourse is reduced and realigned with some other discourses, losing some of the insights it might offer if it wasn't reworked in such a fashion.

Or the epistemic frame could be expanded to recognize or include some elements from other discourses to better prepare the engineering student for design problems where they will have to balance the paradoxical demands of different discourses. In this way space is made for other discourses but the insights and understandings from the engineering epistemic frame and its subsequent discourse are not diminished or weakened. This also holds up the paradox and challenge of balancing many discourses without simply removing or normalizing one of the discourses. I know of some research on this topic from an author we've read, David Jonassen. He wrote an article in JEE that dealt with exposing engineering students to multiple theoretical frameworks on ethics to test how this effected their explanation and understanding of ethical problems (Jonassen 2008). Theoretical frameworks are not the same as epistemic frames; the latter is much broader (these theoretical frameworks were further honed in on the topic of ethics in particular). Nevertheless, the general idea is similar. In his research students were exposed to multiple frameworks, and here I'm suggesting elements from multiple epistemic frames be part of an engineers education. Of course, the totality of another epistemic frame cannot be subsumed into the engineering epistemic frame without drastically transforming it; but recognition and perhaps moderate incorporation of elements of another epistemic frame would be useful for dealing with design problems an engineer may encounter later on, if we accept the way Dorst suggests design problems are responded to.

--Corey

Guiding questions for week 9: outsiders and engineering

A couple of fairly simple but still important guiding questions for the readings this week:

1. In each article, who are the "outsiders" and who are the "insiders?"  Think about the actors, as well as the authors and the audiences.
2. In each article, what do the "outsiders" tell us about?  Think about the actors, tools, ideas, boundaries...
3. What does the collection of these articles tell us about "engineering?"

See you on Thursday.  Robin will be waving to us from Australia.  :-)

Becoming an Engineering Education Researcher: Intersections, extensions and lessons learned among three researchers stories

http://www.ce.umn.edu/~smith/docs/Adams-Fleming-Smith-Becoming_an_engineering_education_researcher-ICREE2007.pdf

This article tells three very different and very interesting stories about becoming an engineering education researcher (EER).
It contains three narrative stories about doing something not well understood or accepted but very rewarding, a pioneer in a new field as it were. Pioneers are said to be on exciting, rejected, surprise laden, risk filled journeys and live sometimes short but often quite fulfilled lives. One of the best stories I have ever read is Endurance : Shackleton's Incredible Voyage Alfred Lansing (Preface). It is a narrative. 

Narratives are defined in the article by referring to Bruner (1991) as
-taking place over some sense of time
-dealing with particular events
-having characters that have beliefs, values, desires, theories...
-being interpretted personally and publically
-about something unusual
-providing information on the reality of the narrative
-generic as to be classified as to genre
-making a claim about how to act
-providing meaning to the reader through sharing the discourse
-become part of a shared body of knowledge

I believe narratives are among the most powerful influencers in our lives and i can recall narratives ( stories) told by my uncles, father and mother as if they were talking to me at this moment.
After reading this article I feel closer to Karl Smith and Robin Adams because they have shared their life stories with me.

 I am interested in learning and sharing our EER stories. If anyone else is interested let's talk.
dan

A few thoughts on what is engineering

In response to the posting “What is engineering? Updated from 87 to 118 words”, I felt just as Xin Chin that engineering has much broader definition than just “people working as engineers”. I personally do not connect engineering only with “people”. Engineering is for the improvement and quality of life for the human kind but in its process involves not only the professional knowledge, skills, and practical experience to solve problems but include foundations as scientific theories, technologies, systems to create, operate, or destroy physical artifacts or change human conditions.

The U.S. Department of Labor describes engineering as the application of “the theory and principals of science and mathematics to research and develop economical solutions to technical problems…the link between perceived social needs and commercial applications” (US Department of Labor, and Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007). As Shepard , Macatangay, Colby, and Sullivan argue in their book “Educating Engineers: Designing for the future of the field” the outcome is often fabrication specifications, the creation and production of a physical artifact, changed personal or public knowledge, new technologies, or a changed state of the human condition.

ABET describes engineering as “a decision-making process (often iterative), in which the basic sciences and mathematics and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective” (ABET, 2007,p.2).

We can see the above definitions are very similar, as the one that follows and I found most comfortable to share. It is cited from Bordogna, 1992 and belongs to a former official of the National Science Foundation who observed that, “In essence, engineering is the process of integrating knowledge and technology to synthesize new products, systems, and services of high quality, with respect for [for example] environmental fragility”.

Considering we all have different or similar opinions when comes to define things, I don’t want my posting to sound as giving descriptions of what is engineering according to respectful institutions or authors popular in the field of engineering publications. In opposite, I hope these ideas invite for exercising critical thinking and help for making more precise definitions of our own. With these included my only intend was to point out that engineering is much more complex process than just the people who practice or don’t practice the profession.

A different approach to discussion than arguement; DeBono and six hat thinking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3ew6h5nHcc

Listening for three minutes may change the way we work together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjVxSk1MqO4&feature=related

A brief explanation of the six hat thinking system.