This panel will report the results of a workshop and symposium on the technological literacy of undergraduates convened at the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) on March 26-27, 2007. The NAE advocates that all Americans become more knowledgeable about technology. Here technological literacy is defined as the broad understanding of all types of technological devices and process not just computers. The opportunity to utilize undergraduate education to further technological literacy of all students must not be neglected. Educators in Computer Science, Engineering and Technology have a responsibility to educate all students not just those intending technical careers. Despite the need for all Americans to become technologically literate, technical literacy is not likely to gain wide acceptance until the scholarly community develops standard courses that are supported by textbooks and other course materials. This National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored workshop sought to identify and define several models of technological literacy courses. In this FIE panel, short presentations about these models will be made by participants in the NAE/NSF symposium. This will be followed by a discussion with the audience. A goal of the discussion will be to seek the input from FIE participants on the technological literacy course models.

From one perspective, the concept of T-shaped professionals who combine depth of technical expertise with breadth of knowledge appears to be but the latest iteration of the concept of the Renaissance or universal man (Gadol, 1973) as exemplified by Leonardo da Vinci. The T-shaped ideal, on the other hand, emerged in the early 1990s and seems to respond to the needs of information technology (IT) enterprises specifically and more generally of firms that seek to distinguish themselves for creativity and innovation. In its original incarnation (Palmer, 1990), what we now call the "T-shaped" individual or professional is described as a "hybrid manager" who combines IT skills with business skills. Twenty-five years later, one of the most frequently quoted papers on the subject (Demirkan and Spohrer, 2015) described the T-shaped professional as a worker who "has deep knowledge in just one area, but a good knowledge set and communication skills across many other areas." Demirkan and Spohrer also see the T-shaped metaphor more broadly as "an alternative paradigm for talent acquisition and management" (p. 13).Although there are many different visualizations of the T-shaped ideal, the knowledge and competencies associated with the T-shaped professional, as represented in the figure below, are fairly well agreed upon.

Slides projected as overheads or by computers have become a conventional and dominant feature of engineering presentations in academia, business, and professional societies. The traditional format for presentation slides-a phrase headline supported by a bullet list-has recently come under harsh criticism. In this paper, we propose an alternative to the traditional design that can communicate engineering content more effectively. The alternative design relies on a succinct sentence headline supported by visual evidence. Its chief strength is that it aids the audience's understanding of the engineering principles and arguments being presented, as opposed to the traditional phrase headline/bullet list design, which tends to function more as notes for the speaker.Although the alternative design offers several clear advantages in an engineering presentation, many engineering students and faculty strongly resist veering from the traditional format defaults of PowerPoint. This paper outlines the key features and advantages of the alternative design and explores the ways in which resistance to the alternative design can be seen as a measure of how embedded a particular way of using PowerPoint has become in engineering professional practice. Drawing upon student and faculty resistance to the design, this paper uses PowerPoint as a case study in the ways skillful users adapt tools such as PowerPoint to better accomplish their own goals rather than simply accepting the default approaches encouraged by the tool.

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