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Sociotechnical Integration as Programmatic Foundation in Engineering: Curriculum Design and ABET Assessment Protocols

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

Sociotechnical Integration and Programmatic Reform

Tagged Division

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division (LEES)

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/47984

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Paper Authors

biography

Chelsea Salinas Colorado School of Mines

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Chelsea Salinas is a Teaching Professor at the Colorado School of Mines where she focuses on program development in the design engineering space, teaching design thinking strategies, user experience and systems modeling.

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biography

Dean Nieusma Colorado School of Mines Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-2711-3315

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Dean Nieusma is Associate Professor and Department Head of Engineering, Design, & Society at Colorado School of Mines.

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Abstract

Engineering education has faced enduring criticism for being overly focused on the narrowly technical dimensions of engineering practice, ill preparing engineering graduates for their future work. “Sociotechnical” approaches to engineering education have arisen as one category of responses to this perceived narrowness. This paper reviews our efforts to situate sociotechnical integration as the foundation of our new undergraduate design engineering undergraduate degree program, focusing on how we have cast this foundation in both our program’s curriculum and through our ABET assessment protocol design and implementation. The paper first reviews some of the scholarship on sociotechnical integration, including justifications for expanding engineering education’s focus beyond technical competencies and identification of a framework for thinking about different conceptions of the relationships between social and technical dimensions of engineering practice. It then provides an overview and justification of our Design Engineering program’s curricular structure, built around a “design spine.” Next, the paper considers the design of our program’s ABET assessment infrastructure and how we have used ABET requirements to ensure we hold ourselves accountable to a high-bar of sociotechnical integration throughout our program, with a particular focus on how we operationalize ABET student outcomes via our program’s targeted performance indicators.

Salinas, C., & Nieusma, D. (2024, June), Sociotechnical Integration as Programmatic Foundation in Engineering: Curriculum Design and ABET Assessment Protocols Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47984

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