Teaching socio-cultural impacts of technology in advanced technical courses: a case study

Talking Tech: How Language Variety in Engineering Curriculum Instruction Can Ease Delivery and Engage Students

“…Simply stating an institutional policy or populating a website with photos of diverse students collaborating is not enough. From an administrative and practical perspective, accreditation bodies are defining and starting to specifically require inclusive classrooms and faculty competence in these areas [1], [9]. Performance and evaluation of compliance with these new requirements is still largely undefined and this paper is an effort to identify discursive methods and rhetorical strategies that are currently in use across university classrooms that could be exemplar of productive and effective approaches for incorporating social impacts into technical courses.…”

“…Berdanier [11] makes it clear the "optional" skills often are those most demanded by industry and necessary to solve the complex problems present in engineering practice. These skills are often ignored in engineering education, or siloed from required technical courses which creates an appearance of unimportance [9]. Despite these issues, the incorporation of social impacts into engineering education and clear, consistent strategies for doing so will aid in the effectiveness of engineering education and tighten that foundational connection between how engineering students are trained and the problems practicing engineers face in industry.…”

“…This means there is an opportunity for finding ways that instructors can influence their classroom environments and sculpt their curriculum and delivery to create inclusive course environments and promote access and efficacy in engineering education. Second, essay writing and critical thinking tasks centered on understanding of the potential social impacts of engineering have been demonstrated as an effective means to engage students in sociotechnical thinking [9].…”

“…Cote and Branzan Albu [9] performed a case study of full integration of socio-cultural impacts which they define as student-identified topics related to technical projects in a capstone course for computer vision technology. The definition of socio-cultural in this context includes but is not limited to the environment, ethics, social relations, personal development, economics, health/medicine, law, elderly, and politics [9, pg.…”

“…This aligns with our theoretical framing because engineering programs were designed and built intentionally to separate the social from the technical, and small changes to those designs wouldn't be expected to alter their outcomes. However, our review of the literature reporting full integration of social impacts in technical courses notes three distinct approaches: 1) a combination of presenting social contexts, making structural conditions transparent, and acknowledging human agency [30], 2) an integrated and robust written component of the course exploring the social impacts of technical projects in capstone courses [9], and 3) thorough contextualization of technical projects [31].…”