Search

Introducing engineering students to topics of social responsibility and sustainability in the field of science and technology studies is internationally discussed, but there is little common consensus on best practices. Especially in large and mandatory engineering courses, initiating reflection processes among the students imposes difficulties on lecturers. The lecture "Engineering and Society" is attended each year by about 500 engineering students at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. Intended to familiarize engineering students with central theories and topics in the field of science and technology studies as well as sustainability and responsibility, the lecture creates a contrast to the highly technical engineering contents in these study programs. To increase the accessibility of these topics for students, a detailed teaching concept was developed by the authors which is reviewed in this paper. The paper proposes this approach for teaching sustainability and responsibility to engineering students in a large mandatory bachelor's course as well as raising awareness for their own responsibility while maintaining focus on the academic content of the lecture. The paper aims to answer the following research questions: How to teach sustainability and responsibility to engineering students in a large mandatory bachelor's course? How to raise awareness for personal responsibility as engineering students? Challenges and possible solutions related to the academic content of sustainability and responsibility are discussed based on evaluation outcomes and lecturers' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The master's seminar "Competencies for Social and Sustainable Engineering Design" at RWTH Aachen University is part of the study programs Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering and Industrial Engineering. Focusing on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), this course covers, teaches and reflects relevant competencies for socially responsible and sustainable engineering design. Following a research-orientated focus, the following research question was addressed: "Which competencies are considered relevant by future engineers in the context of sustainable and socially responsible engineering design?". The purpose of this paper is to present this approach and, on the basis of the seminar, to explain how relevant competencies for socially responsible and sustainable engineering design can be acquired by engineers. Moreover, the seminar concept is explained and a methodology for teaching the aforementioned topics is described that can also be transferred to other courses. The evaluation of course-specific feedback allows to present both conclusions and corresponding solution approaches, as well as challenges associated with the concept. Results show that engineering students call for competencies which go beyond pure technical knowledge, and, at the same time, determine that these competencies, like social competencies, are missing in their studies. Accordingly, this leads to implications for future curricula development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]