Short Abstract:

While technology is deeply embedded in social structures, this aspect is often minimised in engineering education yet necessary for preparing engineers to address systemic issues and seek sustainable solutions. This paper studies changes to an engineering design course seeking development of sociotechnical awareness and contextualising proposed solutions.

Long Abstract:

The technological innovations brought on by engineering work has significant impact on a community or nation’s social relations as well as the mode of dealing with the natural environment. The role of technology is therefore deeply embedded in social structures and can lead to both capability expansion as well as capability deprivation of individuals. Crises particularly highlight this relation. Ongoing environmental crises often seek technological solutions to change interactions with the environment while in conflict-affected areas, resilient forms of communication are often critical. Such interactions between technology, the environment, and a community are complex and require a critical view of technology’s role often opposed to a purely positivist view of technology often embedded within engineering culture. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) offer an important road map to deliver on a commitment to help the world’s most vulnerable in the midst of such converging crises. However, developing technology that will positively impact vulnerable communities requires that engineers are adequately prepared to address systemic issues. How then might the capabilities approach help us to prepare engineers to understand and propose solutions for complex, sociotechnical problems?

Seeking to support broad student capability growth necessary for addressing such challenges, this paper focuses on changes to a 3rd-year engineering design course that has developed over five years. In the course, students collectively choose a UNSDG to explore and use a variety of representational tools to support their understanding of its societal relevance. These tools are informed by interviews and research articles. From a capabilitarian perspective, we seek a balance course between structure and student agency to bring intentional development of a broad set of student capabilities beyond merely producing a working technical product that includes Ability to choose a meaningful project; opportunity to connect engineering with society; and ability to contribute meaningfully to sustainability. Central to this is understanding the role of technology within a specific context. At the end of the course, students present a minimum viable product, or prototype implementation of a technical solution, that demonstrates their understanding of the contextualised problem and technology’s role.

In the first two offerings of this course (Fall 2021, Spring 2022), students struggled to understand the social aspects of design despite asking students to conduct interviews and draw systems maps. Subsequent offerings included more time for structured research of the social system and more class time in developing the systems map with a corresponding reduction in time on producing a product. The deliverables for this course are individual ePortfolio reflection assignments and group final reports. We investigate the results of these changes, comparing ePortfolios & reports from earlier courses with the most recent iterations.

In our analysis, we utilised inductive “In Vivo” coding methods to elicit what students had learned from the assignment in their own words. Assignments were coded by a team of three researchers using consensus coding techniques to reduce intercoder bias (Stemler 2019; Harry, Sturges, and Klingner 2005). From these codes, we categorised the first pass codes into Pattern Codes (Saldana 2013) identifying emergent themes. We were able to classify student learning into a few major categories: Social Context Drives Decision-Making, Understands Sociotechnical Context, Experienced Personal Growth, Developed Professional Skills, and Lack of Engagement. In comparing the portfolios between cohorts, we noticed significant improvement in the first two coding categories as a result of the increased time allocation to developing systems maps.

Core to the capabilities approach is freedom to enact functionings that one values. However, at present the narrow focus on engineering science particularly within engineering curricula in North America can act as a structural barrier that impedes capability development of students who have interest in societal problems or non-corporate engineering work. Understanding a larger context and listening to a variety of viewpoints to understand technology’s role is essential. This paper suggests that more student agency and sociotechnical exploration within engineering programs helps develop engineers to have the societal impact they may desire. This insight is key to attaining the broad development goals the UNSDG necessitate for significant societal impact.