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Multiple studies call for engineering education to integrate social justice into classroom instruction. Yet, there is uncertainty regarding whether integrating these social topics into engineering curriculum will support or detract from the learning of technical concepts. This study focuses on evaluating how reframing technical assessments to include social justice concepts impacts student learning and investigates how well students integrate social justice into engineering decision making. Using a within-subject design, in which students were exposed to both conditions (questions with and without social justice context), we evaluate how social justice framing impacts overall student learning of technical topics. Social justice prompts are added to homework questions, and we assess students’ demonstration of knowledge of original technical content of the course, as well as their ability to consider social justice implications of engineering design. In the earlier homework assignment, the experimental group showed a significant decrease in learning when technical concepts were framed to include social justice. As the students became more familiar with social justice considerations, their learning of technical concepts became comparable to that of students who did not have the social justice components in their assignment. Their evaluation of the social implications of technical decisions also improved. History: This paper has been accepted for the INFORMS Transactions on Education Special Issue on DEI in ORMS Classrooms. Funding: This work was supported by the Carnegie Mellon University’s Wimmer Faculty Fellowship and the National Science Foundation [Grant 2053856]. D. Nock also acknowledges support from the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, where she is an energy fellow.
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Characterizing First-Year Engineering Students’ Priorities and Language Use in Socio-technical Written Reflections
Here's a shorter abstract for this introduction: This paper examines efforts to integrate justice perspectives throughout a first-year computing course for engineers, moving beyond traditional approaches that separate technical and social content. Funded by NSF, our redesigned course embeds justice components through weekly sociotechnical labs, readings with written reflections, justice-themed coding projects, and a final project addressing social impacts. This analysis focuses on students' weekly reflections from one course section to understand how they conceptualize bias, differential impacts, and causes of societal outcomes across different topics. Our findings offer insights for educators seeking to center justice in engineering education through integrated reflection activities rather than standalone ethics modules.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2110727
- PAR ID:
- 10632321
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Portland, Oregon
- 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--48454
