They Can Dig It
Adapting archaeology lessons helps develop students’ design skills.
By Deborah Moore-Russo and Kemper Lewis
Imagine the educational value students would have gained from sitting in a room with Steve Jobs as the design of the Apple computer was conceived, watching as Elon Musk conceptualized the advanced spacecraft of SpaceX, or interviewing Dean Kamen about the development process of the first Segway. Re-creating such immersive experiences, in surrogate form, is the focus of product archaeology, in which the life cycles of products — the customer requirements, design specifications, and manufacturing processes used to produce them — are examined to understand the decisions that led to their development.
Archaeology is at the intersection of science and the humanities. Like engineering, it uses practical observations and scientific experimentation to scrutinize, experiment, and draw conclusions. The imagery typically associated with archaeology is of scientists in the field, using excavation tools to dig in the dirt hoping to recover and analyze artifacts that help them understand the sociocultural history (i.e., the beliefs, practices, technological capabilities) of a location’s earlier inhabitants. Although archaeologists use a variety of tools and methods in their work, their general approach involves four phases: preparation, excavation, evaluation, and explanation.
We leverage a similar four-phase approach in engineering education to consider consumer products as artifacts. Students determine and consider the time period and market conditions when the product was developed (preparation) before dissecting it (excavation). Once the product is dissected, students conduct material tests, look for signs of specific manufacturing processes, and identify how components interact (evaluation). With information, students then identify which technical, global, societal, economic, and environmental factors likely influenced the final product design, developing powerful insights that better inform their future engineering decisions (explanation).
A wide array of product archaeology teaching materials has been developed and deployed across a number of engineering departments in partner universities, including Arizona State, Bucknell, Penn State, Northwestern, and Virginia Tech. One implementation, developed at the University at Buffalo – SUNY capitalizes on the fact that students are tethered to online social networking sites. Weekly competitive “digs” are held on the course’s Facebook page for student groups to guess what product is being described. Clues that describe a technical, global, societal, economic, or environmental element of the product are posted, one a day until the product is correctly identified.
These digs simulate the archaeological process, where artifacts are found and then archaeologists try to determine what the product was as well as why, how, and when it was developed and used. The first group to identify the product earns bonus points and bragging rights for the week. However, groups are given only one guess per product. So they have to weigh how confident their guess is against how willing they are to wait for more clues before another group beats them. For instance, consider this series of nine product clues: 1. Bearing; 2. Motor; 3. Designed first in Asia; 4. Uses the power equivalent to a regular light bulb; 5. O-ring; 6. Wheel; 7. Original design was developed for the disabled; 8. Brake spring; 9. Earliest evidence of this is from the 11th century.
Along the way, 14 groups incorrectly guessed products such as a typewriter, clock tower, water wheel, electric scooter, automatic door, and artificial satellite. Have your own guess? The answer is at the end of this article.*
Collectively, implementation at all participating universities has made a significant impact on students’ skills and knowledge related to ABET-required Outcome h and has increased student perception across a number of skill and knowledge areas critical to the next generation of engineers. Shared teaching and assessment materials are available at productarchaeology.org. *[Answer: Electric Spinning Wheel]
Deborah Moore-Russo is an associate professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction in the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo – SUNY, where Kemper Lewis is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. This is excerpted from “Incorporating a Product Archaeology Paradigm Across the Mechanical Engineering Curriculum” in the Summer, 2013 Advances in Engineering Education. Additional authors of the original article were Phillip Cormier, a doctoral student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University at Buffalo – SUNY, and Erich Devendorf, a research engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate.
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