Grant Recipients
Jenny Howcroft, Systems Design Engineering
Kate Mercer, Library & Systems Design Engineering
Description
Empathy is the ability to understand other’s perspectives, and is a necessary soft skill for 21st century engineers. Empathy skills benefit students by supporting deeper understanding of users, increased creativity, and ethical skill development. However, empathy-based pedagogy is an underdeveloped area of engineering education research. We aim to contribute to this research area by developing an understanding of (1) instructors’ empathy knowledge, perceptions, and values, and (2) empathy-based pedagogy in engineering and architecture courses. This will be accomplished through a survey within the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo. This survey can provide an overview of empathy perceptions and pedagogy across the faculty and identify differences between departments, genders, course types (e.g., design vs technical), etc. in perceptions of empathy and incorporation of empathy-based pedagogy. This research is part of a larger goal to build a pedagogical framework for engineering-empathy-based education.
References
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