Unlearning Anxieties of the Unfamiliar: Teaching Advanced Sociological Topics to Engineering Students.

Learning new concepts outside one's domain can be challenging due to the complexity of the content, the method of delivery, and the assessment process. However, learning new concepts is a necessary part of education and individual growth. This paper outlines this challenge in the context of undergraduate and engineering students taking a sociology course entitled, "Who Gets Ahead: Sociology of Social Networks and Social Capital", We review some of the existing literature focused around teaching new concepts to unfamiliar students, as well as discuss some of the literature around teaching the topic of sociology to engineering students. Finally we will describe our approach taken to teach a sociology course to engineers, as well as some of the observations taken during the course. The outcome of the course showed that many of the student's concerns of the course's requirements stay the same from the beginning to the end, however their perceptions of sociology change to a highly positive one when they are able to apply theories and concepts to real-life examples such as their internships or interpersonal relationships and concrete empirical studies. The challenge is to get them to consider multiple interpretations of social phenomena, as there is a tendency to look for one right answer. Eventually, the success of any sociological course is on how these concerns can be met through innovative teaching methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]