Aaron Eng Seng CHIA
Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management,
College of Design and Engineering (CDE)
Chia, A. E. S. (2024). Engaging persons with disabilities through systems engineering projects [Paper presentation]. In Higher Education Conference in Singapore (HECS) 2024, 3 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecs/hecs2024-aeschia/
SUB-THEME
Opportunities from Engaging Communities
KEYWORDS
Engaging communities, systems engineering projects, person with disabilities, social responsibility
CATEGORY
Paper Presentation
INTRODUCTION
Universities have social responsibilities manifested as community engagement, community outreach programmes, civic engagement, and public engagement (Esfijani et al., 2012). Since Generation Z placed greater emphasis on their role in the world and considered it part of their social responsibility to improve it (Ernst & Young, 2023), universities can play a greater role in this. However, in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, there are not many intervention programmes to enhance social responsibility (specifically engaging communities). One example is the ENACT (engage, navigate, anticipate, conduct, and take action) programme by Hwang et al. (2023).
In a systems engineering course taught, students design and build products through a system development life cycle as shown in Figure 1. In each stage, there is a need to engage relevant stakeholders.
This study aims to study the impact of engaging real stakeholders (communities) for engineering projects on students’ learning and thereby also foster social responsibility. The projects of past students (first group) usually did not engage communities. Students carried out literature reviews and assumed themselves to be the stakeholders of the system. Examples of such products include multifunctional baby bottles, safe chopping boards etc. In the second group of students, they were required to engage persons with disabilities (PwD) to design systems to, for example, enable persons living with dementia (PLD) to travel independently, or help the elderly with hearing impairments to work in cafes.
Figure 1. System Development Lifecycle (Source: Eby (2017)
METHODOLOGY
After completion of each group project, students were interviewed on the challenges of the project and possible improvements. A semi-structured interview was employed based on its suitability (Ruslin et al, 2022). One of the students in the group was tasked to record and transcribe the interview for inclusion in their report. As an instructor, the author also observed how well the project was carried out.
FINDINGS
The first group of students found that it was challenging to gather actual requirements since they might not be the users of the products. The requirements were obtained from third parties such as the Internet or themselves. One suggested improvement was to have projects which involved real stakeholders. It was observed by the instructor that students often missed out the needs of the other stakeholders in the system. For example, the requirements of a baby bottle should not focus just on the baby but also the needs of the parents.
In the second group, some students found difficulty in having direct access to PwDs. While SG Enable supports such projects, they were reluctant to give direct access to some types of PwDs (with good reasons). They often served as intermediaries instead. Sometimes the students resorted to finding such stakeholders from their circle of friends. Students also faced difficulties in trying to communicate with some PwDs, for example, communicating with the deaf. Moreover, the challenges faced by the PwDs might not be articulated clearly as their perceptions of their environments were often different. The students also found that the product did not exist in isolation with the user— often other stakeholders need to be consulted—they could provide additional insights to the design of the product. The instructor found that the students produced better outcomes and learnings via such engagements.
CONCLUSIONS
The systems engineering projects with PwDs help students to engage communities. They were able to elicit real needs and foster social responsibility to become better citizens and engineers. They learnt the challenges of engaging certain types of stakeholders and found it meaningful that their projects could benefit such communities. However, it requires more effort on the instructor’s part to find such projects, spend time with external organisations, and help students to engage the communities.
REFERENCES
Ali, M., Mustapha, I., Osman, S., & Hassan, U. (2021). University Social Responsibility: A review of conceptual evolution and its thematic analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 286, 124931. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124931
Eby, K. (2017, June 27) The ultimate guide to understanding and using a system development life cycle, Retrieved from: https://www.smartsheet.com/system-development-life-cycle-guide
Ernst & Young LLP (2023) How can understanding the influence of Gen Z today empower your tomorrow? Retrieved from https://www.ey.com/en_us/consulting/2023-gen-z-study
Esfijani, A., Hussain, F.K., Chang, E. (2012). An approach to university social responsibility ontology development through text analyses, International Conference on Human System Interaction. pp. 1e7. https://doi.org/10.1109/HSI.2012.10
Hwang, Y., Ko, Y., Shim, S. S., Ok, S., Lee, H. (2023), International Journal of STEM Education (2023) 10:11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-023-00402-1
Ruslin, R., Mashuri, S., Sarib, M., Alhabsyi, F. and Syam, H. (2022) Semi-structured Interview: A Methodological Reflection on the Development of a Qualitative Research Instrument, Educational Studies, Vol. 12. 22-29. http://dx.doi.org/10.9790/7388-1201052229.
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