(Re)Constructing the Professional Formation of Engineers: A Human-Centered Model of Communication Design

The context for this study involved the professional formation of engineers at a School of

Biomedical Engineering (BME) at a large, Midwestern university. Participants for this study

included undergraduate students and faculty, staff, and administration (FSA). Semi-structured

interview data was collected and explored participants’ descriptions, accounts, and experiences

related to professional engineering formation in BME. Data collection included 33 total

interviews including 15 FSA and 18 student interviews. The study involved an empirical

examination of discursive practices that invoked, reproduced, and maintained discourses of

professional engineering at the BME school.

Based on insights gained from the empirical examination of discursive practices, a GPT

framework was applied to examine conflicts in professional formation, strategies participants

used to overcome these challenges, and the underlying rationale for these strategies. Specifically, the goal of gaining a broad knowledge base—incorporating expertise across various engineering

and science disciplines—often can come at the expense of realizing specific application and

technical know-how. For many participants, both goals were critical for becoming a professional

biomedical engineer but often times blocked a discourse of professional formation that was

innovative and inclusive. Participants revealed that a standard lecture curriculum influenced this

tension, in many cases for the worse. However, findings suggested that strategies for overcoming

these conflicts were by integrating lecture curricula with more active learning formats (e.g.,

undergraduate research, lab participation). Moreover, findings showed how standard lecture

communication designs shaped and maintained a discourse community more likely to emphasize

understanding engineering as a science and also gaining a broad knowledge base often times at

the expense of realizing specific application and technical know-how.

This study’s analysis offers several theoretical contributions. First, GPT pointed to the deeply

integrated relationship between the ontological and epistemological foundations of biomedical

engineering professional formation. That is, becoming a biomedical engineer meant having

knowledge of several sets of disciplinary expertise while also understanding when and how to

enact this knowledge in practice. Second, professional formation designs for communication

(e.g., lecture designs, active learning designs) presupposed something about the recurrent

practices held within the school and how these recurrent practices constituted professional

ontology and epistemology in ways that were both enabling and problematic, Third, and from a

HCD perspective, exploring designs for communication brought to life the ways participants,

through interactivity, actively designed discourses of professional formation in an attempt to

achieve and meet their epistemological and ontological goals.