Title
Developing novel practices of somatic learning to enhance empathie perspective-taking for ethical reasoning and engineering design
Abstract
Empathie perspective-taking is central to human-centered, universal, user-centered, and participatory design approaches, as well as ethical reasoning. Designers and users have significant somatic (sensory, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic) knowledge about problems of technology utilization. However, engineering students are not currently taught to access, understand, or value this somatic knowledge in problem-solving processes such as design and ethics. To address this need, we are incorporating a series of developmentally-oriented experiences in enhanced somatosensory awareness adapted from somatics and performing arts into two short courses in the Summer of 2014. Both courses involve assistive technology design projects with community partners of differently-abled clients, but one is located internationally and the other domestically. We will utilize multiple measures of empathie perspective-taking in the context of engineering design and ethical reasoning before and after the courses to assess change. We believe this novel application of practices of somatic learning in the technical field of engineering design and ethical analysis will yield new insights into empathie perspective-taking. This work in progress paper describes our design, application, and testing of these somatosensory awareness practices in both an international and local context. At the conference we will present results from the completed study.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1109/FIE.2014.7044278
FIE
Keywords
Field
DocType
design engineering,educational courses,engineering education,ethical aspects,problem solving,technology management,assistive technology design project,empathic perspective-taking,engineering design,engineering student,ethical reasoning,problem-solving process,short course,somatic learning,technology utilization,assistive technology,empathic design,engineering ethics,perspective-taking,somatic awareness,universal design,ethics,cognition
Kinesthetic learning,Perspective-taking,Participatory design,Work in process,Sociology,Design technology,Knowledge management,Engineering design process,Cognition,Somatics
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0190-5848
0
0.34
References 
Authors
3
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jaycox, H.100.68
Hess, J.L.200.34
Zoltowski, C.B.3187.11
Brightman, A.O.400.34