The “Who” in Engineering: Sociotechnical Engineering as Memorable and Relevant

Common discourse conveys that to be an engineer, one must be “smart.” Our individual and collective beliefs about what constitutes smart behavior are shaped by our participation in the complex cultural practice of smartness. From the literature, we know that the criteria for being considered “smart” in our educational systems are biased. The emphasis on selecting and retaining only those who are deemed “smart enough” to be engineers perpetuates inequity in undergraduate engineering education. Less is known about what undergraduate students explicitly believe are the different ways of being smart in engineering or how those different ways of being a smart engineer are valued in introductory engineering classrooms. In this study, we explored the common beliefs of undergraduate engineering students regarding what it means to be smart in engineering. We also explored how the students personally valued those ways of being smart versus what they perceived as being valued in introductory engineering classrooms. Through our multi-phase, multi-method approach, we initially qualitatively characterized their beliefs into 11 different ways to be smart in engineering, based on a sample of 36 engineering students enrolled in first-year engineering courses. We then employed quantitative methods to uncover significant differences, with a 95% confidence interval, in six of the 11 ways of being smart between the values personally held by engineering students and what they perceived to be valued in their classrooms. Additionally, we qualitatively found that 1) students described grades as central to their classroom experience, 2) students described the classroom as a context where effortless achievement is associated with being smart, and 3) students described a lack of reward in the classroom for showing initiative and for considerations of social impact or helping others. As engineering educators strive to be more inclusive, it is essential to have a clear understanding and reflect on how students value different ways of being smart in engineering as well as consider how these values are embedded into teaching praxis.

Section: Reflect On the Discourse Of Engineering And How That Aligns ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ways of Being Smart in Engineering: Beliefs, Values, and Introductory Engineering Experiences

Kramer,

Kajfez,

Dringenberg

2024

“…Raising students' awareness of the social dimension of engineering and the role engineers play in helping people can also enhance student engagement and retention [14,71]. In particular, women and students from other underrepresented minority groups, who have been shown to leave in disproportionate numbers following the first-year prerequisite engineering courses [72], have demonstrated a greater sensitivity to the broader societal context of engineering design.…”

Section: Sociotechnical Engineering Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Growing the Entrepreneurial Mindset in First Year Engineering Students Using Sociotechnical Design Challenges

DeWaters,

Kotla

2023

Engineering graduates must acquire both technical knowledge and a diverse range of professionalskills to effectively address the current global challenges. Equally important is aprofound understanding of how technological solutions are influenced by the human andnatural environments in which they are implemented. An open-ended, team-based designchallenge integrates entrepreneurial-minded (EM) skill development into an interdisciplinaryfirst-year engineering course that approaches engineering from a sociotechnical perspective.A mixed-methods study using a post-course reflective questionnaire explored students’self-perceived development of EM skills. Quantitative results from a series of 5-point Likerttypequestions indicate that students felt they developed EM skills in all three areas of the 3-Cframework, with average mean scores above 4.0 in all three categories. Scores were significantlyhigher in the Connections and Create Value subscales (mean 4.31 ± 0.62 and 4.23 ± 0.76,respectively) compared to the Curiosity subscale (mean 4.04 ± 0.84). Student comments onopen response questions support the overall value of the project and the broader sociotechnicallearning outcomes that were achieved. Overall, this study suggests the effectiveness ofincorporating open-ended, sociotechnical engineering design challenges to develop skills thatwill better prepare students for collaborative work on complex, interdisciplinary problemsthey may encounter in their professional careers.

“…Today's world and work environment are becoming more diverse and complex. Calls have been made for engineering graduates to have more holistic skill sets beyond technical knowledge [1,2] so they can sustainably, equally, ethically, and justly Investigating Canadian Engineering Students' Perceptions of Graduate Attributes: Frequency, Criticality, and Relative Importance contribute to the economy and address many of the wicked problems facing our societies today [3][4][5]. Additionally, engineers inherently need to integrate and utilize diverse types of knowledge to solve these complex problems and "meet people's needs and wants" [6,7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating Canadian Engineering Students’ Perceptions of Graduate Attributes: Frequency, Criticality, and Relative Importance

Rodrigues,

Seniuk Cicek,

Jamieson

et al. 2024

This study investigates the perceptions of Canadian engineering students regarding the frequency and criticality of the 12 graduate attributes (knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors that engineering students are expected to demonstrate upon graduation) outlined by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB). This study aims to assist engineering educators in gaining a better understanding of students’ expectations regarding how engineering competencies will be demonstrated in practice. This information can guide the improvement of engineering curricula and help engineering programs meet accreditation requirements for continuous enhancement. Descriptive and test statistics were used to analyze a quantitative survey administered to 340 undergraduate engineering students at a large Canadian university. Findings suggest that the students perceived the frequency and criticality of most graduate attributes differently. Individual and teamwork, communication, professionalism, lifelong learning and engineering tools, were viewed as more frequent than critical, while ethics and equity, impact of engineering, investigation, and design were perceived as more critical than frequent. The study also found that communication, individual and teamwork, and problem analysis were perceived as the graduate attributes with the highest relative importance (frequency multiplied by criticality), which is consistent with the literature.