Student Perceptions of First-Year Engineering Justice Curriculum

This complete research paper will describe our qualitative analysis of the impacts of a first-year engineering course which includes curricular elements of social justice, social responsibility, and ethics. We present our interpretation of four interesting results that came out of our mixed-methods study (n=231) in which we surveyed students taking a first-year engineering course on their perceptions of the role of engineering in society and the world. We find that while a single course is unlikely to be sufficient to greatly influence student perceptions, for some sub-groups, the influence was greater than for the study sample as a whole. We specifically highlight four notable findings and discuss their implications.