As one of the engineers mentioned in Professor's Wisnioski's book as actively advocating change, I have first-hand knowledge concerning many of the topics treated. Rather than discuss the book in its entirety, I will focus on what I am most familiar with, elaborating on, and updating, what the author has presented. During the sixties and seventies, there were at least three general issues that motivated many engineers to make waves. The first was the Vietnam War, the cold war, and weapons of mass destruction. The second was growing concern over environmental issues, such as air and water pollution, and energy-particularly nuclear energy. The third involved all too many situations where the professional judgments of engineers on matters such as safety were overridden by managers, usually for short-term financial reasons. My active involvement in this area began when, after about five years at Bell Laboratories, I joined the Columbia University EE (Electrical Engineering) Department faculty in the early sixties. At that time, there were a number of senior professors, in all departments of the SEAS (School of Engineering and Applied Science), who were interested in engineering ethics. Prominent examples were Victor Paschkis, Seymour Melman, and Mario Salvadori. We started an informal seminar to discuss what might be done to educate students in this area. We decided to create an undergraduate technology and society (T&S) course, which would include an engineering ethics component. I wound up teaching this course, with occasional assistance, including guest lectures, from others (mainly Chemical Engineering professor Elmer Gaden). The course lasted from 1971 to 1981. The EE Department became EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science). When the EECS Department later split and I went with the CS (Computer Science) Department segment, the course morphed into Computers and Society. More about this later. Our efforts to require all undergraduate engineering students to take a T&S course failed. By the mid-eighties, after the other members of our group had all retired or left Columbia, there was a meeting of the SEAS faculty to consider curriculum changes. My resolution to make T&S a required course received no support at all.
, and various forms of creativity. His research on human-computer interaction has focused on the development and design of user-interfaces and software that allow both composers and performers to augment the physical control of a musical instrument with direct sensory interaction. He holds twelve patents and is the co-inventor of the BioMuse system, which enables artists to use gesture, cognition, and emotional state to interact with audio and video media.In previous positions, Dr. Knapp has served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at University College, Dublin, and chief technology officer of the Technology Research for Independent Living Centre. As the director of technology at MOTO Development Group in San Francisco, Calif., he managed teams of engineers and How are Threshold Concepts Applied? A Review of the Literature AbstractFunded by a recently awarded NSF RED grant, we aim to transform the curriculum and culture of a large electrical and computer engineering department with a model that foregrounds design and innovation to offer students a variety of pathways to a degree. We are developing a combination of approaches to create a program with disciplinary depth and a range of learning experiences, including a participatory design approach that involves not only curriculum redesign, but also engagement of faculty and students in industry and K-12 outreach. Through these combined approaches, we hope to increase the diversity of students entering the program, the variety of pathways through the program, and the kinds of careers graduates pursue.We begin with the goal of effectively employing the Threshold Concepts Framework to identify transformative targets for curricular revisions. Our first step in approaching the RED grant from the perspective of curriculum develop includes a literature review that both systematically canvases existing resources and summarizes and synthesizes themes that enable us to answer the following questions:1. What research findings have been reported about threshold concepts across disciplines, in the field of engineering, and in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer science? 2. What are the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the threshold concepts framework, both in theory and practice? 3. Which methods are most effective for identifying threshold concepts? 4. How have threshold concepts been used to enact change?In exploring these questions, we investigate the history and evolution of the threshold concepts framework with attention to sociotechnical patterns such as whether and how "professional" and "technical" concepts are delineated. In terms of methodology, we consider whether data collection prompts guide people away from the center of their discipline, and whether there is less of a dichotomy between social and technical than often portrayed in engineering education narratives.Finally, we are employing a participatory design process in which we are not only asking department stakeholders to identify sites of threshold concepts, but also to enroll t...
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