Engineering Students as Responsible Innovation Auditors? An Intervention in Engineering Design Pedagogy

Responsible Innovation (RI), which was once a concept exclusive to academic research, has gained popularity in the past decade in corporate, governmental, and non-profit sectors. Some educators have responded by integrating RI into engineering classrooms. This paper describes a semester-long assignment in which first-year Electrical and Computing Engineering students in a mandatory communication course roleplay as Responsible Innovation Auditors for peers in a first-year engineering design course. The assignment asks students to understand and apply RI concepts in a real-world scenario, addressing their peers as clients in need of RI consultation. While gaining skills in engineering communication, students are taught the basic premises of RI, apply these concepts to the systems-mapping of a client project, and produce a detailed recommendation report based on the principles of RI. The goal of this intervention is to introduce RI early in the engineering curriculum to promote technological stewardship and foster the grass-roots expansion of RI in the tech industry.