Award Abstract # 2105701
Collaborative Research: IGE: Graduate Education in Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering

Administratively Terminated Award
NSF Org: DGE
Division Of Graduate Education
Recipient: UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL
Initial Amendment Date: June 25, 2021
Latest Amendment Date: May 1, 2025
Award Number: 2105701
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Kathleen Ehm
kehm@nsf.gov
 (703)292-5032
DGE
 Division Of Graduate Education
EDU
 Directorate for STEM Education
Start Date: July 1, 2021
End Date: April 25, 2025 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $362,835.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $362,835.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2021 = $362,835.00
History of Investigator:
  • Kavitha Chandra (Principal Investigator)
    kavitha_chandra@uml.edu
  • Charles Thompson (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Tzuyang Yu (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Susan Thomson Tripathy (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Jennifer Percival (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Massachusetts Lowell
220 PAWTUCKET ST STE 400
LOWELL
MA  US  01854-3573
(978)934-4170
Sponsor Congressional District: 03
Primary Place of Performance: University of Massachusetts Lowell
1 University Ave.
Lowell
MA  US  01854-3643
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
03
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): LTNVSTJ3R6D5
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): NSF Research Traineeship (NRT)
Primary Program Source: 04002122DB NSF Education & Human Resource
Program Reference Code(s): 084Z, 9179, SMET
Program Element Code(s): 199700
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.076

ABSTRACT

The future engineering workforce calls for a skill set that requires disciplinary knowledge and technology to be adapted and applied in solving complex problems with experts from diverse fields. This need also opens opportunities for women and students of color, traditionally underrepresented in engineering, to explore a broader range of research and career pathways that better identify with their interests and values. To support students in acquiring these skills, graduate curricula can benefit from a framework and process for designing educational modules that are accessible to students in different disciplines, that identifies how they contribute to their field, and integrates emerging business needs. This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMD) will pilot a model for co-creation of cross-disciplinary educational content by teams of graduate students, research advisors, instructors, and practitioners from industry. The educational model is prototyped using a case study of cyber-physical systems applicable across a wide range of industries spanning the service, manufacturing, health-care, transportation, automation, and smart-system based environmental monitoring sectors. The project is innovative in its application of evidence-based practices from education research on how the curriculum can be inclusive in engaging and educating a diverse student body by involving graduate students in co-creating technical content.

The project involves two phases. The first phase addresses how graduate students learn by co-creating educational material with faculty and experts from industry. The second phase integrates the modules developed in phase one into courses offered at four different institutions (UML, UMD, University of the District of Columbia, and North Carolina A&T State University) and assesses how students learn and acquire transferable skills from co-created material. Both phases prioritize students? voices in an iterative design and evaluation process through focus groups conducted in the framework of participatory action research. Through the co-creation in phase one, graduate students learn about: (a) Models and methods for integrating disciplinary approaches and avoiding common pitfalls; (b) Social science concepts (viz. intersectionality, microaggressions, and institutionalized racism) connected with underrepresentation of females and minorities in STEM fields, and (c) ways to address these issues through effective communication and practice. The educational modules support experiential learning on a testbed that emulates the stages of product life-cycle management (PLM) undertaken in industry and support the development of skills for transferring of discipline-specific information to stakeholders across the PLM stages ranging from ideation to product verification, validation, and usage. A tool kit will provide the templates and rubrics for participatory educational design and collection of common datasets to assess the projected learning outcomes from implementations by a broader graduate education community.

The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Aoki, E and Tran, B and Norceide, F and Tran, V and Sastry, S and Thompson, C and Chandra, K "Integrating Software and Systems Engineering: A Framework for Human-Centric Design of Augmented Reality Applications" Annual IEEE Systems Conference , 2024 Citation Details
Aoki, E. and Tran, B. and Uhunsere, N. and Tripathy, S.T. and Thompson, C. and Sastry, S. "Multidisciplinary Authoring A Critical Foundation for Augmented Reality Systems in Training and Education" ASEE annual conference exposition , 2023 Citation Details
Aoki, Emi and Tran, Bach and Tran, Vinh and Soth, Kimseng and Thompson, Charles and Tripathy, Susan and Chandra, Kavitha and Sastry, Shivakumar "Representing Augmented Reality Applications in Systems Modeling Language" , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1109/SysCon53073.2023.10131060 Citation Details
Chandra, Kavitha and Lewis, Sumudu and Tripathy, Susan "Engaging Future Engineers through Active Participation in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging." , 2023 https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--43314 Citation Details
Kershaw, Trina and Tripathy, Susan and Liu, Hong and Chandra, Kavitha "Board 384: Setting the Stage for Co-Creation: Using Workshops to Scaffold Interdisciplinary Research, Collaboration, and Community Building" , 2023 https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--43082 Citation Details
Nia, M.F. and Callen, G.E. and An, J. and Chandra, K. and Thompson, C. and Wolkowicz, K. and Denis, M. "Experiential Learning for Interdisciplinary Education on Vestibular System Models" ASEE annual conference exposition , 2023 Citation Details
Smith, A. T. and Aoki, E. and Ghandi, M. and Burek, J. and Thompson, C. and Chandra, K. "Human Balance Models for Engineering Education: An Innovative Graduate Co-Creation Project" ASEE annual conference exposition , 2023 Citation Details

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