An exploratory study of students' empathy toward others following a product archaeology activity

Engineering students enrolled in a second-year use-inspired project course participated in a hands-on, role-playing, team-based product archaeology experience-reconstructing the life cycle of a product. The embedded focus on customer needs, design specifications, and manufacturing processes used to produce the product lent themselves to a post-intervention analysis of student reflections regarding the experience, specifically student understanding and empathy toward both users of the product and interdisciplinary team members. End of semester reflections written or audio recorded by students were used to better understand how the product archaeology project instilled a sense of importance in understanding people and having empathy toward others when designing a solution to an engineering problem. Preliminary findings suggest that the role engineering students played-designer, anthropologist, physicist, environmentalist, or machinist-on their interdisciplinary design team impacted their recognition of people in the process.