Project Team
Kate Mercer, Library & Systems Design Engineering
Jennifer Howcroft, Systems Design Engineering
Project Summary
The incorporation of stakeholder insights and perspectives are important in engineering design. However, providing meaningful student-stakeholder interaction opportunities within engineering design courses is challenging and a clear-research backed model for doing so is lacking in the literature. Additionally, while a few case studies have reported on these activities, none provide the stakeholder perceptions of these experiences. This research is aimed at (1) implementing a student-stakeholder interaction opportunity for students undertaking their capstone design projects, and (2) assessing its merits from the student and stakeholder perspective. The merits were evaluated based on both student and stakeholder perceptions and student integration of stakeholder insights into their capstone design projects. In addition to advancing pedagogical research in this area, student teams participating in this opportunity benefit by building skills in design-focused stakeholder engagement that could improve their capstone project experiences and project outcomes due to incorporation of authentic, lived experience insights.
Questions Investigated
The intended project outcomes with associated research questions are:
- Understand student perceptions of stakeholder interactions.
- What value do students associate with direct stakeholder interactions?
- What are engineering students’ perceptions of these interactions?
- Identify how students integrate stakeholder insights into their capstone design project.
- How did students integrate stakeholder information into capstone projects?
- How did students continue to interact with stakeholders after the Stakeholder Café was complete?
- Identify differences in student perceptions and integration of stakeholder insights at an individual, design group, and departmental level. Differentiators like diversity of teams, gender, problem space, and program will be explored.
- Example: Do students from certain programs place more value on stakeholder interactions than others? Are diverse teams more likely to integrate stakeholder insights?
- Understand stakeholder perceptions of engaging with students.
- How do stakeholders describe their interactions with students?
- Do the stakeholders have recommendations about the experience? What did they like and what would they change?
- What did the stakeholder’s takeaway from the experience?
Findings/Insights
A student-stakeholder interactional model was designed and implemented to support upper-year engineering students during the needs assessment phase of the design process. Key elements of this model include stakeholder recruitment, student design team applications, student-stakeholder matching, preparatory student workshop, and student-stakeholder conversations.
Using this model, 23 capstone teams across four engineering programs at the University of Waterloo connected with 18 diverse biomedical stakeholders. In total, 44 conversations occurred during the Biomedical Stakeholder Café with each capstone team having one to three stakeholder conversations. The stakeholders represented a broad cross section of the health care community including medical doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, pharmacists, disability advocates, paramedics, and people with lived experiences.
Based on initial feedback from event organizers, stakeholders, and students, the event was successful at facilitating professional, meaningful student-stakeholder interactions. Stakeholders described their conversations with students as professional and respectful with students coming prepared with questions and showing a willingness to learn and pivot their design approach. Students have expressed gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the event and an interest in seeing this event occur again in the future. The preparatory workshop prepared students to make the most of the stakeholder interaction opportunity by coaching them on professionalism, setting goals, and preparing questions. This model appears to not only support student connections with local stakeholders but also lifelong learning.
References
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