Improving Students’ Sociotechnical Literacy in Engineering

该项目旨在通过培养工程专业学生通过公正和公平的视角来开发、分析、生产和评估工程过程、产品和影响，从而为国家利益服务。项目团队将开发、研究并分享一种新颖的方法，将社会正义主题与一年级工程计算课程中的技术知识结合起来。在本科工程教育中，工程实践中的伦理讨论通常在独立课程中进行，在课程进展的后期进行。这种分离导致学生认为工程的技术和社会方面是分开的和不平等的，技术内容通常被认为更重要。为了消除这种技术与社会的鸿沟，这个项目将把社会、经济和政治方面的考虑纳入一年级的技术课程“工程中的计算机导论”。课程教师、教育研究人员和STEM多样性专家将重新设计课程，并开发新的课程材料，将工程和数据科学中的公平和正义主题整合到阅读、讨论、课堂练习和家庭作业中。为了帮助课程教师实施修订后的课程内容，我们将聘请一批高水平的学生，并通过每周一次的研讨会对他们进行培训，以促进课堂讨论和活动。通过调查、课堂录像和访谈，该项目将研究这种方法的有效性，并在三年内反复修改课程内容和实施结构。将创建在线资源，将项目材料分发给对采用这种方法感兴趣的其他工程项目。该项目将围绕以司法为基础的活动重新设计现有的计算机课程，并由公平学习助理（ELA）项目提供支持，该项目将培训高年级学生促进课堂讨论。通过以正义为基础的活动，学生将通过分析真实的、道德上复杂的数据集和从事对个人有意义的以股权为重点的项目来学习所需的计算技术技能。这种方法将为学生提供早期教育的机会，将社会、经济和政治维度整合到他们的工程工作中。重新设计的课程的每个部分将由ELA项目的两名高级学生提供支持。ela将参加每周一次的公平教学法研讨会，以学习关键数据科学研究和相关的教学方法。该项目为期三年的混合方法研究将产生并传播基于证据的实践，以培养本科生的社会技术素养和对工程的归属感。在围绕这些实践产生新知识的过程中，该项目将通过面向过程的方法（ELAs）和面向产品的方法（重新设计社会技术课程）来培养教学变革。该项目在当地和社会层面都有潜在的好处：修订后的课程和ELA研讨会将直接惠及600名一年级学生和30名ELA；ELA计划的发展将提高工程学院的能力，将整个学院的工程课程纳入以正义为基础的问题；塔夫茨大学STEM公平小组将提供必要的制度基础设施，将道德和社会正义纳入塔夫茨大学多个学院和项目的部门；传播工作将使美国各地的工程项目采用这种方法。NSF IUSE: EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by preparing engineering students to develop, analyze, produce, and assess engineering processes, products, and impacts through a lens of justice and equity. The project team will develop, study, and share a novel approach to integrating social justice topics alongside technical knowledge in a first-year engineering computation course. In undergraduate engineering education, discussions about ethics in engineering practice are typically addressed in stand-alone courses, late in the course progression. This separation leads students to consider the technical and social aspects of engineering as separate and unequal, with technical content usually viewed as more important. To remove this technical-social divide, this project will bring social, economic, and political considerations into a technical first-year course, “Introduction to Computing in Engineering.” Course instructors, education researchers, and STEM diversity experts will redesign the course and develop new course materials that integrate topics of equity and justice in engineering and data science into readings, discussions, in-class exercises, and homework problems. To assist course instructors in implementing this revised course content, a cohort of upper-level students will be hired and trained via a weekly seminar to facilitate in-class discussions and activities. Using surveys, classroom video recordings, and interviews, the project will study the effectiveness of this approach and iteratively revise the course content and implementation structure over three years. Online resources will be created to distribute project materials to other engineering programs that are interested in adopting this approach.This project will redesign an existing computing course around justice-based activities, supported by an Equity Learning Assistant (ELA) program that will train upper-level students to facilitate in-class discussions. Through the justice-based activities, students will learn the required computing technical skills by analyzing real, ethically complex data sets and working on personally meaningful equity-focused projects. This approach will provide students with opportunities early in their education to practice integrating social, economic, and political dimensions into their engineering work. Each section of the redesigned course will be supported by two upper-level students who are part of the ELA program. The ELAs will participate in a weekly equity pedagogy seminar to learn about critical data science studies and related pedagogical approaches. The project’s three-year mixed-methods research study will generate and disseminate evidence-based practices to develop undergraduates’ sociotechnical literacy and sense of belonging in engineering. In producing new knowledge around these practices, this project will cultivate pedagogical change through a process-oriented approach (ELAs) together with a product-oriented approach (the sociotechnical course redesign). The project has potential benefits at both local and societal levels: the revised course and ELA seminar will directly benefit 600 first-year students and 30 ELAs; the development of the ELA Program will increase the School of Engineering’s capacity to transform engineering courses throughout the school to incorporate justice-based issues; the Tufts STEM Equity Group will provide the institutional infrastructure necessary to incorporate ethics and social justice in departments across Tufts’ multiple colleges and programs; and dissemination efforts will enable engineering programs across the U.S. to adopt this approach. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.