Engineering Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship: A Course-level Implementation Case in Hong Kong

Rosanna Yuen-Yan Chan; Cecilia KY Chan; Mehrdad Tahernia; Jiaxin Liang; Qi Cao

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Conference: 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Publication Date: June 23, 2018
Start Date: June 23, 2018
End Date: July 27, 2018
Conference Session: Humanitarian and Sustainability in a Global Engineering Context
Tagged Division: International
Page Count: 16
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--30409
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/30409
Download Count: 448

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Paper Authors

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Rosanna Yuen-Yan Chan Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Rosanna Yuen-Yan Chan is adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Information Engineering, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She possesses a dual background in engineering and educational psychology. She founded the IEEE Education Society Hong Kong Chapter and is the Founding Chair. Rosanna is currently a Member-at-Large of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Education Society and a Vice Chair of the IEEE Hong Kong SIG in Humanitarian Technology.

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Cecilia KY Chan University of Hong Kong

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Dr. Cecilia Chan is the Head of Professional Development and Associate Professor in the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at the University of Hong Kong. She has conducted research on topics such as the development and assessment of generic competencies, assessment and engineering education. Cecilia holds a PhD in Engineering from Trinity College, a postgraduate diploma and a MA in Higher Education. She also held a Fellowship from King’s College London. Dr. Chan has involved in over 40 research/project grants worldwide. Please see Teaching and Learning Enhancement and Research Group (TLERG): http://tlerg.cetl.hku.hk/

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Mehrdad Tahernia Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Mehrdad Tahernia was born in Urmia, Iran, in 1988. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering and M.S. in communication systems from Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran and the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, respectively. He is now a postgraduate student and teaching assistant at Department of Information Engineering, CUHK.

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Jiaxin Liang Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Jiaxin Liang received the B.E. degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, in 2015, where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Information Engineering. His research interests include wireless communications, multiple access networks, and software-defined radios.

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Qi Cao Chinese University of Hong Kong orcid.org/0000-0001-8649-9313

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Qi Cao is a postgraduate student and teaching assistant at Department
of Information Engineering, CUHK.

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Abstract

BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION The United Nations (UN) has announced a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in its recent policy document, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. These SDGs are universal, transformative, and embark upon a range of immense global challenges such as ending poverty and hunger, and the achievement of gender equality. Since then, governments and multinational enterprises worldwide have begun their joint endeavors to work towards the full implementation of the agenda. Engineering educators have been called for taking lead in ensuring that engineering graduates have the ability to apply and contribute professional engineering knowledge for achieving the SDGs. In the current work, we react to the call by introducing elements of sustainable development and global citizenship into a regular undergraduate course within the Information Engineering curriculum.

METHOD, PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGIES, AND IMPLEMENTATION The implementation took place in a course titled “Social Media and Human Information Interaction” offered in Fall 2017 (N = 68). The course aims to provide a wide range of concepts and techniques related to social media analytics and human information interactions. We adopt pedagogical strategies in design thinking to foster engineering students’ ability to think critically from multiple perspectives, with stringent ethical standard, and be creative and innovative. As one of the assessment items, students are required to work in teams of 3-5 members to produce a policy report which: (1) identify an existing sustainability issue and name the SGDs involved; (2) analyze the issue and collect statistics from resources such as the UNSD (United Nations Statistics Division) statistical databases to support their argument; and (3) make policy solutions based on the knowledge learned from (or related to) the course.

ASESSMENT AND RESULTS We develop an analytic rubric for assessment and provide it to the students to guide their project work. The rubric includes 4 dimensions: issue identification, research, policy solution, and organization; and is specified in 4 levels: exemplary, accomplished, acceptable, and unacceptable. A total number of 16 policy reports are produced by the students in the end of the semester. Students’ policy reports are graded according to the rubric. The results will be analyzed and discussed in the full paper.

OUR CONTRIBUTION AND SIGNIFICANCE The current work is amongst the pioneer effort in integrating elements of sustainable development into the formal undergraduate engineering curriculum. Our implementation case study has demonstrated how to contextualize and operationalize design thinking at regular course level; so as to facilitate the development of global citizenship in engineering students. We hope this work has partially answered the important question of “what can engineering educator do for sustainable development?” and can engender further discussions on engineering education for sustainable development.

Citation
Format

Chan, R. Y., & Chan, C. K., & Tahernia, M., & Liang, J., & Cao, Q. (2018, June), Engineering Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship: A Course-level Implementation Case in Hong Kong Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30409

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION
The United Nations (UN) has announced a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in its recent policy document, “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. These SDGs are universal, transformative, and embark upon a range of immense global challenges such as ending poverty and hunger, and the achievement of gender equality. Since then, governments and multinational enterprises worldwide have begun their joint endeavors to work towards the full implementation of the agenda. Engineering educators have been called for taking lead in ensuring that engineering graduates have the ability to apply and contribute professional engineering knowledge for achieving the SDGs. In the current work, we react to the call by introducing elements of sustainable development and global citizenship into a regular undergraduate course within the Information Engineering curriculum.

METHOD, PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGIES, AND IMPLEMENTATION
The implementation took place in a course titled “Social Media and Human Information Interaction” offered in Fall 2017 (N = 68). The course aims to provide a wide range of concepts and techniques related to social media analytics and human information interactions. We adopt pedagogical strategies in design thinking to foster engineering students’ ability to think critically from multiple perspectives, with stringent ethical standard, and be creative and innovative. As one of the assessment items, students are required to work in teams of 3-5 members to produce a policy report which: (1) identify an existing sustainability issue and name the SGDs involved; (2) analyze the issue and collect statistics from resources such as the UNSD (United Nations Statistics Division) statistical databases to support their argument; and (3) make policy solutions based on the knowledge learned from (or related to) the course. 

ASESSMENT AND RESULTS
We develop an analytic rubric for assessment and provide it to the students to guide their project work. The rubric includes 4 dimensions: issue identification, research, policy solution, and organization; and is specified in 4 levels: exemplary, accomplished, acceptable, and unacceptable. A total number of 16 policy reports are produced by the students in the end of the semester. Students’ policy reports are graded according to the rubric. The results will be analyzed and discussed in the full paper.

OUR CONTRIBUTION AND SIGNIFICANCE
The current work is amongst the pioneer effort in integrating elements of sustainable development into the formal undergraduate engineering curriculum. Our implementation case study has demonstrated how to contextualize and operationalize design thinking at regular course level; so as to facilitate the development of global citizenship in engineering students. We hope this work has partially answered the important question of “what can engineering educator do for sustainable development?” and can engender further discussions on engineering education for sustainable development.
AU  - Rosanna Yuen-Yan Chan
AU  - Cecilia KY Chan
AU  - Mehrdad Tahernia
AU  - Jiaxin Liang
AU  - Qi Cao
CY  - Salt Lake City, Utah
DA  - 2018/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Engineering Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship: A Course-level Implementation Case in Hong Kong
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/30409
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--30409
ER  -