In this chapter so far, we have discussed using active learning modules to teach invention and cases to teach the role of ethics in invention. An obvious next step is to create active learning modules that put ethics at the center of design. Had I been proceeding in logical, hypothetico-deductive fashion, that is exactly what I would have done. Instead, I tried to develop environmental invention modules before I had a set of cases that would show students how different practitioners decided what was meant by sustainablity.
Right after students in the secondary course for gifted students completed their telephone module, we gave them a second module that we hoped would allow them to apply what they had learned about the invention process to an invention of their own choosing. But we wanted to constrain their choice to technologies that might help make the world a better place.
We told them their task was to invent an energy-saving system that employed alternate technologies like solar, wind, waves, and/or bio-mass. We reminded them that they were not expected to solve the world's energy problems, but that any use, however small, of a renewable, non-polluting resource would help in the overall scheme of aiding our global environment. We told them that the technology or system they designed should potentially be marketable, i.e., not rely solely on regulations--ideally, people or corporations should be motivated to buy it both because it made both economic and environmental sense.
We gave them the kind of ‘no emissions’ zone created by Chattanooga as an example. According to William McDonough,
In 1968, Chattanooga's air was declared the worst in America. A councilman back then said the city had a "civic heart attack." So, city government went to local businesses and said, "Don't pollute." Period. Not pollute less, but don't pollute at all. Businesses said okay. Now Chattanooga has a 120 block area planned for zero emissions.
The hope of cities like Chatanooga is that companies will elect to move into these kinds of areas, intending to make a profit when the rules, to use Milton Friedman’s phrase, favor sustainability. We told the students this example was borrowed from William McDonough and referred them to other materials that explained his philosophy. But we left them a lot of room to come up with their own interpretations of what it meant to create a ‘renewable, non-polluting resource’--in part because we hoped building would lead to debates about what technologies were really helpful to the environment. Is more energy used in manufacturing solar cells than they save over their lifetime? We wanted students to consider questions like this.
At this time, the only one of our cases that was even partly done was ASN, so we used Al Rich as an example of an ethical inventor and told the students that one of their options was to consider how to reduce the pollution produced by power plants in the developed world. What about the possibility of energy-independent homes that use utilities only as a back-up? Here Rich’s technology would be part of the kind of overall design suggested by Amory Lovins and others . Could one develop solar power plants, or ones based on wind, or bio-mass? We also gave them the sort of option that led us to develop the SELF case. We told them they could imagine a remote village in the third world, where there was plenty of sun and steady wind but little fuel for cooking or heating, no refrigeration for vaccines or food and water had to be pumped from a deep well. Propane could be trucked into the village over a long distance on roads that were periodically interrupted by guerrillas. The villagers were considering migrating to a forested area they could clear-cut to build a new village; such a move, multiplied by hundreds of such villages, would increase the danger of the greenhouse effect and destroy an important natural habitat--where villagers have left, there is now a virtual desert. The students were challenged to develop technologies that would help the village survive and prosper.
We encouraged them to create scenarios of their own to illustrate the advantages of their technological innovations. We did not yet realize the importance of providing a larger set of such scenarios to illustrate the possibilities.
We tried to scaffold their learning process by providing suggested steps to follow, building off what they had learned on the previous module:
1) Discuss within your group potential project ideas. Any work on this topic done as a group should be recorded in a group invention notebook, following the other guidelines for group entries given in the telephone case.
2) Library research is an essential component of this module. Random searches are inefficient; you need a search plan, a careful division of labor, and it is important to stay in touch with each other as you explore.
3) Decide as a group on the path you wish to explore, what kinds of tests you may want to do, and what materials you will need.
4) Design a model or prototype that will illustrate the feasibility of your idea, as well as its potential benefits. You will not be able to prototype an entire system, but you could construct a working model or an aspect of it, or provide an experimental demonstration of the feasibility of a key component. The point of such a demonstration is to convince skeptical backers that this is not a 'pie-in-the-sky' solution which could never be implemented.
5) Submit a proposal, including a list of materials you plan on purchasing. Your proposal should be similar to the caveat you prepared for the telephone module and must include:
How might your system benefit the local or global environment?
A description of what you plan to build, including preliminary sketches.
A brief description of how you arrived at your idea, including what alternatives you considered.
6) Test your ideas.
Build as much of your model or prototype as you can.
Test aspects of its functioning. Record numerical data in your group notebooks, what conclusions you can derive from each experiment, and what the next experiment ought to be.
7) Use experimental results to illustrate the potential and the limitations of the total system you would like to design. Data from the tests of the prototype should suggest how the system could actually be built or implemented.
8) Marketability: Determine the approximate cost of the total system. Show how you arrived at these costs. Who will use the system? Will likely users be able to afford it?
9) Environmental benefits: Include an analysis of the environmental benefits of your system. For example, if you are building a solar water heater, discuss the anticipated reduction in power demand and acid rain from utilities. Don't forget to include the environmental costs of the technology you are designing! What, for example, is the environmental cost of manufacturing solar cells?
10) Present your system to the rest of the class. Your presentation should include:
(a) The rationale for your system--who will use it? How will it benefit the local or global environment?
(b) A description of your system, with visuals that illustrate it.
(c) A demonstration of a prototype or model that illustrates the potential for your system and its feasibility. The prototype should get the audience excited about the idea--you're looking for that 'wow' effect that Bell got with his early telephone demonstrations. Regarding feasibility, include marketing considerations.
(d) A brief description of how you arrived at your system--what your initial goals were, what steps you went through.
11) A written report that includes:
(a) The rationale for your system
(b) The detailed description, with visuals--similar to what you would put in a patent, focusing on its unique features
(c) Experimental data obtained from your prototype
(d) A narrative of the process you went through, including sketches of intermediate stages and alternatives you considered but decided not to pursue.
12) A brief individual paper in which you analyze and compare your group's processes to those of other groups and to A.C. Rich's processes. Your entry should include:
(a) The goals and steps your group followed, and your sense of how well this process worked. In hindsight, are there times the group should have done something differently?
(b) The goals steps other groups followed, and how they differed from yours.
(c) The goals and steps Al Rich followed, and how they differed from yours.
(d) What lessons did you learn from considering 1-3 above?
(e) What will you do differently next time, when you work with a group on a new invention task?
This was a ridiculously ambitious schedule, considering we only had about ten days to do this module. But it was the only class the students had to focus on, unlike those at the university, and we wanted to see how far they could get. If they made progress, I could try the same module in my university course.
Participants focused almost exclusively on solar. One group came up with a solar speedboat, designed for recreational use; still another came up with a solar hairdryer; another designed a solar airplane. Each included interesting prototypes. For example, the solar speedboat had to make innovative use of a combination of series and parallel circuits. The solar plane could actually fly for a short distance. But these students gave little thought to the global problem of sustainability; instead, what they created were electronic toys. They learned a lot about design, but little about environmental intelligence.
Two groups took the developing world mission seriously. One designed a solar oven, adapting a design we provided them with. Another had a very creative design: a "Solar Tent" which could be floated on a balloon to allow villagers in a rain forest to get power without cutting down trees. This design was probably not practical, but the students put some thought into it, figuring out how to mount the panels at an angle where they would get sunlight even though suspended under a balloon.
Of the 31 participants in this course, which was offered in two three-week segments to half of the students each time, 25 felt that the course exceeded their expectations in almost every area, one believed that the course did not meet her expectations ("I expected to have more instructional time and guidance"), and one did not express an opinion. Representative quotes from students who felt the course met or exceeded their expectations included:
I have gained a greater knowledge and understanding of the process of invention.
This sure met my expectations because we strained to work hard and work together toward one goal.
Yes, [the course] was more than I had expected. It was fun and challenging.
[The course] went beyond my expectations. I did not think I would get nearly this much out of three weeks. I learned more in these three weeks then I learned all year in science class.
The course passed my expectations. It was inspiring -- I plan on doing more in this field.
I found [the course] to be challenging and very interesting. The hands-on learning gave you a personal experience with inventing and learning in general.
I enjoyed this very much. [It was] challenging, which means more exciting. Thanks for doing this.
It's a lot better than filing papers like they make me do when I'm finished or bored at my school.
One student wrote us about six months after the course and indicated that he is still working on the solar airplane. He is now focusing on a solar-powered launch system that will power the plane's battery. At the end of his (unsolicited) letter, he said, "I thoroughly enjoyed the class last summer. It was challenging, yet fun, and I got a lot out of it that has already been applied to school."
At the outset, we hoped this course might help students during the school year. We conducted a one-year follow-up evaluation with a little less than half of the students. The selection process favored those who returned for a different enrichment course in the next season, so we most likely interviewed the students who were most eager and enthusiastic. Only two students reported no effect on their school performance; the other eleven cited improved ability to work in groups and/or increased creativity in problem-solving. Several even mentioned improved building skills.
We also hoped the course might influence students’ future majors and potential career decisions. When asked about this, only four of the students felt the course had any effect on these choices. Three said they were more likely to choose engineering, including one woman who was looking at early entrance college programs for women in engineering. The fourth student said, "During the course I learned that science is not something only super geniuses can do. But I also realized that I don’t want to go into those areas--they just aren’t for me." We count this as a positive result--this student learned that invention and discovery are not mysterious, and that she could make a contribution in this area, but didn’t want to.
One of the other ideas we had really hoped to get across was that invention includes a combination of reflection and experimentation. One student put it best when she said, "You have to reflect on your tinkering and tinker with your reflections. This way, you can see what works, what doesn’t, and how to use experiences to improve your invention." This sounds very like Bell, who would follow up his experiments with hypotheses and ideas for future experiments. He often seemed to tinker more with reflections than devices, perhaps because of his limited resources and expertise.
Students generally saw reflection more as a tool for evaluating results than as a way of evaluating and improving their thinking processes. But one student noted that, "A conscious effort was made to take into account the mistakes made in the telephone project when working on the solar project."
Students certainly reflected on their group processes, and worked together to improve them. For almost half of the students, the most valuable experiences in the course had to do with learning how to work with others. One student said she learned to "COMPROMISE!! You have to let some ideas go for the good of the group." Another student remarked that, "Unless a very specific goal is agreed upon, everyone will work toward their (sic) own specific goals. Splitting up the workload was one of the most difficult things in getting my group to work well."
Students also liked the active component of the modules. One student said that the most valuable experience was "the actual inventing--the chance that we had to actually spend time to create something from our own imagination."
My colleague Larry Richards and I had been playing with environmental ideas in our university Invention and Design course as well. One year, for example, we had the students design an environmentally-friendly house. They learned a lot, but we found we had to give a primer on architecture as well as environmental design--too much! Another year we tried a more open-ended environmental module similar to what I used with the gifted secondary students. Only one group produced what I thought was a viable technology: a system to keep the tires in a car inflated at just the right pressure, which could potentially produce major energy savings if installed in thousands of cars.
About this time, I became involved with the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), created by the Lemelson Foundation at Hampshire College. The inventor Jerry Lemelson wanted to invest money he had earned from patents in a program that would encourage students to become both inventors and innovators. The term innovator is often used to refer to entrepreneurs who take an invention and transform it into a marketable product. Jerry Lemelson not only wanted to student inventions; he also wanted students to create start-up companies that would contribute to the U.S. economy.
The initials ‘NCIIA’ are deliberately similar to NCAA (National College Athletic Association); Greg Prince, the President of Hampshire College, wanted to suggest that this invention alliance was as important for the future of universities and colleges as athletics--radical thought!
From my standpoint, the great thing about this program was that it provided money to purchase equipment for student use. I had been trying to get an equipment budget for my Invention and Design course The NCIIA also emphasized team invention and design, which fit in well with my courses. I attended a conference sponsored by the NCIIA in Washington, D.C. and came away with an idea for modifying the environmental module.
What if I made the end-product a draft of a real patent, something the very best student teams could go forward with? The NCIIA would also fund student teams that intended to continue work beyond a course, provided their goal was a marketable innovation. Therefore, conceivably a student team from my course could get most of the way towards a patent for a new environmentally sustainable technology, then apply for funding to finish the job and take it to market.
At this time, I had only the ASN and an early version of the DesignTex to illustrate the kind of thinking that goes into environmental design--and Al Rich’s design had significant market problems. But I hoped the students would at least make use of McDonough’s framework.
I applied to the NCIIA for a small grant that included equipment costs for both the telephone and environmental modules. I received the funding, and used part of it to take the students to the patent office. Rodger Flagg, President of Express Search, Inc., donated his time and that of his expert staff of patent search specialists; they taught each team how to look for patents similar to their invention idea. Before the trip to the patent office, with help from Rodger’s son Cris, we had students prepare by writing patent abstracts and identifying search catagories. We faxed the abstracts and categories to Rodger’s group, who were ready when the students arrived.
Final projects included:
(1) A system that stored the energy from braking a car in flywheels.
(2) A system that would generate and store energy from the motion of waves.
(3) A method that would substitute recycled tires for carbon in certain kinds of filters.
All of these were potentially patentable, because the student groups had crafted them so as to avoid any conflicts with existing patents. But I wasn’t sure any of these would be marketable; the group designs showed little concern with cost and manufacturing. They also showed too little concern with sustainability. For example, the regenerative braking design would add 400 pounds to the car, reducing fuel efficiency and adding considerably to the cost.
Still, I asked if any students wanted to pursue further funding for their designs. One stepped forward--Jeff Wang, an environmental science major who spearheaded the regenerative braking group. He had done great research and come up with a patentable design, but not a practical one. The course was valuable for him because it enabled him to stop before he went too far down a blind alley.
He had a new idea. He wanted to create a windmill-based system that could be used to regenerate anaerobic soil in places like the Everglades, where the normal organisms in the soil can die from lack of oxygen. This kind of technology is especially appropriate form the standpoint of The Natural Step, which emphasizes that photosynthesis is the main method by which the sun’s energy is stored on Earth. Jeff’s use of portable windmills could also save energy over conventional sources of power, and allow his system to be operated in remote locations.
Jeff recruited another student from the Invention and Design class and they wrote a proposal to the NCIIA. They ended-up receiving one of the first Level III grants, designed for entrepreneurial teams like Jeff’s. He built a prototype of his system, demonstrated it at an NCIIA conference held at the Smithsonian, and as of this writing, is obtaining patent protection and planning to make his first sales. (For a complete description of Jeff’s system, see http://wsrv.clas.virginia.edu/ ~jyw3y/wind/windmill.htm).
I liked the NCIIA goal of having students do projects that had a real impact--not just assignments for school. Students were expert at being students--doing whatever was necessary to get a good grade, and not going above and beyond. I wanted to turn them into creative professionals. It seemed to me my goals and the NCIIA’s coincided, though I thought more about educational benefits and they about commercial.
My new idea was to focus the environmental module on a proposal to the NCIIA. Instead of thinking solely about potential patent conflicts, I wanted the students to being to think like ethical entrepreneurs. I now had the Rohner Textil and SELF cases I could use. I decided to begin with the telephone module, then introduce a series of ethics cases while the students worked on an environmentally-intelligent technology of their own choosing. I even gave them the option of bringing another inventor’s technology to market. There were usually three modules in the course, but I convinced my colleagues to let me cut back to two for this experiment. Maybe we just hadn’t been giving students enough time to really think about new technologies that might transform the world.
You’d think an experienced teacher like me would have known better. In the end, the students put no more work into this module when it was only one of two than when it was one of three. There were some clever ideas, including:
(1) Treating the oil in a tanker with bacteria the moment it begins to spill. This group adapted an existing, patented technology used for fire-fighting on the tankers and proposed mixing bacteria with the water in the event of a spill. Then this bacteria-water mixture could be sprayed onto the oil to promote rapid bioremediation.
(2) Creating an environmentally-friendly doll whose composition and manufacture embodied the principles it was designed to teach.
(3) A complete system for accelerating decomposition in landfills by aerating the soil with oxygenated water and periodically mixing the waste. Their system included a vented grid through which the water seeped, a way of trapping and recycling the water and genetically-engineered bacteria that would accelerate the process.
The last two resulted in proposals I thought were especially worth sending on to the NCIIA. The ‘Enviro-Doll’ had real promise as an educational tool. The group’s research revealed one bio-degradable doll made of tobacco leaves, which they felt provided no clear environmental message. The group’s doll would have a story attached to it, explaining its environmental theme. The Captain Planet action figures have such an ecological story, but they were made of the same plastic as any other action figure, and therefore they did not embody environmental intelligence.
This group researched a number of potential materials for a doll, including Climatex Lifecycle and Foxfiber, and decided on a PET cloth, made from 100% recycled plastic bottles. McDonough would not approve of this decision, but the group was able to locate a PET fabric manufacturer they felt they could work with, and this consideration outweighed others for them.
I was initially a bit skeptical of the landfill proposal. It sounded far too complicated for practical use in landfills with limited budgets. But this was a hard-working group. I had already nixed one of their earlier ideas having to do with streamlining and fins on automobiles, on the grounds that automotive engineers had thoroughly researched this kind of technology, with far greater resources than this group could bring to bear.
So they decided to focus on the problem of landfills. Most suffered from the NIMBY syndrome--no one wanted them in their neighborhood! The students decided their goal was "to turn solid waste into marketable compose, using a cyclic landfill system that increases the decomposition speed." In other words, they wanted to accelerate the process of turning waste into food. So I encouraged the students to continue working with this problem.
We took the usual trip to the patent office and this group identified and ordered a series of patents, which came within a week. Two of the group members approached me in alarm several days later. It turns out that another inventor had patented virtually the same invention about a month earlier.
The group was discouraged. I was elated. This case of re-invention confirmed my notion that a group of undergraduates could create a new, environmentally-friendly technological system. I told the group to get in touch with the inventor and help him market his idea. They did so, and the inventor was enthusiastic about cooperating.
As noted in the beginning of this chapter, one of the best ways of transmitting wisdom is through mentoring and apprenticeship. I thought the students could teach the inventor as well as the inventor teaching the student. But this potential collaboration emerged late in the course, barely in time to submit the proposal.
In the end, neither of these proposals were funded, in part, I think, because despite all the extra time allotted in the course, the two groups still had to rush to complete their proposals by the deadline. A proposal of this sort is not just a document describing an invention--it is itself an intimate part of the invention process, where a group describes its technology in provocative detail and establishes that they know who might need it. I say ‘provocative detail’ because a good proposal leaves the reader convinced the group has a good idea and is qualified to carry it out, but also that there is a great deal to be done--or else why write a proposal? I tried to teach this to students, but they had trouble imagining how an audience that included entrepreneurs and academics would respond. This is not just a question of coming up with the right rhetoric; it is honing and refining the idea and anticipating potential questions. Bell was a successful inventor in part because he wrote a great patent and he provided a powerful narrative of his invention process. Writing is part of invention.
In my next invention and design class, I intend to create more opportunities for students to work with actual inventors, right from the beginning of a module. What I need to determine is whether I can assemble a stable of willing inventors and entrepreneurs--this may take several years, but I think the potential benefits are enormous. So are the pitfalls--many students are not yet ready for this kind of professional relationship. I know I wasn’t at their age. I have to offer this kind of collaboration as an option, only, and find a graceful way for either the inventor or the students to terminate a relationship that is not working.
What can the students provide? They will have all done the telephone module, which means they will know how to keep an invention notebook, write a patent and work as a team. They will still have a great deal to learn about entrepreneurship, but the cases would help with this. Hopefully, the students will supply energy , enthusiasm and a willingness to learn and I can find inventors who will take joy in mentoring. Stay tuned.
I am also trying to develop new tools that will make it easier for students--and inventors--to keep detailed notes on their invention processes. A team of systems engineering students and I are developing a kind of electronic inventor’s notebook. The goal is to distribute at least some of the knowledge and wisdom involved in reflection into a set of tools. Reflection is the hardest skill to teach; it must be learned by doing, and the doing needs to be facilitated and prompted.
As a student or inventor or discoverer writes in her notebook, she can highlight text and tag it. For example, if a piece of text were relevant to a patent, she could use a series of patent tags; if it were relevant to a grant proposal, she could use a series of proposal tags; if relevant to a scientific article, an article tag. Each of these types of tags would have sub-tags associated with it. For example, one might have introduction, methods, results and conclusion tags for a scientific article that would sort text and images into the right section; similarly, for a patent, one might have preferred embodiment and claims tags. This kind of system would allow an inventor or scientist or student (these categories are not mutually exclusive) to record ideas in a continuous stream and have them sorted into a variety of reports. All sketches and ideas would also be categorized in a format that made it easy to search.
The tags would also serve as prompts, or reminders, for the kinds of material the students ought to be recording. For example, we have a set of tags that remind students and practitioners how to document an experiment, including a starting hypothesis, sketch of any apparatus used, brief note on procedures, results and implications. Much of this may be obvious to experienced practitioners, but it is not to students. We are also exploring tags for aspects of the invention process that would not be obvious to practitioners, like reflecting on what they are doing--what kinds of strategies they are following, whether and what sorts of mental models they are using and what kind of impact their invention might have on society and nature.
To make such a system creative, it should be customizable--a scientist or inventor should be able to create his or her own tags and organizational system. But the initial defaults should be useful enough so customizing could come later. The default system should also embody a lot of the best knowledge gained from studying the processes of practitioners.
This page was last edited: Wednesday, July 14, 1999