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Transdisciplinary Approaches in Canadian Engineering Education: Convergences and Challenges

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Interdisciplinary Integration and Sociotechnical Thinking: The Big Picture

Tagged Division

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society Division (LEES)

Page Count

19

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44516

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44516

Download Count

192

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Paper Authors

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Kari Zacharias University of Manitoba

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Kari Zacharias is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Engineering Professional Practice and Engineering Education at the University of Manitoba. She studies intersections and meeting points between engineering ways of knowing, being, and making, and other ways of understanding the world.

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Jillian Seniuk Cicek University of Manitoba Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-3349-9704

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Dr. Jillian Seniuk Cicek is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Engineering Professional Practice and Engineering Education at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, Canada.

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Lydia Wilkinson University of Toronto Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-1917-0002

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Lydia Wilkinson is an Assistant Professor, Teaching in the Engineering Communication Program/Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education at the University of Toronto, where she teaches courses on written, oral and visual communication

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Chantal Rodier

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Laura M. Patterson University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus

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Laura Patterson is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the School of Engineering at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna, BC, Canada teaching technical communication courses to engineering students since 2007. She holds a Ph.D. in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech University.

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Renato B. Rodrigues University of Manitoba

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Ph.D. student in Engineering Education at the University of Manitoba.

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Ken Tallman University of Toronto

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Ken is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream with the Engineering Communication Program at the University of Toronto. Ken's responsibilities include coordinating communication instruction in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

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Abstract

The Canadian Engineering Education Association-Association / Canadienne de l’Éducation en Génie (CEEA-ACÉG) is a national organization for engineering education practice and research in Canada. Many CEEA-ACÉG members organize into Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to advance their specific interests in engineering education and maintain communities of practice. The Humanities and Engineering SIG is a network of educators, academics, and artists working within or studying the intersections between humanities and engineering. At the 2022 CEEA-ACÉG annual conference, the Humanities and Engineering SIG facilitated roundtable discussions on four transdisciplinary approaches in engineering education. Over a two-hour period, participants rotated between four tables, focusing on one of the following topics at each table: Sociotechnical thinking, Sociotechnical leadership, STEAM, and Decolonization. This paper explores the themes that emerged during conference participants’ guided discussions on these four transdisciplinary approaches vis-a-vis a constructivist qualitative content analysis of the facilitators’ notes and transcriptions of the recorded discussions. The relative novelty of these four concepts might have made it difficult for participants to find common definitions, and to discuss their importance to engineering. However, as the discussions within and across tables progressed, participants collectively identified challenges and convergences of these transdisciplinary approaches in engineering education. Based on this analysis of a microcosm of the experiences with transdisciplinary approaches of engineering educators in Canada, we conceptualize this process and these topics as “loose concepts”, and discuss their power for future research and practice

Zacharias, K., & Seniuk Cicek, J., & Wilkinson, L., & Rodier, C., & Patterson, L. M., & Rodrigues, R. B., & Tallman, K. (2023, June), Transdisciplinary Approaches in Canadian Engineering Education: Convergences and Challenges Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44516

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