Powered by Research Commons at University Libraries. STEAM Salon is an informal series held in the STEM Library featuring faculty and student speakers in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics who engage and inspire our university community with their current research.

Please note that all Fall 2020 events will be held virtually via Zoom. Registrants will receive an event link 24 hours prior to the event.

In the last decade, there have been several efforts from engineering faculty to include social justice and socio-technical thinking in the engineering curriculum. Creating new courses and adding modules to existing ones can be extremely valuable interventions. However, making socio-technical thinking an integral part of existing technical courses is also a necessary approach to reduce the perception “social” issues are not equally valued in engineering. The efficacy of such efforts has not been widely tested.

This presentation builds on our analysis of an effort to incorporate socio-technical systems thinking into a required civil and environmental engineering sophomore level course to test whether such interventions effectively bridge the socio-technical divide in engineering curriculum.

Our current analysis employs open coding of student work to evaluate if, when, and how students are able to transcend instrumental socio-technical systems thinking about technology, which narrowly defines social relationships with technology in terms of first-order efficiency and productivity outcomes. These sorts of outcome are perceived as value-free and depoliticized, thus rhetoric that comfortably fits into the practice of engineering.
 

Please note: This event will be presented online via Zoom. Registrants will recieve an email with a Zoom link 24 hours prior to the event.