Chapter 4: The Interactive Qualifying Project: Selection and Design
Problems to be avoided in IQP selection and design
From the definition of the IQP and description of the types of projects given above it is clear that the boundaries of good IQP design are very broad. Consequently, it is important for students and faculty to know what types of activities are inappropriate for IQPs and likely to result in weak projects. Our past experience indicates that the problems encountered with the IQP frequently result from poor IQP selection and definition at the outset.
Our worst projects are often on inappropriate subjects. Many appear to have been chosen by faculty or students in the pursuit of a special interest that is inappropriate for, or at least poorly suited, to the design of an IQP. That special interest may involve low level assistance with the faculty's research, developing a teaching aid, or service for an agency with which the faculty member or student has a link. The project topics seem frequently to result from the advisor or students asking the wrong question: that is "how can I/we use the IQP to pursue a particular interest" rather than "how can I/we use our interests to develop a well designed project that is truly an IQP and meets its objectives."
The most serious of these past design deficiencies fall into two broad classes: The first and by far the most serious category are problems that result in projects that are simply unworthy of college credit. The projects in this category involve activities that are not normally part of college programs and do not make the kinds of intellectual demands on students that are traditionally expected of college level work. The second broad class of problems consists of those that prevent projects from achieving the special objectives of the IQP that distinguish it from our other degree requirements. Often these projects have a narrow focus and lack the interaction between technology and society that is at the heart of the IQP.
Not College Level Work:
Projects which fail to result in college level work come in a variety of forms but they share a common feature. That hallmark is a focus on a simple intellectually undemanding activity to the virtual exclusion of the reflective processes commonly identified with college study and report writing. Projects of this type are characterized by a failure to demonstrate an understanding of complex social and technical problems or systems, to analyze cause and effect relationships, to evaluate alternatives, to apply basic principles and theories to problem solving, or to develop policy recommendations.
How to Projects: An example of projects in this category that was common in the past was the preparation of "how to" manuals. Many of these manuals were aimed at the homeowner and offered advice on practical arts at the tradesmen level. These manuals typically consisted of uncritical compilations of facts that are available from existing manuals and reference books. It is theoretically possible that the preparation of a manual (particularly on a complex subject) could be an intellectually demanding task that would serve the aims of the IQP. However, in our past experience it rarely has. That failure is no accident. The basic aim in preparing a "how to" manual is, after all, compiling facts. Analysis tends not to be an inherent part of the process and is often avoided.
Data Gathering Projects: Another example of unacceptable projects are those that ostensibly deal with substantive issues, but in fact never progress beyond the data gathering stage. In many of these projects, students conduct surveys and merely tabulate the results without making any attempt at evaluation or drawing conclusions.
Community Service Projects: The most numerous types of projects involving activities that are inappropriate as degree requirements for engineering students are those that are limited to the actual provision of some type of community service, such as unsupervised practice teaching or assisting the handicapped. Projects focused on these activities are but examples of a class of experiential projects in which the principal weakness is that the students have failed to reflect upon their experiences or to place them in a conceptual context.
"Term papers:" The final category of IQPs that are undeserving of college credit are projects whose principal failing is that their scope and objectives were too limited for the team size and/or the quality of the work that went into realizing these objectives was very low, not college level. The objectives may be appropriate for IQPs, and meet the aims of the IQPs as far as they go. These projects would typically have been satisfactory if they had greater scope, or if the quality of the literature review, data gathering and analysis had been adequate. IQP reviewers characterized these projects in the past as "term papers" or even "high school term papers"
It is possible for "how to", practice teaching, or community service projects to incorporate analytical or critical components. For example, teaching could involve curriculum development, accompanied by careful review of literature relating to the subject matter and the population to be taught, analysis of learning outcomes, and of the relation of the teaching experience to learning or development theories. In creating "how to" manuals , the emphasis may be placed on the evaluation of alternate procedures to determine whether they will achieve their designed purposes, or which will be best, cheapest or safest. Nevertheless, our track record with these types of projects has been very discouraging. Faculty should avoid them or approach them very carefully with explicit emphasis on designing in the evaluation and analysis of societal impact. Our desire to give students wide discretion in their choice of IQP should not be used as an excuse to allow them to pursue activities that are unworthy of college credit.
Purely Technical Projects:
The second broad category of problems that have been identified in past reviews are those that, while not leading to work inappropriate for college credit, do prevent projects from achieving the special objectives of the IQP. Of most concern are MQPs masquerading as IQPs. These are projects that are entirely technical in nature. The "societal" aspect exists only in the sense that the work of professional engineers generally impacts society. Our failure to eliminate completely the phenomenon of IQPs that are really MQPs may reflect confusion in the minds of some students and even faculty as to the nature of the interaction that IQPs require. IQPs are, of course, concerned with the interaction between technology and society. Interacting with other people or agencies, working with off-campus social or benevolent institutions, or working with faculty and students outside one's discipline, while desirable, do not in themselves make projects interactive.
In the early days of the Plan when the IQP was in the process of being created, there was substantial disagreement as to how it should be defined and what its precise objectives should be. In the end, it was agreed that both technology on the one hand, and society and human values on the other, should be defined as broadly as possible. Nevertheless, there was universal agreement that the project had to embody a concern for the impact of technology on society in some sense. It could not consist simply of a technical design problem. This meant that projects that focused on, for example, developing and designing an aid for the handicapped could not qualify as IQPs simply because of the benefit for which the device was intended. This prohibition has been respected up to the present. Today, IQPs hardly ever involve simply the design of a device where the project is concerned solely with the engineering design problem in a fashion that would make the project virtually indistinguishable from a mechanical engineering or electrical engineering MQP. However, some IQPs deal with other types of design problems, excluding electromechanical devices but, nevertheless, involving a focus on technical design considerations to the virtual exclusion of any kind of analysis of the societal impact. This is particularly true -- in fact in the past it has been almost universally true of education projects. In this respect, there is no difference between a project which deals with the technical problems of utilizing new computer multimedia technology to provide classroom instruction, and a project which utilizes the latest developments in science and engineering to design a new device for the handicapped? In both cases, the concern is with the application of the new technologies. The project is essentially technological in character.
There is nothing inherently wrong about either type of project as an intellectual exercise appropriate for a college program. However, neither is interactive in the sense of examining the relationship between technology and society. Neither meets the aims of the IQP as originally defined in the early days of the Plan, and neither would help WPI meet ABET's requirement for demonstrating that our students understand "the impact of engineering solutions in a global/societal context."
Education Projects: In general, the education projects have frequently involved applications of technology in the classroom, development of new curricula, and, as noted above, the actual delivery of educational services by our students in the classroom, i.e. practice teaching. An educational project that deals with curricular development could very well be very interactive in nature, if the project delves heavily into issues of the impact of the curricula on the educational process and hence, society, or examines society's educational needs. These kinds of questions do get raised in education projects, but, in the past, all too rarely.
Web Page Design Projects: A number of other types of projects have similar problems. Of particular concern currently are projects on designing Web pages. To be acceptable as IQPs these projects should make appropriate assessment mechanisms a part of their methodology from the beginning. Additionally, surveys or focus groups should be employed to determine the best sorts of information to include, the most effective formats, and the users' special needs before design commences.
The best approach for dealing with all of these types of design projects is to avoid them, -- unless both faculty and students are prepared to consciously incorporate evaluation and analysis of societal impact into the project's objectives from the beginning.
Purely Societal Projects:
At the other end of the society-technology spectrum are projects that resemble humanities sufficiencies or social science MQPs and contain no technical component. Such projects could fulfill some of the aims originally envisaged for the IQP, for example, learning about social values and systems and methods of analysis in the humanities and social sciences, etc. Nevertheless, pure social science or humanities projects clearly fall short of the ideal in that they ignore the society-technology interface. These projects frequently examine a societal or ethical issue that does not involve technology in a central or leading way. In focusing on the aspects of primary concern, technical side issues tend to be ignored. Given the importance of helping students understand the role of technology in our society, it may often be appropriate in these projects to explore fully whatever technical issues do exist, even if this involves a detour from the principal thrust of the project. Moreover, purely societal issues have often received much attention from social scientists. Given the weak social science backgrounds of most of our students and frequently of the faculty advisors, focusing on such issues may not do much more than give the students an opportunity to demonstrate their ignorance.
Maintaining the Balance Between the Technological and Societal Aspects:
In some instances, lack of balance between technical and societal issues results from the narrowing of a project and from broad and general concerns to a specific "researchable" question. The general issues may provide an ideal example of a problem with multiple interactive dimensions. However, creating a manageable project on a topic often requires narrowing the scope to a sub topic that has only technical or societal aspects. There is no fully satisfactory solution to this dilemma. Given the complexity of the general problem and, often, the intensive research in all aspects by experts in each field, failure to narrow the project's scope will lead to little more than a literature review. If the identification of a specific researchable hypothesis results in a project that considers only the technical or only the societal aspects of a multi-dimensional problem, some effort should be made to demonstrate that the authors had considered the broad implications. IQPs should address societal/technological issues and the relationship of the particular project to those issues should be clearly identified.
On the other hand, if the scope of the project remains broad and the result is a literature review, the student should strive to evaluate and integrate the findings of other studies and demonstrate a thorough understanding of the subject. Our past reviewers have noted that a common weakness of many literature reviews is that they are often unoriginal, deriving themes uncritically and directly from two or three major authors. Many students seem to think that a discussion mixed with critical comment will be sufficient. Often, however, the critical comment has no credible foundation and it is merely a repetition of someone else's views. There are no obvious criteria for evaluating the evidence, and conclusions are therefore developed on the basis of subjective impressions. In analyzing social and moral issues students are too often captured by a single perspective and too often accept conventional wisdom uncritically.
Assessing the societal impact of technology obviously comes far less naturally to almost all faculty and students than dealing with the technology itself, or a technical or liberal arts subject falling within their areas of expertise or majors. This is often true, at least to some extent, even for social scientists, as the societal impact of many types of technology have not been systematically addressed by these disciplines and the normal methods of analysis in the social sciences may be inapplicable. However, difficult as it may be to address human value issues and the societal impact of technology, that is what IQPs must do if they are to realize the objectives we have set for them, and if the IQP is to serve effectively as the primary means by which WPI satisfies ABET's concerns for insuring that students understand the societal impact of their professional work.
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