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Session Description

Free ticketed event
The value add of engineers trained in routine design continues to be eroded by software and global competition. At the same time, the perceived rigidity of a professional engineering identity hampers efforts to diversify the undergraduate engineering complement. In response to these challenges, the engineering (leadership) community has begun to explore links between individual values, innovative engineering design, and enhanced design team performance. Our work on early engineering design education now focuses on the development of a student’s individual value proposition, design identity, and expanded perspective on professional personae. Our goal is to attract a broader set of students and to enhance their skills and marketability, whether in traditional industry or entrepreneurship.

In this workshop, participants will engage in values-elicitation and -articulation activities that we have used to integrate design thinking and leadership development in the classroom. These activities have been refined based on testing with K-12 students, their teachers, university students, and members of the academy over the past two years. Through a combination of card games, math problems, product dissection, sketching, prototyping, teamwork, presentation, and design activities, participants will explore their own design identity and the ways in which they can facilitate the development of their students’ identities in the classroom.

Speakers

1. Mr. Jason A. Foster P.Eng.

   University of Toronto

   Jason Foster is the Senior Lecturer in Engineering Design within the Division of Engineering Science at the University of Toronto. He has developed eight engineering design courses, spanning the first through fourth years of study and class sizes from 10 to 300 students. A systems design engineer by training, has has been researching the theory, practice, and teaching of engineering design throughout his career. His pedagogical focus is on the praxis of engineering design.

2. Ms. Patricia Kristine Sheridan

   University of Toronto

   Patricia Sheridan is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering at the University of Toronto. She holds a B.A.Sc. and an M.A.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, and is a core member of the Praxis cornerstone design teaching team. Her teaching and course development focus on creating interactive learning activities at the intersection of design, leadership, teamwork, and identity formation. Her research focuses on methods to improve the teaching and learning of team effectiveness in engineering design courses.