Engineering Education Research

Entrepreneurial-Minded Learning

1) Human-Centered Design Mindset

With a background in human factors and industry experience, I aim to instill a human-centered design mindset in students. Understanding human factors is crucial for product managers and successful entrepreneurs, so I developed methods to cultivate this mindset in students. Recognizing that a mindset shift requires more than a term project or one-time activity, I designed an ongoing activity in my human factors course called the "Design Hall of Shame." This activity incorporates habit formation elements—motivation, action, feedback, and reward—to develop a human-centered design mindset. The effectiveness and learning outcomes were measured against curiosity, connection, and creating value. The ASEE paper and the pedagogy are accessible below. 

Hall of Shame Habit Formation Elements

2) Agility and Resiliency In Project Management

Systems and design thinking are fundamental aspects of the Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM). However, there is often a gap between learning these theories in academia and applying them in industry. To address this gap, I experimented with the application of the "Agile methodology" in human factors projects to prepare students for the agile environments prevalent in today's market, which require flexibility in research and design methods. This approach helps students develop agility and resiliency, essential skills for managing dynamic project requirements.

3) Future of Work Systems 

To better prepare engineering management students for contemporary work systems, new modules and projects are developed and introduced in the work analysis and design course for graduate students. The course aims to apply engineering methods to improve work systems and modernize them through emerging technologies such as AI, computer vision, sensors, exoskeleton suits, and virtual and augmented reality. Using the entrepreneurial-minded learning framework, the course trains students in innovative thinking, enhances their curiosity about emerging technologies, and connects engineering and managerial topics to address future work systems with a value creation mindset. A notable addition is the "Future of Work" module, which encourages students to cultivate curiosity, foster connections, and practice value creation by engaging in business decision-making and generating value-added strategy proposals for organizations. he effectiveness and outcomes are being measured, and the module will extend to include sustainability topics in adopting future work technologies in work systems and their impacts on organizations.

4) Integrating Engineering Management with Sustainability  

Sustainability engineering has received more attention in recent years in the industry; however, there is a gap in effective pedagogical practices and their application in academia. The future of work research project in the work analysis and design course was the initial module to be integrated with sustainability topics and requirements. Students learned the adoption requirements for incorporating new technologies in work systems and conducted studies on organizational strategies for monitoring CO2 and system efficiency before and after adopting new technologies on a large scale.

The Engineering for One Planet (EOP) [1] framework was adopted to target senior undergraduate and graduate level learnig objectives from Bloom's Taxonomy [2]. The primary Sustainability Goals from the 17 United National Sustainable Develpment Goals (SDG) [3] are :