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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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Characterizing student argument justifications in small group sociotechnical discussions
There have been increased calls to include sociotechnical thinking–grappling with issues of power, history, and culture–throughout the undergraduate engineering curriculum. One way this more expansive framing of engineering has been integrated into engineering courses is through in-class discussions. There is a need to understand what students are attending to in these conversations. In particular, we are interested in how students frame and justify their arguments in small-group discussions. This study is part of an NSF-funded research project to implement and study integrating sociotechnical components throughout a first-year computing for engineers course. In one iteration of the revised course, each week students read a news article on a current example of the uneven impacts of technology, then engaged in in-class small-group discussions. In this study, we analyze students’ discourse to answer the research questions: What arguments do students use to argue against the use of a technology? How do these arguments relate to common narratives about technology? In this qualitative case study, we analyzed videorecordings of the small group discussions of two focus groups discussing the use of AI in hiring. We looked closely at the justifications students gave for their stated positions and how they relate to the common narratives of technocracy, free market idealism, technological neutrality, and technological determinism. We found all students in both groups rejected these common narratives. We saw students argue that (1) AI technology does not solve the hiring problem well, (2) it is important to regulate AI, (3) using AI for hiring will stagnate diversity, and (4) using AI for hiring unfairly privileges some groups of people over others. While students in both groups rejected the common narratives, only one group explicitly centered those who are harmed and how this harm would likely occur, and this group did so consistently. The other group managed to consistently reject the narratives using vague, safe language and never explicitly mentioned who is harmed by the technology. As a result, only one group’s discussion was clearly centered on justice concerns. These results have implications for how to scaffold small group sociotechnical discussions, what instructors should attend to during these discussions, and how to support students to orient toward systemic impacts and sustain a focus on justice.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2110727
- PAR ID:
- 10509838
- 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 Manuscript
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--43187
