On Track: Seeing Engineering as Sociotechnical using Fitness Trackers

In this innovative practice paper, we describe a project related to fitness trackers designed to cultivate sociotechnical awareness and practice among second-year undergraduate engineering students in Spring 2020. We identified four topics related to fitness trackers that intersected with broader sociotechnical themes including data privacy, the workplace, health insurance companies, and sustainability. In teams, students researched the social and environmental impacts of fitness trackers for their topic and gave a presentation to the class including leading a discussion. This project was designed to scaffold learning, encourage class participation, and enhance the quality of presentation. Survey responses revealed that all student respondents found the practice presentation with the instructors held over Zoom as helpful in completing their assignments and presentations. Other aspects that students rated as helpful included providing a list of resources to start their research and an example presentation to clarify expectations about depth required. The global COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the project presentations being conducted remotely, which gave students the opportunity to practice facilitating using Zoom, a skill that is directly relevant to current industrial practice. Students were creative in how they encouraged their classmates to participate including using Zoom polls, Kahoot, and breakout rooms. Students' responses to survey questions demonstrate that they learned about the sociotechnical nature of engineering, believed the project topics mattered to them as engineers, and these topics were relevant to their majors. Students cited the environmental, social, and legal aspects of the project as most interesting to them as engineers. Thus this can serve as an example for other engineering educators for how to approach teaching sociotechnical content in engineering.

Compassionate Flexibility and Self-Discipline: Student Adaptation to Emergency Remote Teaching in an Integrated Engineering Energy Course during COVID-19

The global pandemic of COVID-19 brought about the transition to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) at higher education institutions across the United States, prompting both students and the faculty to rapidly adjust to a different modality of teaching and learning. Other crises have induced disruptions to academic continuity (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes), but not to the same extent as COVID-19, which has affected universities on a global scale. In this paper, we describe a qualitative case study where we interviewed 11 second-year Integrated Engineering students during the Spring 2020 semester to explore how they adapted to the transition to remote learning. Our results revealed several student challenges, how they used self-discipline strategies to overcome them, and how the faculty supported students in the classroom through a compassionate and flexible pedagogy. Faculty members showed compassion and flexibility by adjusting the curriculum and assessment and effectively communicating with students. This was especially important for the women participants in this study, who more frequently expressed utilizing pass/fail grading and the personal and gendered challenges they faced due to the pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis, we found that a key element for supporting students' well-being and success is the faculty members communicating care and incorporating flexibility into their courses.