The purpose of this article is to describe the current state of knowledge and practice in the flipped learning approach in engineering education and to provide guidance for practitioners by critically appraising and summarizing existing research. This article is a qualitative synthesis of quantitative and qualitative research investigating the flipped learning approach in engineering education. Systematic review was adopted as the research methodology and article selection and screening process are described. Articles published between 2000 and May 2015 were reviewed, and 62 articles were included for a detailed analysis and synthesis. The results indicated that flipped learning gained popularity amongst engineering educators after 2012. The review revealed that research in engineering education focused on documenting the design and development process and sharing preliminary findings and student feedback. Future research examining different facets of a flipped learning implementation, framed around sound theoretical frameworks and evaluation methods, is still needed to establish the pedagogy of flipped learning in teaching engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic review of research on the flipped learning method in engineering education

Background
Engineers are increasingly being asked to empathically engage with a broad range of stakeholders. Current efforts to educate empathic engineers, however, are hindered by the lack of a conceptually cohesive understanding of, and language for, applying empathy to engineering. Prior studies have suggested that research informed by long-standing traditions in other fields may provide the rigor, conceptual clarity, and expertise necessary to theoretically ground the education and practice of empathy in technical disciplines.

Purpose
This study examined three research questions: What are current understandings of empathy in engineering and engineering education? How do these understandings compare with conceptions of empathy in social work, a professional discipline that defines empathy as a core skill and orientation of its practitioners? What can engineering educators learn from social work to inform the education of empathic engineers?

Scope/Method
This article presents the findings from a sustained, four-year, interdisciplinary dialogue between engineering education and social work education researchers. This effort included an examination of productive tensions and similarities between the two fields, a critical synthesis of the literature on empathy in each discipline, and the development of a context-appropriate model for empathy in engineering.

Conclusions
We propose a model of empathy in engineering as a teachable and learnable skill, a practice orientation, and a professional way of being. Expanding conceptions of empathy in social work, this model additionally emphasizes mode switching and a commitment to values pluralism.

A Model of Empathy in Engineering as a Core Skill, Practice Orientation, and Professional Way of Being

This two-year qualitative study explored the learning process alongside students’ perceived outcomes within an interdisciplinary project-based learning (PjBL) task. Students from three different undergraduate courses were assigned a project that spanned across all three classes and placed student teams in the roles of client and contractor. Content analysis of reflective journals and focus groups provided a rich view of the learning experience from the student perspective. Findings from Year 1 demonstrated ways in which students had employed soft skills (e.g., communication, collaboration), but also revealed the need for changes to the course design to fully realize the interdisciplinary vision of the project. Findings from Year 2 showed how students negotiated the realistic tensions of the client-contractor relationship while working to develop both soft skills and hard skills (e.g., programming, design, market research). Overall, this study reveals how the interdisciplinary nature of this project supported important aspects of student learning that might not have occurred through a more traditional class project. In addition, it sheds light on the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration among instructors when designing a PjBL experience that pushes students to crosses disciplinary boundaries.

The hard work of soft skills: augmenting the project-based learning experience with interdisciplinary teamwork

Faculty from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the College of Education at the University of Missouri (MU), Columbia, developed a novel course for engineering graduate students emphasizing pedagogy and professional skills. The two-semester course sequence, titled “Preparing Engineering Faculty and Professionals,” includes readings from books that cover several different areas: How People Learn, with focus on the latest findings from cognitive science and their applicability to teaching; The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for discussion of other professional skills; and The World is Flat for discussion of global trends and its effects on professionals. Other components of the course include lectures by guest speakers on topics ranging from how universities work and how to run successful research centers to leadership traits for engineers. A pilot survey of students at the end of the two-course sequence revealed that students had acquired little knowledge about pedagogy and professional skills from other courses in their undergraduate and graduate engineering curriculum; this course addresses such deficits by raising awareness and knowledge of these skills.

Professional Skills in the Engineering Curriculum

Background
Studies have highlighted the importance for engineers of leadership, adaptability to change, and synthesis of multiple perspectives. Yet only a few studies and instruments have explored the operational definitions of these concepts for engineering undergraduates.

Purpose
The goals of this research were to identify observable outcomes that engineering undergraduate students should demonstrate related to leadership, adaptability to change, and synthesis abilities and to create an instrument to assess them.

Design/Method
In the first phase of the study, 12 engineers working in academia and 11 engineers working in industry were interviewed. The transcripts were analyzed using a constant comparative method to determine constructs related to leadership, change, and synthesis. In the second phase of the study, survey items were developed and administered to 753 engineering undergraduate students in the spring of 2011. An exploratory factor analysis determined the common factors across the survey items.

Results
The mixed methods approach resulted in the creation of 45 survey items categorized into four factors: Being an Engineering Leader, Engineer's Impact on Society and Economy, Engineering Leadership, and Development of an Adaptor to Change.

Conclusion
This study operationalized leadership, change, and synthesis within the context of engineering education. This operationalization may help to define learning outcomes and competencies for engineering leadership programs, and may provide faculty with an assessment tool for their students. Students may also use the tool to self-assess their leadership, change, and synthesis abilities.

Creating an instrument to measure leadership, change, and synthesis in engineering undergraduates

Today’s competitive global market and changing work environment demand that engineers possess “soft skills” in addition to technical skills, and they must be able to understand project goals and have the ability to accomplish them with available resources. Currently, engineers learn leadership and management skills while working—learning “soft skills the hard way.” In order to meet the demands of this changing world, engineering programs are challenged to come up with innovative ways to teach classes so that graduates are prepared to take on the challenges twenty-first century engineers face. This article provides a summary of engineering leadership and its relationship to engineering education, problem-based learning, and service-learning pedagogies as they relate to engineering education, and an example of implementing these pedagogies in an engineering course.

https://ascelibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.1061/%28ASCE%291532-6748%282007%297%3A1%2818%29

J. Kent Hsiao

Papers

Engineers Learn “Soft Skills the Hard Way”: Planting a Seed of Leadership in Engineering Classes