Engineering education faces a critical demand to cultivate the next generation of scientists and engineers to deal with urgent, severe, and complicated global challenges, known as wicked problems, and intercultural competence is one of the essential multidisciplinary perspectives that engineering students must learn. This study adopted Community Engaged Learning (CEL) and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) to facilitate students’ intercultural competence development through a multi-lateral collaboration between a US based University, a Honduran University, and a Honduran NGO. Both the US and Honduran universities developed community-oriented programs where students engaged in community engagement-related activities. The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) was utilized to assess students’ intercultural competence with the results highlighting the complexity of intercultural growth across multiple offerings of the course. In the first iteration of the course, data set showed that engaging with a different culture was insufficient to generate significant growth. In contrast, the second iteration data set supports that redesigning the course may have contributed to an increase in overall growth related to intercultural competence as measured by the IDI. The result also demonstrates that students could achieve meaningful intercultural growth through virtual exchange within an engineering-focused course.
This paper describes an example of inclusive design, generated by a team of undergraduate students and faculty collaborating with gamers with disabilities, occupational therapists, and assistive technology specialists. The inclusive design is an accessible gaming tray that was developed for players with disabilities to improve the portability, wire management, comfort, safety, and customization of their gaming setup. The design incorporates the Xbox Adaptive Controller, a customizable hub for external input devices such as buttons, joysticks, and other assistive technology to maximize the accessibility and enjoyment of gaming. The design, the Xbox Adaptive Controller Adaptive Play Surface, was developed to be rapidly produced by local maker spaces and tailored for individual users. The iterative design process utilized inclusive design practices which focused on enablement and user experience. Initially, designs were produced in CAD as part of a three-week first-year design course, and over the next two summers, two of the design students continued designing and produced two prototypes: first using resin casting and next laser cutting plywood. The second prototype can be quickly and economically manufactured, is transportable and adaptable to most wheelchairs. Further collaboration is recommended with the players, occupational therapists, case workers, and caregivers to evaluate the design.
Traditional models of international service-learning in engineering often prioritize student development while falling short on long-term, community-centered outcomes. These models rarely scale or sustain impact beyond a single intervention, raising concerns about ethical reciprocity and global relevance. This paper proposes a refined model for community-engaged engineering education that reframes the Ethos Center at the University of Dayton as a catalyst for collaboration leading to scalable community impact and empowerment. The methodology integrates a case analysis of five globally impactful organizations guided by a custom scalability rubric and empowerment theory. Findings reveal that scalable social impact requires more than technical solutions; it demands long-term partnerships, shared leadership, and investment in community capacity. In response, this paper introduces the Ethos Framework: an interdisciplinary, values-driven model supported by circular funding, curricular integration, and impact measurement. By aligning engineering education with co-creation leading to sustainable scalable impact and empowerment, the Framework offers a replicable strategy for institutions seeking to scale not just projects, but justice and global solidarity.
In this paper, we report on students’ self-assessment of the impact of engagement in various Service-Learning (SL) projects, specifically focused on relevant All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) engineering education outcomes. We report on the self-assessment by undergraduate students who had and didn’t have projects. The assessment spans students across multiple years in the Masters of Technology Environmental Engineering (MTEE) program and covers a range of projects, including water quality assessment, water audits in institutions, and water policy formulation. Students who participated in the SL projects were surveyed on the impact of their participation in these projects on the achievement of selected AICTE engineering education outcomes. The results demonstrated that student self-assessment of the achievement of outcomes showed a significant increase in attainment levels, as well as in the number of students attaining higher levels through their participation in SL projects. This was the case for undergraduate students who participated in some SL projects and MTEE graduate students who were required to engage in the various real projects that the institution took on. The data broadly demonstrates that student’s own assessment of the enhancement of their achievement of AICTE learning outcomes affirms the relevance and value of service-learning and project-based learning. This is an additional study that shows the tremendous educational benefits of incorporating SL into engineering curricula.
Particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide (CO), and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are key environmental and health risks. In Peru, biomass cookstoves are used by approximately 70% of rural households. This work describes the development of a low-costsensor system, in collaboration with a stove-certification laboratory in Peru, to measure cookstove emissions. Using an open fire cookstove, emissions were compared using the low-cost sensor system (~$300) and a commercial sensor system ($3000) currently used by the laboratory. Emissions trends for PM2.5 and CO were similar for both sensors. However, absolute values of the measurements were not the same, indicative of the importance of sensor calibration. Only the low-cost system included a CO2 sensor, enabling the ability to estimate the combustion efficiency. The development of low-cost sensors has the potential to increase cookstove testing in developing communities to provide insights on how to reduce emissions.
A smartphone endoscope adapter was developed by students for Health PEI to reduce the impact of the limited access to healthcare in rural communities. The adapter allows doctors to connect their smartphones to endoscopes to record procedures, which can aid practitioners in remote diagnosis, record keeping, and follow-up appointments. This article contains a case study of the eight-month service-learning experience to offer insights from two students and their instructor in the second-year engineering design course. The design process, communication, and iteration are outlined in the case study. Throughout the experience, twelve CAD models and seven physical prototypes were developed, and the students continued to iterate and test the device after the academic year ended, demonstrating their devotion to the project. The involvement of the community partner influenced the quality of the design, the motivation of students, the timeline, and the number of iterations. Also, the students’ desire to positively impact a community by providing access to technology was a motivating factor throughout the project, which aligns with the intentions of a service-learning project. A discussion on the impact of reflection and iteration is offered and recommendations are provided for instructors, students, and community partners to optimize service-learning experiences.
Abstract – In service-learning projects, engineering students work with community partners on projects that reflect situations that professional engineers may face. Grounded in life experiences, the challenges and obstacles vary based on the project and the particular needs of the community partner. This case study presents several barriers that a team of second-year engineering students worked to overcome, to understand the design problem, and to engage in empathetic design. The four students developed an assistive drumming device for a young Indigenous child who has a rare metabolic disorder. Communication barriers arose due to geographic distance, cultural differences, and because there were multiple stakeholders in the chain of communication between the students and the user. To understand more about the metabolic disorder, drumming, and the user’s cultural context, the students performed extensive research, spoke with key knowledge-holders, and attended cultural events. These additional steps contributed to a successful design, and the case study demonstrates how empathetic design encourages students to persist until a solution is found. Lastly, we offer recommendations to help students practice empathetic design.
Reflection has been identified as a key component of service-learning. To add to the body of knowledge on pedagogical reflective practices, this paper examines how reflection was incorporated in an international service-learning project with Global Brigades in rural Honduras through the lens of three students from Atlantic Canada, one of whom engaged in the project through an optional course and two of whom had a co-curricular experience. The reflections incorporated throughout the project differed by group size, organization, structure, timing, setting, and tone. At a high level, combining different methods of reflection and understanding of gray areas in morality and engineering were explored. Recommendations for reflection in service-learning education are offered in preparing for the experience, during the international project, and after the experience to integrate learning with course content. This article utilizes a retrospective lens to examine the ways in which reflection was incorporated in a curricular and co-curricular international service-learning experience and offers insights from three students who participated in the project.
Reflection has been identified as a key component of service-learning. To add to the body of knowledge on pedagogical reflective practices, this paper examines how reflection was incorporated in an international service-learning project with Global Brigades in rural Honduras through the lens of three students from Atlantic Canada, one of whom engaged in the project through an optional course and two of whom had a co-curricular experience. The reflections incorporated throughout the project differed by group size, organization, structure, timing, setting, and tone. At a high level, combining different methods of reflection and understanding of gray areas in morality and engineering were explored. Recommendations for reflection in service-learning education are offered in preparing for the experience, during the international project, and after the experience to integrate learning with course content. This article utilizes a retrospective lens to examine the ways in which reflection was incorporated in a curricular and co-curricular international service-learning experience and offers insights from three students who participated in the project.
Reflection has been identified as a key component of service-learning. To add to the body of knowledge on pedagogical reflective practices, this paper examines how reflection was incorporated in an international service-learning project with Global Brigades in rural Honduras through the lens of three students from Atlantic Canada, one of whom engaged in the project through an optional course and two of whom had a co-curricular experience. The reflections incorporated throughout the project differed by group size, organization, structure, timing, setting, and tone. At a high level, combining different methods of reflection and understanding of gray areas in morality and engineering were explored. Recommendations for reflection in service-learning education are offered in preparing for the experience, during the international project, and after the experience to integrate learning with course content. This article utilizes a retrospective lens to examine the ways in which reflection was incorporated in a curricular and co-curricular international service-learning experience and offers insights from three students who participated in the project.
Participatory design approaches such as co-design are promoted as ways to increase the likelihood that engineered products are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable by incorporating stakeholders into decision-making processes. However, executing collaborative design practices that incorporate the variety of stakeholders represents an enormous challenge. In this paper we examine these realities as experienced by a co-design team comprised of design engineers from a foreign country who are engaged with local stakeholders to develop a product for a community in the Brazilian Amazon. Based on more than a year of ethnographic research, we identify three types of perspectives or institutional logics operating in this setting—engineering, modernization, and traditional—which interact to constrain and enable the co-design process. We find that these logics can undermine co-design because the design team is better equipped to respond to stakeholders who express modernization logics rather than traditional ones. We conclude that while co-design can be truly collaborative in development projects, other times it may lead to the appearance that the design process is collaborative when it may in fact mask the marginalization of certain stakeholder voices.
Those who participate in service-learning/civic engagement (SLCE) in engineering have a common practice of reflecting on partnerships to determine if they were successful and how they might be improved. But what makes a partnership successful? We wanted to learn more about how and why to quantify partnership success to think “beyond the deliverable,” which is often the singular focus of engineering SLCE projects. To this end, we created a rubric for three dimensions of partnership that we selected after consulting engagement partnership literature: transactional, cooperative, and transformational. Using this rubric, we assessed the 55 completed partnerships of the LSU Community Playground Project (LSUCPP) by plotting scores in a 3-axis coordinate system (transactional as the x-axis, cooperative as the y-axis, and transformational as the z-axis) where a placement closer to (3.0, 3.0, 3.0) means a more universally successful partnership. Within each dimension of partnership, we assessed design, people, and process in equal measure to ensure that we paid adequate attention to each of these key aspects of engineering SLCE efforts. Further, part of this assessment involved surveying constituents (community partners, students, and faculty) about the transformational dimension of completed partnerships. Results showed that our partnerships had high transactional (2.4) and cooperative (2.5) mean scores overall, with a lower transformational mean (1.8). We also identified a transactional/cooperative threshold (2.0/2.0) at which the chance of having a transformational partnership went up; overall, our percentage of highly (2.0 or higher) transformational partnerships was 58%, but 70% of our partnerships that reached the threshold were highly transformational. The aspects of transformation most often identified by our survey respondents included building your capacity personally (81%), building lasting connections with colleagues (73%), and building your capacity professionally (70%). We believe that the method of holistic assessment for community-university partnerships presented here can lead to better engaged partnerships and can be adapted by others who wish to improve their SLCE engineering partnerships.
Abstract – International service-learning (ISL) has been attributed to fostering multicultural education outcomes by impacting the understanding of diversity and cultural competence in students. Within engineering education, international service-learning courses are often designed with an emphasis on engineering technical skills development. Despite the expected encounters with cultural differences, learning outcomes addressing these interactions are often an implicit focus. When not addressed, unintended consequences of these encounters can lead to increased prejudice, stereotypes, and other negative behaviors towards outgroup community members in service-learning partnerships. This manuscript presents a systemized literature synthesis of 20 papers from the engineering ISL literature in order to provide researchers and practitioners with a foundational understanding of how cultural differences have been examined or acknowledged in existing ISL work. The literature synthesis revealed the need for 1) further empirical research on encounters with cultural differences in engineering, 2) more qualitative studies exploring student experiences encountering cultural differences, and 3) a theoretical agenda that examines encounters with cultural differences within the context of engineering research and practice. The outcomes of this synthesis provide insights on research and practice that can be used to inform future work for centering encounters with cultural differences in ISL experiences in engineering.
Service learning is an educational model that incorporates instruction, learning, service, and reflection. Many critics have highlighted weaknesses of service learning including its inability to address structural issues, build authentic relationships with communities, assess learning, and meet community goals. Expeditionary learning is a newer learning methodology that includes a focus on social justice, provides more time for building relationships and understanding community goals, and utilizes a portfolio-based assessment approach. Because Expeditionary Learning can address some of the weaknesses of service learning, we present Hybrid Expeditionary Service Learning--a new service-learning model that employs an expeditionary learning design and embeds both the classes and service of the service-learning program within learning expeditions. The paper highlights the rationale, benefits, and mechanics of how the expeditionary learning model reinforces service learning, and also how the service-learning model can reinforce expeditionary learning.
In the aftermath of the January 2010 Haiti Earthquake, the streets of downtown Leogane were paved to mitigate waterborne disease using humanitarian relief funds. After paving, many of the shallow water wells in Leogane dried up. It was believed that the new pavement disrupted groundwater recharge and negatively impacted the wells. Therefore, a project was performed to assess groundwater conditions in a cost-effective manner using a rapid, inexpensive, non-intrusive geophysical approach. The scope of the project included 1) surveying the new pavement system, 2) surveying water wells in Leogane, 3) testing the well water for coliforms, 4) performing geophysical DC resistivity testing to map groundwater depth and 5) developing a groundwater map to assess the impact of the pavement on the water table. As a result of this project, it could not be concluded that the new pavement was a factor in the groundwater fluctuations observed in the water wells in Leogane. It is more likely that some of the drop in the water table was due to the earthquake itself and some of it was caused by seasonal fluctuations in the water table. It was also observed that all the water wells that extract water from shallow (less than 6 m deep) aquifers in Leogane contain coliforms due to their proximity to household latrines, although a second deeper aquifer was identified and found to be coliform-free. With respect to broader impact, this methodology represents a relatively simple approach to mapping groundwater and assessing water quality that can be easily applied to other communities in the developing world to guide their efforts to develop and manage groundwater.
Service-learning (SL), especially in engineering, is a promising way to engage and support local communities, educate students as holistic citizens and professionals, and strengthen the connection between higher education and society. However, within engineering education, SL as a pedagogy has yet to reach its full potential as a transformational pedagogy. To further our understanding of why SL in the context of engineering remains limited, this contribution characterizes: 1) beliefs about engineering implicit in students’ descriptions of their SL experiences, and 2) the ways in which students’ beliefs manifest within the context of SL in engineering. We used an inductive, qualitative approach to analyze focus group and interview data. Our data includes rich, contextual descriptions of SL experiences, which enabled us to generate insight into students’ implicit beliefs about engineering and how they manifest in SL contexts. We found that students predominantly draw on three implicit beliefs about engineering when engaged in SL experiences: 1) Engineering is predominantly technical, 2) Engineering requires deliverables or tangible products, and 3) Engineers are the best problem solvers. These beliefs often manifested problematically, such that they promote university-centered and apolitical practice while reinforcing social hierarchy, leading to community exploitation in support of student development. This study produces empirical evidence that such implicit beliefs are a mechanism that limits the potential of SL by hindering community-centric and justice-oriented practice. However, some students demonstrated their ability to disrupt these beliefs, thereby showing the potential for SL as a pedagogy in engineering to surface implicit and counterproductive beliefs about engineering and achieve SL goals. The beliefs that are salient in SL and the concrete ways in which they manifest for students have implications for how SL is practiced in engineering and the experiences of both students and partner communities. These beliefs impact the extent to which the socio-political elements of the service are addressed, the quality and extent to which the engineering solution is aligned with social justice, and the extent to which SL is university- versus community-centric. The implications of these findings lead to recommendations to, and the need for future research on, how engineering educators might explicitly design SL curricula to identify, address, and dismantle problematic beliefs before they manifest in problematic ways in SL contexts.
Community engagement experiences in STEM fields are typically project-based, which introduces components and considerations not explicitly addressed by models commonly used in community-engaged learning more broadly. This paper is a narrative on how we reflected on current models, developed a new one designed for project-based community engagement experiences, and where we see it being useful into the future. While existing models can be useful for STEM-based project teams, project-based engagement raises further questions and presents additional features, such as the existence of the dual value generators of both the project deliverable and project process. We concentrated on providing a macroscopic view of project-based community engagement to organize aspects of a program and maximize positive features while managing resources. The visual model has been developed to facilitate reflection on program design, development, operation, and assessment. It can facilitate intentional consideration, definition, and organization of stakeholders, project deliverables, project process, resources input, and value produced. We foresee several potential uses for this model as a conceptual framework and practical tool for community engagement experiences and programs.
The intersection of service learning and cultural intelligence has been established a way for engineering students to gain vital formative experience and skills. Project MESA (Making Examinations Safe and Accessible) is a service learning team founded to address the barriers to gynecological screenings in Nicaragua, which are believed to contribute to high cervical cancer incidence. Through this study, the service learning approach of the project is evaluated in its effectiveness in developing cultural intelligence and promoting mastery of the socially engaged design process through team participation. Results showed that students who had greater measures of sentiment for Project MESA displayed higher cultural intelligence. Through a qualitative review, students were also able to identify the major components of socially engaged design. Students who participated in Project MESA also reported that their approach to the engineering design process was enhanced by service learning. Furthermore, students responded to what they felt they were able to gain from participation in the project. A number of themes were identified, the most common of which were prototyping, cultural sensitivity, and partner communications.
