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1. The “Who” in Engineering: Sociotechnical Engineering as Memorable and Relevant

   https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v13i5.36571  

   Chen, Diana A.; Forbes, Marissa H.; Hoople, Gordon D.; Lord, Susan M.; Mejia, Joel Alejandro (July 2023, International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP))

   Does emphasizing the role of people in engineering influence the memorability of engineering content? This study is part of a larger project through which our team developed a new undergraduate energy course to better reflect students’ cultures and lived experiences through asset-based pedagogies to help students develop a sociotechnical mindset in engineering problem solving. In this study, students in the class were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews (n=5) to explore our effectiveness in helping them develop a sociotechnical mindset around energy issues and conceptualize engineering as a sociotechnical endeavor. This study focuses on an activity during the interview where the participants were asked to sort a variety of images associated with class learning experiences along a spectrum of least to most memorable. Emergent themes from students’ responses revolved around learning experiences that included global perspectives and emphasized a “who” (i.e., whose problems, who is impacted by engineering, and what type of engineers the students will choose to become) as the most memorable. Our results indicate that students found the sociotechnical aspects of the course more memorable than the traditional canonical engineering content. These findings suggest that framing engineering content as sociotechnical can be one strategy to increase student engagement, increase memorability of lessons, and help students to think more deeply about their own goals as future engineers. 

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2. Board 122: Work in Progress: Identity and Positioning of International Students in Sociotechnical Discussions

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--42426  

   Meng, Jingshu; Norton, Hannah; Andrews, Chelsea (June 2023, Annual ASEE Conference and Exhibition)

   Concerns about technocentric undergraduate engineering courses have now become widely disseminated. As a result, universities are diligently working to include more sociotechnical content in formerly purely-technical courses, with the goal of engaging students in recognizing and analyzing the economic, political, and social impacts of technology. In the U.S., many of the focus topics for this sociotechnical content are grounded in a U.S. context, requiring an understanding of the history and current state of racial and economic power structures. While U.S. residents are likely familiar with these structures, it is important to consider how these topics are encountered by international students. This case study on international student experience is part of a larger NSF-funded research project exploring integrating sociotechnical topics in a first-year engineering computing course. The revised course included weekly readings followed by small-group discussions on curriculum-aligned real-world justice topics. This work in progress study analyzes post-course student interviews of six international students of color to understand their experiences in this course. We use a qualitative case study approach to analyze these interviews, drawing heavily from work in identity (e.g., Berhane, Secules, & Onuma, 2020), being careful to take an intersectional lens (e.g., Ross, Capobianco, & Godwin, 2017). We draw heavily from the emergent framework of Learning Race in the U.S. Context (Fries-Britt, Mwangi, & Peralta, 2014). We focus on the unique challenges for international students as they navigate justice discourse in the U.S. context. Our examination of international student interviews illuminated conflicts between international students’ self-identity and what they felt they were expected to know and have experienced. Most first-year international students of color reported strong identities as international students and did not identify as strongly with their racial/ethnic groups. They felt they were lacking U.S. racial context, including both knowledge of the history of U.S. racial relations and lived experiences within these systems. At the same time, there is evidence that other students in the classes positioned the international students of color as experts in racial relations in the U.S., looking to them to share personal experiences or for approval of what other students were sharing. Without essentializing these particular international students’ experiences, we hope to draw attention to the social dynamics encountered during sociotechnical lessons and the potential for marginalization of the international student population. 

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3. Implementing Transmedia Using a Narrative Framework for an Introductory Engineering Course

   Pina, Jeremiah; Ellis, Glenn W.; Mazur, Rebecca (January 2023, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This paper details the process of developing and adapting a narrative framework for teaching an introductory geotechnical engineering course (EGR 340) through a systematic iterative procedure that embeds conceptual learning into a story format and, over time, elaborates elements and interactions within the story using methods of transmedia storytelling. Although the tools are presented within the context of geotechnical engineering, the approach can be applied throughout engineering education. The elaborative transmedia storytelling process we describe is based on the Imaginative Education (IE) teaching approach. Well-grounded in the learning sciences--but novel in engineering education--IE facilitates student engagement through the use of cognitive tools (such as extremes of reality, heroism, and the exploration of binaries). These tools are connected to types of understanding and serve to enhance a sense of mystery and wonder for topics that might not otherwise register as being immediately relevant to students. A significant benefit of this approach is that that it lends itself to modification and personalization through the inclusion of new features and methods of interaction at the level of the whole story and at the level of story elements. Four types of understanding and their associated cognitive tools were used in EGR 340 and their application is described in this paper. They include: • Mythic understanding using a fantasy narrative that played on the idea that geotechnical engineers refer to their field as the “dark arts of engineering.” • Romantic understanding using heroic narratives that helped students put themselves in the place of Terzaghi and Casagrande as they developed the field. Extremes of reality was another Romantic tool used throughout the course. For example, students learned about soil stress by first solving the mystery of how quicksand works. • Theoretic understanding using concept maps and narrative was used at both the course and unit level to organize concepts. • Ironic understanding using discussion of the inadequacies of theoretic understanding to recognize the reference to “dark arts.” Transmedia storytelling through extensive use of short video clips and other means was used to enhance the application of these tools. For example, students traveled virtually to Venice where they joined a noisy gondola tour to examine building foundations and learn about how poor water policies impacted the sinking of the city. Course evaluation and lesson assessment data were collected in 2018, 2020, and 2022, with each year being associated with a different version of the course. Using these data, we present a mixed-methods analysis of learning outcomes that provides evidence for the effectiveness of this approach at different steps along the way. Non-parametric comparisons of student assessment data demonstrated that student conceptual learning was relatively stable across measures and versions, but that students in the fully transmedia iteration generally performed more strongly on assessments of project-based learning (Borrow/Fill; Atterberg; Dam). Thematic analysis of student responses to open-ended course evaluation prompts demonstrates that engagement was high across all versions of the course, and that students in the 2022 version discussed engineering topics in a manner that included personal connections and reflections. 

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4. What Is Engineering and Who Are Engineers? Student Reflections from a Sustainability-Focused Energy Course

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063499  

   Forbes, Marissa H.; Lord, Susan M.; Hoople, Gordon D.; Chen, Diana A.; Mejia, Joel Alejandro (March 2022, Sustainability)

   In the spring of 2021, the University of San Diego’s Department of Integrated Engineering taught the course, “Integrated Approach to Energy”, the second offering of a new required course, to nine second-year engineering students. The sociotechnical course covered modern energy concepts, with an emphasis on renewable energies and sustainability, and it exposed the students to other ways of being, knowing, and doing that deviated from the dominant masculine Western White colonial discourse. Following the course completion, we interviewed five students by using a semistructured protocol to explore how they perceived of and communicated about engineers and engineering. We sought to identify the takeaways from their course exposure to sustainability and the sociotechnical paradigm, which were central to the course. The findings suggest that the students were beginning to form sociotechnical descriptions, and that they were still developing their understanding and perceptions of engineers and engineering. Moreover, we observed that they were still wrestling with how best to integrate sustainability into those perceptions. There was an a-la-carte feel to the students’ conceptualizations of sustainability as it related to engineering, as in, “you can ‘do’ sustainability with engineering, but do not have to”. We argue that engineering students likely need these pedagogical paradigms (sociotechnical engineering and sustainability) woven through the entirety of their engineering courses if they are to fully accept and integrate them into their own constructs about engineers and engineering. 

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5. Studying the Formation of Engineers: A Case Study of a Higher-education Learning Ecology

   Korte, Russell; LeBlanc, Saniya (July 2021, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   null (Ed.)

   The development of professional engineers for the workforce is one of the aims of engineering education, which benefits from the complementary efforts of engineering students, faculty, and employers. Typically, current research on engineering competencies needed for practice in the workplace is focused on the experiences and perspectives of practicing engineers. This study aimed to build on this work by including the perspectives and beliefs of engineering faculty about preparing engineering students, as well as the perspectives and beliefs of engineering students about preparing for the workplace. The overall question of the research was, “What and how do engineering students learn about working in the energy sector?” Additional questions asked practicing engineers, “What is important to learn about your work and how did you learn what was important when you started in this industry? For engineering faculty, we asked, “What is important for students to learn as they prepare for work as professionals in the energy industry?” We anticipated that the findings of triangulating these three samples would help us better understand the nature of the preparation of engineering students for work by exploring the connections and disconnections between engineering education in school and engineering practice in the workplace. The aim was to map out the complex ecosystem of professional learning in the context of engineering education and practice. The core concept framing this study is the development of competence for engineering practice—including the education of students in the context of higher education and the practical learning of newly hired engineers on the job. Initial findings of the work-in-progress describe the nature of instruction and learning in higher education, learning in the workplace, along with comparisons and contrasts between the two. As of this point, we have initially mapped the learning ecosystem in the workplace based on in-depth, qualitative interviews with 12 newly hired engineers in the target energy company. In addition, we are analyzing interviews with two managers in the company and three other experienced leaders in the energy industry (this sample is currently in process and will include interviews with more participants). Currently, we are analyzing and mapping the learning and experiences of students in their studies of energy engineering and the instructional goals of engineering faculty teaching and mentoring these students. The map of the higher education ecosystem will connect with the workplace ecosystem to portray a more longitudinal map of the learning and development of professional competence of engineering students preparing for their career in the energy sector. The findings of the analysis of the workplace emphasized the importance of the social and relational systems in the workplace, while very preliminary indications from the educational context (students and faculty) indicate initial awareness of the social context of energy practice and policy. There are also indications of the nature of important cultural differences between higher education and industry. We continue to collect data and work on the analysis of data with the aim of mapping out the larger learning and experience ecosystem that leading to professional competence. 

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