Expanding Engineering Limits-A Concept for Socially Responsible Education of Engineers

Given changing demographics among engineers and engineering students, increasing international teamwork, and growing awareness of the ways in which cultural and cognitive biases may impinge on engineering problem-solving to reach optimal solutions, can a course providing an opportunity to learn about culture and diversity benefit engineers' training? In 2015, the inaugural Expanding Engineering Limits course was offered to undergraduate and graduate students as a transnational course between Stanford University in the United States and RWTH Aachen University in Germany. The course was designed to introduce students to a variety of terms, concepts, and paradigms that could deepen their understanding of culture and diversity in engineering education and practice. In addition to classroom lectures, students from both RWTH Aachen University and Stanford University participated in a Design Thinking course developed by the two teams and realized at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and worked on group projects throughout the academic term, examining organizational and cultural change in transnational teams. Instructors employed several qualitative and quantitative course evaluation methods, including pre- and post-surveys to measure student change in key attitudinal domains, short in-class reflections and questionnaires to solicit student feedback, institution-level course evaluation forms, and data from students' final projects. Overall, results from these evaluation techniques indicated that the course informed students' thinking and knowledge about the importance of diversity and culture in engineering. Students saw the experiences of working together in a transnational project team as very beneficial for the understanding of cultures and diversity in a professional context. Evaluation findings suggest that the course's intended goals were met to a substantial degree. We propose that a course-based experience such as this one can benefit an engineer's training, and share recommendations and "lessons learned" for engineering educators and leaders.