Improving Department Climate Through Bias Literacy: One College's Experience

Sheridan, Jennifer; Fine, Eve; Romero, Manuela; Neimeko, Carmen Juniper; Carnes, Molly; Bell, Christine; Lee, You-Geon; Stockstill, Casey

doi:10.1615/jwomenminorscieneng.2021032729

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…There have also been some attempts to address these issues specifically in engineering education. Sheridan et al ( 2021 ) studied the impact of a UBT workshop for faculty 6–12 months after the workshop and found that it had an impact on sensitivity to bias issues and discussion of bias issues, but did not impact on self-reports of behaviour. Similarly, Chromik et al ( 2020 ) found that training with students showed students increased awareness of the potential impact of implicit bias.…”

Section: Developing Equitable Teamwork Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Educating Engineering Students to Address Bias and Discrimination Within Their Project Teams

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What training should engineering students receive to enable them to contribute to reducing bias, discrimination and the persistent lack of diversity in engineering? Collaboration is central to professional engineering work and, consequently, teamwork and group projects are increasingly present in engineering curricula. However, the influence of unconscious bias on interactions within teams can negatively affect women and underrepresented groups and is now recognised as an important engineering ethics issue. This paper describes a workshop designed to enable engineering students to work equitably in diverse teams. Key features of the workshop include (1) the emotionally safe, empowering and warm environment created, (2) the creation of opportunities for students to discuss and apply the issues raised to their own engineering projects, and (3) the opportunities to practice the use of both proactive and reactive strategies to address bias and discrimination in teams. The evaluation of the workshop suggests that engineering students regarded both onsite and online formats as providing useful skills that they intended to apply in practice. Follow-up evaluations suggest that the workshop leads to behavioural change, especially the use of proactive teamwork strategies intended to reduce the impact of unconscious bias.

show abstract

Section: Developing Equitable Teamwork Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%