1. E28: Design Notebooks Role Playing Exercise in Gender Equity and Inclusion in Team-based Design Classes

2. Background This role playing exercise came from a real life freshman design class at the University of California at Berkeley. The class consisted of lectures and lab sections. The students learned spatial reasoning, solid modeling and engineering drawings and engineering design. The students were organized into teams of 4-5 students to work on a design project. The students were asked to keep a design journal and make at least one entry every week. The journals are submitted at the end of the semester.

3. Lesson Plan The goal of this role playing exercise is to allow participants to replay the experiences of one of these design teams through sanitized excerpts from their design journals. Two of the journals are available. Find two volunteers (one male, one female) to read from two of the journals progressing from week 1 to week 15. After going through the readings facilitate a discussion with the participants.

4. Characters Rosa, a Latina Freshman student from California’s central valley. Jason, one of 3 male Asian-American Freshman students on the team, all of whom are friends and attended Berkeley High School.

5. Jason Week 2 It’s really great that my friends and I are on the same design team in our first engineering class. The design project will end with a competition for the best design. There is also a girl on our team. None of us know much about her.

6. Rosa Week 2 I’m so excited about going to my first engineering class. I have been assigned to a design team. Everyone seems nice. They all seem to know each other. I’m really looking forward to working with them on this project.

7. Jason Week 5 Our brainstorming session was great. We all had great ideas. Except maybe Rosa. She didn’t seem to quite be on the same page as the rest of us.

8. Rosa Week 5 We held our first brainstorming session yesterday with our design team. I thought I had a lot of great ideas, but sometimes it seemed like my team members weren’t listening to them. I’m going to work hard to develop them better so I can sell them at the next meeting.

9. Jason Week 7 We have to present our design concepts tomorrow. We have to select the best ideas to our TA. We can’t afford to spend time on losing ideas. Fortunately, everyone thinks my concepts are the best. But Rosa keeps wasting our time on distractions.

10. Rosa Week 7 I tried really hard to present my design concepts at the team meeting today, but every time I spoke up my ideas were shot down. Everyone else seems to think Jason’s concept is the best. I think my design will work better but no one will listen to me.

11. Jason Week 10 We are making good progress on our design project. Everyone is working hard on the drawings and the construction. Except Rosa, she attends our meetings but doesn’t seem to say much. I don’t think she deserves to get credit for this course.

12. Rosa Week 10 I am very depressed about working with my design team. I’m tired of being criticized so I just don’t talk anymore. I don’t feel welcome.

13. Jason Week 15 We have to present our project at the competition tomorrow. We still have a huge amount of work to do. We have drawings to finish and we have to get the bugs out of the rubber band spring. I only wish we had more time or more people to help. Rosa is a total loser. She doesn’t even bother to show up to our meetings.

14. Rosa Week 15 I am so depressed. I am so intimidated by my team mates that I can’t show up to meetings any more. Last time I cried walking home. I guess I’ll show up for the presentation but I don’t think I have what it takes to be an engineer. I’m going to change my major or drop out of school.

15. Discussion Questions What went wrong here? What could the TAs have done as an intervention. (Note the class has over 100 students and lab sections are run by the TAs). What do you think the instructor and TAs could do differently in future semesters?

16. What Actually Happened The team did not get all of their deliverables in on time. The instructor worked with the TAs to make sure in future that no team had a single female student. The design journals were turned in every week and returned so that the TAs could intervene if needed. Rosa did graduate and is now working as an engineer, thanks mostly to the support from the Minority Engineering Program.