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Civil engineering education must be updated to keep pace with the profession and move past a culture of disengagement where technical work is considered separate from societal impact. Civil engineering students need to engage with diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) so they can understand the differential impacts of engineering on individuals from different groups within society. We aim to encourage the transformation of civil engineering education to produce engineers that will be prepared to meaningfully engage with society and advance justice in their future professional roles by providing examples of pedagogical change and analyzing student responses. In this study we implemented new course assignments in an introductory civil engineering course and a civil engineering materials course. In the introductory assignment students were taught to draw systems models and asked to consider social and technical factors contributing to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In the materials course students completed pre-class readings about a regional highway reconstruction project, including articles about neighborhood opposition to the project, and participated in an in-class discussion. We analyzed student submissions using qualitative content analysis. Students in both courses (33% introductory, 60% materials) described learning about the impact engineering designs had on the community. In the materials class students were asked specifically about the impact of race and wealth on infrastructure decision-making. Student responses showed a wide range in how students understood the history of the situation and dynamics of power and privilege. Errors and limitations in student responses point to specific ways the instructors can improve student learning. Our results demonstrate that the integration of activities about societal impact is possible in technical engineering courses, emphasize the importance of integrating social context and related DEIJ content into technical courses, and provide insights into what students perceived they learned from the activities.
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Board 122: Work in Progress: Identity and Positioning of International Students in Sociotechnical Discussions
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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- Award ID(s):
- 2110727
- PAR ID:
- 10509835
- Publisher / Repository:
- Annual ASEE Conference and Exhibition
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--42426
