Reflection #3: Learning Gains

    Over the duration of the ten-week civic engagement course, Community Based Engineering Design, I gained lots of knowledge about working with a partner on a project, effective team communication, engaging with the wider community, and was able to enhance my engineering skills. Beyond the technical part of the course, it required a wide range of skills from time management to teamwork. 

    Prior to the beginning of the course, I had limited experience with working with an outside organization, despite community service or volunteering. Our partner on the project, SafeChat Silicon Valley, is a resource for survivors of domestic violence. Domestic violence is a relevant issue in our world and it was important for my team to consider our critical customer while working on our project. Specifically, the confidentiality and safety of the users. While completing the actual work, I learned the importance of considering the influence on external factors, such as the survivors. However, prior to diving into the work, our research on domestic violence, specifically within the Silicon Valley community, was crucial to successfully target our project to reach as many survivors as possible. For example, in our marketing portion we needed to understand our target audience and for our functionality we needed to consider time spent on the website for a quicker user experience. All of these ideas stemmed from research, which we conducted independently on our own time and through interviews with our partner. Another factor that was essential to remember when going through the project was focusing on the customer needs at hand. There was an end goal for the project and it was essential for our team to avoid differing from their needs. The main idea I drew from this was in order to better assist the community and our partner, you need to fully engage and be willing to learn beyond prior knowledge.

    Another key takeaway from the course, I learned in the first few weeks of class, which were more informational. However, there were great guiding questions and points that were helpful while working through our project. One that specifically stood out to me was project management because of its importance in my potential career. There were lots of components to consider while working through a project, one being time management. As a class, we met only once a week, therefore my team and I had to work together and independently in order to complete the project on time. It was helpful to have a team around me providing support along the way, but also keeping me accountable for my work. Additionally, our team always referenced the duration of the project, which is our ten-week course. The Gantt Chart we created in the beginning weeks, helped keep our team on a tentative schedule. Overall, I found the project management portion of the class to be extremely beneficial to my learning and development as I look forward to implementing it into my future work.

    As the world continues to progress technologically, through more advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence or self-driving cars, engineering skills will continue to be essential to society. However, this course taught me beyond the engineering aspect, but rather the practical skills needed to make an engineering project successful.