Student Perceptions of "Tech Stewardship"

Technological stewardship, or tech stewardship, is an approach to guiding the design, implementation, or use of technologies. Within Canada, the most prominent use of this term is the Tech Stewardship Practice Program (TSPP), an online course developed by the Engineering Change Lab. While the TSPP has reached thousands of people since its inception in 2022, the term tech stewardship has not yet been widely adopted within engineering education or industry. This study is based in data from focus groups conducted with undergraduate engineering students participating in the TSPP, and characterizes students’ perceptions of “tech stewardship.” We find that students came to the TSPP with disparate understandings of what stewardship means, and developed different understandings as they moved through the program. Student perceptions across and within focus groups demonstrated a range of interpretations of and relations to the TSPP, and pose a variety of questions for educators who may seek to engage with tech stewardship in their teaching practice.