Deborah Dysart-Gale

Navigating a Constitutional Moment: Reflections on Implementing Graduate Attributes in Canadian Engineering Education

This piece is a self-reflexive essay examining our experiences during an important transitional moment, what we will identify as a ‘constitutional moment’, in engineering education in Canada. We are a collection of scholars who specialize in the study of the interface between technology and the humanities and social sciences (most of us identify as Science and Technology Studies scholars). Housed within the Center for Engineering in Society, itself housed within a faculty of engineering, we find ourselves presented with dual challenges of introducing insights from the critical studies of the relationship between science, technology, and society into the engineering curriculum, while also maintaining legitimacy among the engineering faculty that we find ourselves a part of. This paper is a result of our attempts to understand the challenges in engineering education that are unique to our Canadian context and to systematize our responses to these challenges. The aim of this paper is to share our experiences navigating the relationship between the construction of our centers identity as an Engineering Studies hub and our critical participation in engineering education practice.

Leveraging networks : online network based learning for 21st century engineering education and practice

How can engineering students be prepared for their career in the 21st century? For over 10 years, Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB) has advanced the concept of the ‘global engineer’ as one approach to this challenge. The global engineer is a technically competent engineer with excellent communication and leadership skills, as well as a developed awareness of globalization and sustainability. The current engineering curriculum offers many tools and resources to prepare students for the unique challenges and opportunities that the 21st century will present. However, there is a great opportunity to leverage recent advances in online learning and network/community based learning to enable students to further connect to these 21st century concepts. This paper outlines the architecture of an online platform as well as its approach to pedagogy and developing a Canadian learning network for global engineering. 1 GLOBAL ENGINEERING: LESSONS FROM THE CLASSROOM

Teaching writing online: Two case studies

Increasingly over the past decade, online learning has received growing attention in the academy. This paper describes the experiences of two instructors at the same institution with the teaching of writing online: one using hybrid (blended) instruction to “flip” the classroom to teach a service course on technical writing to Engineering students with low TOEFL scores; the other is an asynchronously online undergraduate elective course intended for majors in Education and other Social Sciences who might be considering careers in training, employee communication, technical communication, and related fields.