Embedding Context in Teaching Engineering Design - Advances in Engineering Education - Summer 2013

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rizky

Understanding the global, societal, environmental, and economic (GSEE) context of a product, process, or system is essential for engineers to design and innovate. Because engineering curricula offer limited opportunities to address this, the work integrates GSEE-oriented product archaeology into a senior design course. The paper presents the instructional framework, describes didactic activities based on experiential learning, and summarizes qualitative results showing that product dissection and GSEE-focused tasks equip students with new tools to analyze contextual, technical, and functional properties.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Product archaeology and GSEE context

Four stages of learning model integration

Archaeological and learning activity mapping

| Ad | vances in engineering edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | summer 2013 embedding Context in Teaching engineering Design XAVER NEUMEYER WEi ChEN Northwestern University Evanston, iL AND ANN F. Mc KENNA Arizona State University Mesa, AZ ABsTrACT Understanding the global, societal, environmental and economic (GSEE) context of a product, process or system is critical to an engineer’s ability to design and innovate. The already packed curricula in engineering programs provide few occasions to offer meaningful experiences to address this issue, and most departments delegate this requirement to an early cornerstone or later capstone design experience as a result, making these courses an ineffective “catch all”. To address this challenge, we utilize the paradigm of product archaeology, to understand the decisions that led to a product’s development. Product archaeology is defined as the process of reconstructing the lifecycle of a product – the customer requirements, design specifications, and manufacturing processes used to create it. By considering products, processes and systems as designed artifacts with a history rooted in their development, we embed GSEE context as a central component in developing design [solutions. in](solutions. in) the current work, students focus primarily on the useful life of products and their design solutions, rather than on product end-of-life issues. Specifically, in our work we have implemented several approaches to integrate contextual thinking related to GSEE dimensions into a senior level engineering design course. Following Kolb’s model of experiential learning and an instructional framework adapted for product archaeology (inclusive of evaluateexplain – prepare - excavate activities) we have restructured the course to embed specific and targeted reflection, dissection, and analysis activities so that student teams effectively address the GSEE factors in their design solutions. This paper provides the theoretical framework of our instructional approach, describes the specific didactic activities we implemented, and summarizes results from our qualitative analysis. Overall, our results suggest that the use of product dissection summer 2013 1 advances in engineering education embedding context in teaching engineering design and GSEE activities is an effective way to equip students with new tools to understand contextual, technical, and functional properties of their design projects. Key Words: Product architecture, design, global and societal INTrODuCTION Embedding global, societal, environmental, and economic aspects (GSEE) into engineering design instruction is a significant challenge to many engineering departments. We address this issue by extending the concept of product archaeology, through embedding questions about GSEE aspects into students’ regular class deliverables, such as product design specifications, detailed design reports, final reports and others. Product archaeology is defined as the process of reconstructing the lifecycle of a product, including the customer requirements, design specifications, and manufacturing processes used to produce it. The concept of product archaeology was first introduced by Ulrich and Pearson [1] as a way to measure the design attributes that drive cost through analysis of the physical products themselves. Our view not only considers the manufacturing cost of a product (i.e., economic issues), but also the global and societal context that influenced its development. it also provides a framework for studying the environmental impact of a product by considering, for example, the energy and material usage throughout the life cycle of the product. When implemented in an engineering classroom, product archaeology allows students to place themselves in the minds of designers during the time a specific product was developed to try to re-create the global and local conditions

FAQs

Why is embedding GSEE context important in engineering design education?

It helps engineers design and innovate by grounding decisions in global, societal, environmental, and economic realities. The paper notes existing curricula rarely provide meaningful experiences for this purpose.

What is product archaeology in the context of this paper?

Product archaeology is the process of reconstructing a product’s lifecycle, including customer requirements, design specifications, and manufacturing processes. It is used to embed GSEE questions into regular design deliverables.

How does the instructional approach integrate learning theory into course activities?

The approach adapts Kolb’s experiential learning model using an archaeological dig structure (preparation, excavation, evaluation, explanation). Students perform targeted reflection, dissection, and analysis to address GSEE factors in design solutions.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rizky