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As global engineering education projects and programs are initiated, too often social outcomes and long-term impacts are assumed to be positive. This is particularly true for sustainable development projects, which often have an inherent assumption of positive transformation through engineering solutions. We argue that a focus on technical deliverables absent prioritization of how and with whom our partnerships happen is less likely to actually lead to our desired social outcomes and longer-term impacts. We draw from the fields of community-based global learning, global development, and program evaluation to provide tools and insights for university-based engineering teams and off-campus partners to improve their long-term outcomes and impact. In particular, we draw on the fair-trade-learning (FTL) framework and core principles. We suggest adaptations to the FTL framework for engineering education, namely (i) broadening the definition of "community" to explicitly incorporate multiple types of off-campus partners, including for-profit enterprises; and (ii) more clearly distinguishing between outputs (e.g. deliverables), outcomes, and longer-term social impacts. Our analysis suggests integration of the FTL core principles of partner/community voice and direction and dual purposes increases the likelihood of achieving the desired social impact.

Many of today's engineering students are seeking international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary educational opportunities that involve acquiring real-world project experiences while working toward making a difference in communities. Even as university teaching and learning is tied to terms and learning modules and therefore has certain constraints, educational programming should be balanced with lasting contributions to long-term goals of the partners and communities with which they interact. To achieve these goals, Oregon State University's humanitarian engineering program offered a two-part faculty-led study abroad course focusing on technologies and policies to meet household energy needs in rural Guatemala. During a 1-credit background course, a triad of stakeholders worked together to identify and formulate research questions for student-led team projects. These projects supported current and long-term objectives of the partnering researchers, U.S.- and Guatemala-based NGOs, local entrepreneurs, and communities in Guatemala. The research questions were then investigated during a 3-credit summer field course that followed. For the NGO and OSU researchers, these goals included gathering systematic data regarding user perceptions and adoption of the technologies for donor reporting requirements, measuring performance, facilitating co-development of user-driven designs, evaluating new usability protocols, and developing new sensor-based monitoring tools to quantify impact of cooking technologies. For the local manufacturing partner EcoComal, the primary goals involved improving workflow processes, optimizing stove performance, and contributing to manufacturing cookstoves. Communities were also supported through income-generating opportunities and subsidized cookstove distribution. Results showed that through this model both praxis and knowledge were advanced, partner projects and missions were supported, new technologies were commercialized, and data collected contributed to support donor financing and publications. Lessons learned point to the value of long-term partnerships outside of the course itself, the need for attention to fair trade learning and communication, and preparing for flexibility in the field when executing the projects.

Technology adoption in low-income regions is among the key challenges facing international development projects. Nearly 40% of the world's population relies on open fires and rudimentary cooking devices exacerbating health outcomes, deforestation, and climatic impacts of inefficient biomass burning. Clean technology alternatives such as clean cookstoves are among the most challenging technologies to approach their target goals through sustainable adoption due to a lack of systematic market-driven design for adoption. Thus, a method is needed to provide insight regarding how target customers evaluate and perceive causes for adopting a clean technology. The holistic approach of this study captures technology adoption through lenses of social networks, individual and society scale beliefs, and rational decision-making behavior. Based on the data collected in the Apac region in Northern Uganda, an agent-based model is developed to simulate emerging adoption behavior in a community. Then, four different scenarios investigate how adoption patterns change due to the potential changes in technology or intervention strategy. These scenarios include influence of stove malfunctions, price elasticity, information campaigns, and strength of a social network. Results suggest that higher adoption rates are achievable if designed technologies are more durable, information campaigns provide realistic expectations for users, policymakers, and education programs work toward women's empowerment, and communal social ties are recognized for influence maximization. The application of this study provides insight for technology designers, project implementers, and policymakers to update their practices for achieving sustainable and to the scale clean technology adoption rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clean technologies aim to address climatic, environmental, and health concerns associated with their conventional counterparts. However, such technologies achieve these goals only if they are adopted by users and effectively replace conventional practices. Despite the important role that users play to accomplish these goals by making decisions whether to adopt such clean alternatives or not, currently, there is no systematic framework for quantitative integration of the behavioral motivations of users during the design process for these technologies. In this study, the theory of planned behavior (TPB) is integrated with usage-context-based design to provide a holistic approach for predicting the market share of clean versus conventional product alternatives based on users' personal beliefs, social norms, and perception of behavioral control. Based on the mathematical linkage of the model components, technology design attributes can then be adjusted, resulting in the design of products that are more in line with users' behavioral intentions, which can lead to higher adoption rates. The developed framework is applied in a case study of adoption of improved cookstoves in a community in Northern Uganda. Results indicate that incorporating TPB attributes into utility functions improves the prediction power of the model and that the attributes that users in the subject community prioritize in a clean cookstove are elicited through the TPB. Households' decision-making behavior before and after a trial period suggests that design and marketing strategy should systematically integrate user's behavioral tendencies prior to interventions to improve the outcomes of clean technology implementation projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]