Piloting a framework to evaluate and guide student understanding of global, socio-cultural, environmental and economic design factors

Several previous studies have highlighted the sociotechnical nature of engineering practice while simultaneously recognizing the gap in student learning of sociotechnical factors in undergraduate engineering education.Furthermore, students struggle to see the relevance of understanding and engaging with five key design factors: global, social, cultural, economic and environmental as assessed by competency frameworks at the university and accreditation levels.This study piloted a series of in-class engagement activities in a water and wastewater design class to be used in Civil and Environmental engineering courses to enhance student understanding and learning of the five design factors.Activities included a pre-activity and post-activity survey of student knowledge of the design factors, confidence level with a design project solution, and appropriateness of the design project.Additional activities included individual and group analyses of a design scenario, guided activities designed to simulate client engagement in practice, and peer-review sessions where students gave each other feedback on their designs.Results indicate that the designed activities help students move from a high-level understanding of each design factor to a more nuanced understanding of how to apply the design factors to water and wastewater projects specifically.Students showed an increase in confidence in their design from a technical perspective but increases in confidence are confounded by students' newfound awareness of "appropriateness".The pilot data and activities in this study generated sufficient data to evaluate the research questions proposed by this study and require revision and refinement in other courses to assess their broader applicability in the Civil and Environmental engineering curriculum.