The Role of Disasters and Infrastructure Failures in Engineering Education with Analysis through Machine Learning

Abstract

Engineering programs must produce graduates who are able to consider multicriteria decisions including ethical implications during engineering practice. Teaching students in a meaningful manner to consider these multifaceted decisions was investigated through the usage of disasters and primary coverage of infrastructure disasters. Students provided reflections as part of the course, which were then analyzed using a topics discovery latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model. Our analysis of the students’ reflections on engineering disasters reveals six major themes touched on by students: engineering, ethics, community, monetary, case scenarios on engineering failures, and change. The analysis shows the multifaceted ethical reasoning students developed as a result of discussions on engineering failures and their implications. Ultimately, this teaching framework can guide engineering class design that embraces real-life failures as avenues of education.