If Engineers Solve Problems, Why Are There Still So Many Problems to Solve?: Getting Beyond Technical “Solutions” in the Classroom

This Evidence-Based Practice Paper describes implementation and assessment of an exercise bringing international perspectives, liberal arts, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into a first-year engineering program challenging the arbitrary boundary between engineering and the liberal arts. First-year engineering students (Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical) participated in a role-playing game recreating the 2009 United Nations Climate Talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. The exercise is part of a series of published games called Reacting to the Past (RTTP), with the purpose of engaging students to enhance their understanding of a given event or topic, while improving their research and communication skills. In this case, the further goal was for students to broaden their understanding of the technical aspects of climate change, as well as the political and social reasons that technological solutions are not always implemented, despite the best intentions and technical knowledge. Students practiced researching a topic, selecting and evaluating resources, proper citation of works used, written and oral communication, and advancing a position in a professional manner. These skills, while crucial for practicing engineers, are often relatively weak in incoming students. Our initial success integrating international perspectives and traditional liberal arts concepts into a first-year engineering course was supported by several classroom innovations, including a classroom-embedded librarian and gamification. Benefits of this activity in the first-year classroom include: Getting students to interact with each other in a substantive way, strengthening the cohort, and supporting retention. Providing structure for learning library, writing, and presentation skills, etc. Introducing how professionals handle concepts of politics, tact, and negotiating across boundaries. Providing an experiential learning environment to understand how politics, both personal and professional, can interact with technical solutions, leading to improvement or disruption in the lives of all. Starting a discussion about United Nations Sustainable Development Goals early in the careers of engineering students. Certainly, students will see these concepts again; there are multiple group projects and research projects in their time at our school, as well as courses on ethics and professionalism. However, introducing these concepts in their first semester prepares students for future courses, and helps them understand that engineering is not just problem sets and robotics. Background: The College and the Course Engineers often do not arrive at college with an appreciation for the importance of professional research and communication skills [1]. These skills are necessary not only for their successful undergraduate career, but also for a successful engineering career. Engineering students are often unaware of the number of reports and presentations they will be expected to deliver, or the amount of teamwork required in the engineering work environment. They do not yet understand that their chosen profession is strongly sociotechnical, involving both social and technical aspects [2]. Many novel approaches have been developed to address these challenges, including problemand project-based learning [3], entrepreneurship [4], and flipped classrooms [5]. Some students have also demonstrated increased success with increasing awareness of the positive impact engineers can have on communities [6]. Merrimack College is a small, liberal arts college in the Augustinian Catholic tradition, located in North Andover, Massachusetts, northwest of Boston. There are approximately 3,700 undergraduates at the college, and 700 master’s students, with no doctoral programs. There are approximately 400 undergraduates specializing in Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, or Computer Engineering. Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering students interact with one another, especially in the first year, while Computer Engineering has its own curriculum. Of the approximately 100 incoming students, 35% are Mechanical, 30% are Civil, 20% Electrical, and 15% are undecided. At Merrimack College, all first semester Civil, Mechanical, and undeclared Engineering (CE, ME, and UE respectively) students are required to take “GEN1001: Introduction to Engineering.” The course includes a lecture (covering measurements, exposure to basic statics/mechanics, technical writing, basic software skills, guest lectures, presentation skills, etc.), and recitation (including a group project to design and build an operational windmill). The course for incoming engineers includes interdisciplinary hands-on projects, presentations, and writing assignments with the goal of developing a sense of cohort, and “leveling the field” for students with a wide-range of backgrounds and experience. Electrical Engineering (EE) majors generally take a different introductory course, coming together with the other engineering first-year students on Fridays during a recitation session to design and build the interdisciplinary windmill projects. In Fall 2017, due to sabbaticals, the EE students were enrolled in the same lecture section as the CE and ME students. Enrollment in GEN1001: Introduction to Engineering was 96 students in 2017, 88students in 2018, and 79 in 2019. Table 1 summarizes the enrollment in GEN1001 for the Fall semesters 2017 to 2019. In the last third of the Fall 2017 and 2019 semesters, students were engaged in a number of exercises related to climate change. They were introduced to the mechanics and history of Table 1: GEN1001 Course/Semester Summary Semester Total number of students enrolled (number each section) Majors RTTP? UN Sust. Goals? Fall 2017 96 (48, 48) CE, ME, UE, EE Yes No Fall 2018 88 (45, 43) CE, ME, UE No No Fall 2019 79 (41, 38) CE, ME, UE Yes Yes climate change and investigated the political and economic reasons that have made this a significant issue. To learn more about the involvement of the United Nations in climate change, students engaged in a role-playing exercise recreating the 2009 Climate Talks in Copenhagen, and in Fall 2019, students also reviewed the UN Sustainability Goals, creating a video discussion of how engineering is linked to one of the specific goals. The Fall 2018 class was the “control” for the activities, providing a method of comparing outcomes of the course with and without the role-playing and video exercises. Background: The Game The role-playing exercise is part of a series of published games called Reacting to the Past [7], designed to engage students to expand their understanding of a given event or topic. In this case, the goal was to involve students in the technical aspects of climate change, and explore the political and social reasons that technical solutions are not always implemented despite best intentions and technological ability [8]. In addition, the exercise goals included: Having students interact with each other in a substantive way, strengthening the cohort, and supporting retention. Providing structure for learning library, writing, and presentation skills, etc. Introducing how professionals handle concepts of politics, tact, and negotiating across boundaries. Creating an experiential learning environment to understand how politics, both personal and professional, can interact with technical solutions, leading to improvement or disruption in the lives of all. Initiating discussions about United Nations Sustainable Development Goals early in the careers of engineering students. As part of the RTTP role-playing game, each student was assigned a unique, historical figure that participated in the Copenhagen Climate Summit [9]. The roles included individuals with various motivations and perspectives associated with their professional position, including Barack Obama, President of the United States, Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, Rajenda Pachauri, Chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change, and Katie Couric, News Reporter. Rather than “just” researching a topic, students experienced what it might have been like to be involved in climate debates as a participant – with “points” resting on how well they knew the topic, how well they communicated their reasoning, and on the final outcome of the game (was the final game outcome positive for the character’s position? (i.e. type of treaty approved)). They experienced why some individuals and groups might want a stronger agreement and transparency, while others push for weaker agreements or less transparency, all believing they are acting in the best interest of their country or industry. This provided students the ability to appreciate multiple viewpoints on data and policies, and how each perspective was seen as legitimate for a specific population. Students worked individually and in groups to select appropriate sources, properly cite the works they used, and communicate through writing, discussion, and presentation to professionally articulate a position. This exercise illuminated the need to find valid sources, understand what others might say in reaction or support of a given viewpoint, and to clearly communicate technical topics both in written and oral form. These are skills that are important in all engineering fields. The embedded librarian offered students feedback from someone other than the instructor, to provide a different perspective on their own work, and to more clearly understand the broader impact of the work done by engineers. The librarian offered extended office hours and movie nights related to topics covered in the class. In addition, the “teamwork” atmosphere made the class more enjoyable for the instructor, which made it more enjoyable for the students. The librarian and instructor worked together to prompt discussion, and more fully engage students in all aspects of the course. After two class periods on climate change science, and one clas