Keynote Speakers

How can educators help students to be more effective and ethical engineers?  How could students discuss social responsibility in a Circuits class?  In this talk, I will share reflections from my journey as a female engineering educator and researcher who values innovation and inclusion.  Drawing from my research, including a chapter in The Routledge International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education, I will highlight examples of ethical issues specific to Electrical Engineering and sociotechnical integration in an Introduction to Circuits class.  I will share guidelines for successfully integrating social content into technical classes so that students see it as “real-world” engineering that enhances their learning.  I will also discuss a USA National Science Foundation project to integrate sociotechnical modules into Circuits and invite partners.

Education has always been bound up with technology. Advances in technology mean that we need to re-think not only how we conduct education but also what that education is for. The new generative AI challenges many of the current goals of education. I argue, with examples, that this should lead us to focus more on dialogue not only as the means of education but also as the end of education. Not just dialogue between humans but perhaps even more urgently, dialogue between humans and technology: how to ask better questions, how to understand better what the technology can and cannot do so as to be able to work more creatively with it. Education is engineering the future. To engineer a better future we should re-design education to promote more effective and reflective human-AI collaboration.