Background Humanitarian engineering (HE) is rapidly emerging in universities and professional workplaces worldwide. In HE, socio‐technical thinking is fundamental as HE projects exist at the intersection of engineering and sustainable community development. However, the literature still lacks an understanding of the key features of socio‐technical thinking. Purpose/Hypothesis The purpose of this article is to investigate the key characteristics that distinguish the socio‐technical thinking of an expert from a novice in the context of HE projects. Design/Method We distributed the Energy Conversion Playground (ECP) design task to students starting their engineering degree (n = 26) and practitioners (n = 16). We iteratively and inductively analyzed the responses to develop a rubric characterizing the key features of expert socio‐technical thinking. We then scored participants' responses and compared them to identify differences between students and practitioners. Results The analysis showed that expert socio‐technical thinkers can provide high‐quality considerations across three domains: technology, people, and broader context. The comparison of the participants' scores showed that both students and practitioners scored highly in the technology domain. In contrast, students scored poorly in the people and broader contexts domains, identifying only simplistic considerations in these non‐technical areas, if at all. Conclusions This study provides novel insights into the development of socio‐technical thinking and further validates the ECP as a trustworthy measure of socio‐technical thinking. Implications for engineering educators and multiple lines of future research are also discussed.

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Qin Zhu is a PhD student in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. His main research interests include global engineering education, engineering ethics, and philosophy of engineering and technology. He received his BS degree in material sciences and engineering and first PhD degree in philosophy of science and technology (engineering ethics) both from Dalian University of Technology (China).

Background Engineers are often expected to span organizational, cultural, stakeholder, geographic, temporal, and other boundaries. Yet, few studies on boundary spanning have appeared in the engineering education literature, suggesting the need for improved theoretical and conceptual foundations to guide empirical studies of boundary spanning in engineering. Purpose To develop a more comprehensive understanding of boundary spanning, this study addresses five research questions: (a) What types of boundaries have been identified as topics of interest? (b) How are boundary spanners and boundary spanning defined? (c) What types of activities and behaviors comprise or have been linked to boundary spanning? (d) What individual competencies and characteristics have been proposed or studied as important for boundary spanning? and (e) What boundary spanning themes are most prominent in studies of engineers and other technical professionals? Scope/Method Using a qualitative systematic review process, we identified and analyzed 72 scholarly papers from multiple disciplines. Multiple reviewers coded each paper using a hybrid deductive‐inductive content analysis process to identify key themes related to boundary spanning. Conclusions The analysis resulted in a framework consisting of six boundary types, three types of roles and definitions, and five types of activities. Discussion of boundary spanning competencies was limited in the collected works, and only seven papers exclusively focused on engineers. We conclude by proposing boundary spanning as an important meta‐attribute for engineers and a promising lens for investigating engineering practice. We also relate our findings to the engineering education literature and suggest directions for future research.

-Students in global service-learning and similar programs frequently encounter substantial social, cultural, political, and ethical differences when working with project partners in different countries and regions. Neglecting such differences can lead to project failures and/or disempowered communities. In response to these challenges, educational resources have been developed to teach students to think about how the people, social structures, and other contextual factors associated with projects can affect, and be affected by, students' designs. Yet, there remains a scarcity of valid and reliable instruments to evaluate the effectiveness of such interventions. The purpose of this study is create a theoretically and empirically grounded instrument, the Energy Conversion Playground (ECP) design task, that is able to provide a meaningful and robust assessment of an individual's ability to identify salient technical and non-technical considerations when approaching an engineering design task situated in a developing country context. We present the scenario and an accompanying rubric that was first developed inductively from student responses to the scenario (specifically 449 discrete items from 93 ECP design tasks submitted by students who attended a Global Engineering Design Symposium). Further development of the rubric involved deductive grounding in relevant literature. To demonstrate the sensitivity of ECP design task to changes in students' thinking, we also performed comparative analysis of responses from a subset of the students (n=37) who completed the same instrument both before and after participating in the GEDS.