Collaborative Research: Pivots: Upskilling Automotive Workers for Future Electrical Vehicle Maintenance and Repair through Immersive Experiential Learning

Award ID: 2347196

With the rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) on the road, there will be numerous new job opportunities for EV maintenance and repairs for the next several decades. However, there is a significant shortage of adequately trained automotive technicians in the United States who are well-prepared to maintain and repair EVs. The existing automotive technicians have limited career development opportunities due to the fact that they have full-time jobs and limited time and resources to acquire the knowledge and skills needed for maintaining and repairing EVs. In addition, EV maintenance and repair require professional knowledge from multiple domains, which makes it challenging for existing training methods to create immersive and effective learning experiences for automotive technicians. The broader impacts of this project include the development of a globally competitive EV workforce, broadening the full participation of minorities and underrepresented populations in the EV industry, promoting future EV adoption to achieve global sustainable goals, and enhancing the future designs of EVs through the partnerships between academia, industry, local communities, and public agencies. In this project, an interdisciplinary team of researchers will work with multiple industry and educational partners to explore and test the practical foundations of an experiential learning approach for helping existing automotive technicians upskill their knowledge and skills for future EV technologies. This project will: (1) Understand existing EV training workflow and identify automotive technicians training needs through co-design and survey; (2) Develop a multi-stage experiential learning pipeline for existing automotive technicians; (3) Propose an effective and scalable experiential learning curriculum for automotive technicians to identify and solve real-world EV problems via online learning, hands-on learning, factory visits, and co-op/internship. This project aligns with the NSF ExLENT Program as it seeks to support experiential learning opportunities which range from fundamental theory to hands-on applications of EV diagnosis, maintenance, and repair. These opportunities exist for individuals from diverse professional and educational backgrounds, and seek to increase their interest in, and their access to, career pathways in emerging EV technology fields. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Sharon Bird