The Impacts of Humanitarian Engineering Context on Students’ Sociotechnical Thinking

Abstract

Framing engineering problems in a humanitarian engineering (HE) context has been shown to have a significant impact on students’ learning, particularly how they understand and articulate sociotechnical design considerations. However, no studies explicitly compared differences in sociotechnical thinking for different forms of engineering context. This study aims to investigate the differences in sociotechnical thinking for students presented with an engineering design challenge framed within two different country contexts. First-year (n=59) and third-year (n=58) students participated in a one-hour design challenge activity. Students were asked to consider the factors that they thought would influence the design of a retaining wall in a randomly assigned context: Mississippi [non-human engineering (HE)] or Bangladesh (HE). Students’ responses were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed to evaluate differences in the sociotechnical factors mentioned by the two groups. Study results showed that HE context students identified significantly more (p=0.005) sociotechnical design factors and have a more nuanced understanding of how the wall impacted people. HE students also focused more on deficiencies in the local capacity in the Bangladesh context, whereas non-HE context students focused more on physical design considerations and alternative uses of the wall. Study results provide evidence for the strong gains in sociotechnical thinking facilitated by HE context integration, even during a short activity. They also imply that HE context integration must be done thoughtfully to teach students how implicit biases and cultural racism impede effective engineering design.