Micah Lande

• South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

This chapter summarizes four interview-based studies exploring the impact of two graduate-level courses in mechanical engineering at Stanford University on the innovative, entrepreneurial, and collaborative capacities of alumni and, in particular, the innovative career pathways of female graduates. The research findings are situated in two framewor...

Design is an essential part of engineering practice and engineering education. As such, our research aims to examine the longer-term impact of engineering design education on graduates’ career paths and their practical utilization of design, post-graduation. We have focused our attention on several decades of alumni from two specific graduate cours...

This article explores the experiences and opinions of young makers and their parents regarding the integration of maker technologies, activities, and spaces into their schools. By utilizing institutional logic theory as an analytical lens, conflicts between the values, goals, and norms of making and schooling were revealed. The findings suggest tha...

This paper describes a methodological approach for designing and preparing case study research on a faculty development program based on the additive innovation cycle. The program was implemented as part of a National Science Foundation-funded “Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments” research project. The enacted intervention...

italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution: This article shares the learning ecosystem of a project-based embedded systems course, identifying course elements that support self-directed learning and how assignments guide students toward becoming adaptive experts. Background: The...

The practice of prototyping is challenging to novice designers as they underutilize insights that prototyping offers to solving design problem. Central to this challenge is the abstract nature of design concepts like idea representation, iteration, and problem solution-space exploration. A unique opportunity from mathematics education presents itse...

We propose a framework, established in the literature on uncertainty and decision-making, that guides the development of effective prototypes that inform the design of products and systems in a way where digital, big-data become central to the design process. Ultimately, we seek to move design thinking to the new domain of digitization of organizat...

This evidence-based practice paper describes a semester-long intervention designed to help faculty realize a mindset of “additive innovation” to promote the sharing, scaling, sustainability, and implementation of pedagogical risk-taking within an engineering curriculum. This intervention has been developed as part of a research project that is fund...

This is a research study that investigates the range of conceptions of prototyping in engineering design courses through exploring the conceptions and implementations from the instructors’ perspective. Prototyping is certainly an activity central to engineering design. The context of prototyping to support engineering education and practice has a r...

Practical ingenuity is demonstrated in engineering design through many ways. Students and practitioners alike create many iterations of prototypes in solving problems and design challenges. While focus is on the end product and/or the process employed along the way, this study combines these interests to better understand the product and process th...

Teaching engineering design can be an inexact art. Textbooks, tools, and methods do exist, but translation of this knowledge to design practice in the classroom setting may flounder for many reasons. There is often no script for the instructor to follow because design itself is a process that is amorphous, iterative, and coevolutionary. In this cha...

Engineers build and create with materials (“stuff”) to fashion new designs. The practice of prototyping in the design process can be challenging for novice designers however. Students learning to become engineers often underutilize prototyping as a step for their design process. The abstract and nebulous nature of what and how to prototype is centr...

Human systems engineering education seeks to infuse principles of applied psychology, cognitive science, human factors, and user-centered design into the engineering curriculum to help students understand the people they are engineering for (e.g., clients) and their own roles as engineers. This paper outlines a conceptual qualitative framework for...

The project described in this paper is part of a cohort of projects funded to revolutionize engineering and computer science departments (National Science Foundation RED initiative). The focus of our work is to take a systems-level perspective regarding how change can be facilitated within an organization. Our efforts aim to empower faculty to be a...

Collaborative hackathons give undergraduate engineering students the opportunity to work in small teams to solve technical design challenges in a severely-constrained time period. These vents approximate project-based learning environments by giving students the opportunity to learn new technical skills through projects of their choosing. Project-b...

Within the last ten years, the Maker Movement has had a significant effect on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. Growing in tandem with the interest in makerspaces, digital fabrication technology, and innovation-oriented curricula has been researchers’ desire to understand the pedagogical value of these efforts. Stra...

This paper is a Work in Progress (WIP). Techniques of engagement and knowledge transfer in the world of engineering education are constantly evolving to meet higher academic expectations of students to solve problems beyond the classroom context. One such evolution is the introduction and utilization of the Maker culture into engineering curricula....

The impact of makerespaces on accreditation.

Background Makers are a growing community of STEM-minded people who bridge technical and non-technical backgrounds to imagine, build and fabricate engineering systems. Some have engineering training, some do not. This paper presents a study to explore the educational pathways of adult Makers and how they intersect with engineering. This research is...

The purpose of this qualitative, exploratory pilot research study is to begin to understand the various prototyping approaches of undergraduate engineering students both in class and out of class. In academic makerspaces, understanding differences in student conceptions across these two contexts can point to an idealized point to integrate students...

Hackathon events are severely time constrained events (24-36 hours consecutively) where engineers dive deeply into solving design challenges. Part of the learning experience is to learn as much as you can in a short amount of time. This work explores how participants learn enough to complete a project during the limited amount of time given about s...

The analysis using the KEEN and the Five Roles frameworks have shown that Makers have many of the skills and traits needed for entrepreneurship. This led to the discussion and possible ideas for the future of making and entrepreneurship. This paper also investigated and discussed the potential benefit each mindset could have from cross pollinating...

Self-regulated learning is a defining trait of the Maker Movement. Projects undertaken by Makers tend to be solutions to problems defined by the Makers themselves. They learn the knowledge and skills necessary as they become relevant in their project design process. This means that as they take on new projects, their adaptive expertise will be cont...

The purpose of this NSF-funded study “Might Young Makers Be the Engineers of the Future?” is to understand Young Makers in K-12 and how their knowledge, skills, and attitudes might prepare them to pursue advanced STEM education and careers. Makers are an emerging community of self-described DIY-enthusiasts, tinkerers and hobbyists. This work seeks...

This research paper explores the factors that contributed to the formation of Maker identity in a population of young adults. These "Young Makers" are learning skills, knowledge, and habits of mind that provide them with plausible pathways to STEM majors and careers. Thus, STEM educators are developing Maker-based curricula and opening makerspaces...

The objective of this paper is to propose guidelines for designing open-ended, hands-on making educational experiences within the context of undergraduate engineering coursework. The aim is to expand understanding of what making-based learning (MBL) in the context of undergraduate engineering design education might be, especially for current Millen...

This study examines the emergence of leadership characteristics within a new organizational community of individuals: the Maker community. The Maker community is a group of individuals that classify themselves as “Makers” and have become innovators and entrepreneurs through the creation of technological gadgets, artistic projects, and other end pro...

Makers are those who use technology to solve problems and invent solutions. The problems are personal in nature to the individual Maker, resulting in passionate, self-directed work towards a solution. With this work, we investigate youth actively participating in the Maker Community and how lifelong learning, or self-direction, is supported by thei...

The project described here is one of six “revolutionizing engineering departments” (RED) grants recently awarded by the National Science Foundation. The RED project at Arizona State University (ASU) focuses on empowering faculty to be agents of change to expand our project-based learning pedagogy throughout our mezzanine engineering fundamental cou...

Participation in the school-based science fair is ubiquitous to the middle-school student. Rising in popularity is the community based, extracurricular Maker Faire for the young tinkerer or maker. With this study, we share perceptions of these 2 canonical STEM events from the perspective of Young Makers. We report on the perceptions of science fair...

In this paper, the skills Makers are learning are categorized according to their fit with existing and proposed ABET standards. Makers, both young and adult alike, learn a variety of skills to create technically sophisticated artifacts of personal interest. Here we argue that making (open ended, student led project based learning) and the Maker Min...

Making is becoming a popular activity for young people to get interested in STEM topics. Maker Faire events and extracurricular making clubs support this engagement. Informal science education, particularly through science and technology centers have been adopting making activities for floor programs and some have created maker spaces. This study e...

The purpose of this NSF-funded study is to understand Young Makers in K-12 and how their knowledge, skills, and attitudes might prepare them to pursue advanced STEM education and careers. Makers are an emerging community of self-described DIY-enthusiasts, tinkerers and hobbyists. Popularized by the quarterly magazine MAKE and annual Maker Faire ev...

Participants in this special session will: 1. Learn about the knowledge, skills, and attitudes possessed by Makers 2. Discuss the similarities and differences between Makers and Engineers 3. Discuss how Makers fit ABET's model for engineering graduates 4. Discuss how Makers fit the Engineer of 2020 model for engineering graduates 5. Leave enlighten...

Makers are those who enjoy creating things and learning new skills, as well as interacting within a connected community1. Through the analysis of Makers as part of a larger study2 a researcher had noticed the emergence of leadership traits within the Maker community. Leadership is a key quality for the engineer of the future3. Proactiveness, confid...

Many qualitative research studies in engineering education use semi-structured interviews as an approach to inquiry. However, traditional semi-structured interviews do not always enable participants to answer questions in deep and meaningful ways. Recent research in engineering education has successfully drawn upon the inquiry method of photo elici...

Broadening Engineering Pathways; Learning from MakersA more inclusive vision of engineering crossed with Making could build future engineeringcapacity as well as raise awareness to the general public of the work and impact such workoffers. Findings from the Center on the Advancement of Engineering Education’s AcademicPathways Study (Atman et al., 2...

This paper explores the usefulness to leverage activities within the growing Maker Movement and outside of the traditional engineering enterprise to better understand what might be possible to bring back to the engineering classroom to improve teaching, learning and the potential impact of hands-on engineering activities. By focusing on specific Ma...

What is Making? What is Engineering? Makers are an emerging community of self-described DIY-enthusiasts, tinkerersand hobbyists. Popularized by the quarterly magazine MAKE and annual Maker Faireevents, this work seeks to examine and better understand the context of their activities,particularly in informal engineering education and tinkering activi...

A Maker is a modern-day tinkerer and hands-on doer and fashioner of stuff. Makers create their inventions wholly out of their imaginations, with the support of a rich collaborative community both online and in person. This paper describes the results from a qualitative study on the characteristics of collaboration in the Maker community. Results in...

This paper illustrates the spaces, tribes and experiences within the Maker community. Using a theoretical framework of learning ecology and communities of practice, we illustrate and provide the context of Making, Maker Faires and Mini-Maker Faires, and Makers' experiences. We contribute a proposed taxonomy by which makerspaces can be categorized....

Engineers participate in the Maker movement. Some Makers do not pursue formal engineering education but both the engineering field and their own vocational advancement could readily benefit. We seek to understand Young Makers in K-12 and how might their knowledge, skills, and attitudes prepare them to pursue advanced STEM education and careers. Fro...

The Innovation Corps for Learning (I-Corps-L) is a pilot initiative from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) to study whether the NSF I-Corps model can help to propagate and scale educational innovations. The NSF I-Corps guides teams based on established strategies for business start-ups,...

The PEER Collaborative National Network is a national peer mentoring network for early career tenure- Track or mid-career tenured faculty who conduct and are primarily evaluated based on their research related to engineering education. This paper discusses the development, logistics, and outcomes of two PEER workshops built around a community of pr...

This paper presents our methods for examining the educational pathways of adult Makers. Through critical incident interviews and artifact elicitation interviews of a segment of Makers collected at Maker Faire events, we seek to develop a theory based on the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and pathways of Makers to inform future innovations in formal...

The purpose of this study is to systematically explore a vein of the Maker ethos: enthusiasm for Making and sharing knowledge and technical artifacts that have been Made. This exploration encompasses surveying how Makers engage in communities of practice and knowledge brokering11. Although their work is done outside of structured engineering educat...

What is a Maker? People from diverse backgrounds contribute to the emerging community of people of DIY-enthusiasts, tinkerers, and hobbyists. Makers embody the desire for innovation and ingenuity of future engineers. MAKE1 magazine and Maker Faire2 events allow others to experience what Makers make, and who they are. What is of particular interest...

The engineering design process is a core piece of engineering education. Students are typically introduced to the process during their first semester of school and are taught many methods to improving their own design process. Several models have been introduced by professional teams, researchers, and students, each having its own particular use an...

Engineers participate in the Maker movement. Some Makers do not pursue formal engineering education but both the engineering field and their own vocational advancement could readily benefit. We seek to understand Makers and how they are inclusive or exclusive of what can be expected from engineers. From the Engineer of 2020 list of characteristics...

Designing for others is a paramount focus of teaching user-centered engineering design. This paper presents a novel engineering design brief presented to undergraduate engineering students to design for extra-terrestrials scheduled to visit their collegiate campus. Through this alien-centered design approach, students are pushed to develop empathy...

In recent years, increasing amount of attention has been paid to the teaching of engineering design. This increase stems from response to calls for reform in the way engineering graduates are trained and many engineering programs reacted by adding more practical courses such as engineering design to their curriculum. Unlike traditional engineering...

Makers are an emerging community of self-described DIY-enthusiasts, tinkerers and hobbyists. Popularized by the quarterly magazine MAKE1 and annual Maker Faire2 events, this work seeks to examine and better understand the context of their activities, particularly in informal engineering education and tinkering activities. Makers embolden characteri...

This paper reports on a study that investigated whether a five-session product dissection intervention that of a common dental floss dispenser effectively improved students' ability to consider economic factors in engineering. The study took place within a first-year introduction to engineering design course at a large southwestern public universit...

When creating novel and creative artifacts, engineering students and professional engineers alike must come up with novel and innovative ways to describe their innovations and inventions. Linguistic analysis can be a useful tool for providing information about engineering project documentation to show characteristics that accompany creation of just...

Teaching first-year students is a balance between introducing technical content and providing perspective for students to forge connections to the context of what engineers do. Making the possible impact of engineers real and visible to introductory students in an authentic manner can be challenging. This paper describes the implementation and impa...

This work investigates affordances of co-working, collaboratory spaces in support of engineering design student design teams. A framework for establishing such spaces is presented adapting a set of design axioms: design is a social activity, preserve ambiguity and all design is redesign. Student reflections are used to illustrate these design princ...

Building on existing knowledge of design and design thinking we apply several other fields of knowledge such as emotion coding, improvisation, ethnography, social psychology, and decision analysis into key metrics we call Design Thinking Metrics (DTM). We applied these metrics to analyze and assess videos of software design teams. We then conducted...

In order to be fully prepared for the engineering workforce, students should tackle design challenges that are both contextually and technically deep. This paper details a curricular innovation in a junior-level, project-based electrical engineering course within the Department of Engineering in Arizona State University's College of Technology and...

Over the last decade, many courses have been created in the hopes of getting engineering students more excited about innovation and entrepreneurship. While most of these courses have aimed to teach students business acumen, we believe that, under the right circumstances, traditional engineering courses can get students excited in these topics as we...

Engineering entrepreneurship demands a broad range of skills and knowledge, extending far beyond technical expertise in an engineering domain. Motivation and proactive behavior, professional skills (e.g., communication, leadership, business), and creativity in problem solving are among the attributes linked with successful entrepreneurship. An exte...