2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Evaluating the Efficacy of Project-Based Approach for Teaching Humanities Courses to Engineering Students

Presented at Environmental Engineering Division (ENVIRON) Technical Session 4 - Engineering for One Planet & Sustainability Innovation

This paper investigates the effectiveness of a project-based learning (PBL) approach for integrating humanities education into the engineering curriculum. To test the effectiveness of the PBL approach, first-semester and third-semester engineering students enrolled in the course titled "Entangled Worlds: Technology and the Anthropocene" were exposed to many concepts from humanities. The course curriculum was designed to integrate humanities and engineering to understand the havoc wreaked on the planet by human activity and technologies (called the age of the Anthropocene), and reimagine our present technologies for a better future. The course was jointly developed and simultaneously delivered by two faculty representing humanities and engineering domains respectively. This was done so that the students could appreciate both the philosophical and theoretical frameworks from the humanities governing the scholarly literature on the Anthropocene while at the same time gaining an understanding of statistical data and scientific evidence establishing the detrimental effects of present-day technologies. It was felt that humanities could be best learnt by engaging the engineering students through a PBL approach.
The students grappled with current real-world problems and reimagined technological solutions for a sustainable future with the planet as a stakeholder (the Planetocene) through projects. The PBL approach was also compared to a traditional lecture-based humanities course RTS (Reimagining Technology and Society) taught previously to the current third-semester students.
Students performed significantly better (p < .001) in the PBL-incorporated course compared to the RTS course, demonstrating the effectiveness of PBL in enhancing learning outcomes. While both groups rated the course highly, students with no prior humanities coursework (Semester 1) had a slightly more positive perception (p < .05) and performed slightly better (p < .001) than those with prior exposure to a traditional humanities course experience (Semester 3).
PBL offers a promising approach to bridging the humanities-engineering divide, cultivating critical thinking skills, and preparing future engineers to tackle planetary challenges. However, the potential benefits of PBL may be maximized when implemented with students who have not yet received extensive traditional humanities instruction.

Authors

Dr. Brainerd Prince Plaksha University [biography]

Brainerd Prince is Associate Professor and the Director of the Center for Thinking, Language and Communication at Plaksha University. He teaches courses such as Reimagining Technology and Society, Ethics of Technological Innovation, and Art of Thinking for undergraduate engineering students and Research Design for PhD scholars. He completed his PhD on Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Philosophy from OCMS, Oxford – Middlesex University, London. He was formerly a Research Tutor at OCMS, Oxford, and formerly a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, a Recognized Independent Centre of Oxford University. He is also the Founding Director of Samvada International Research Institute which offers consultancy services to institutions of research and higher education around the world on designing research tracks, research teaching and research projects. His first book The Integral Philosophy of Aurobindo: Hermeneutics and the Study of Religion was published by Routledge, Oxon in 2017. For more information, please visit: https://plaksha.edu.in/faculty-details/dr-brainerd-prince
Dr. Siddharth Plaksha University [biography]

Dr. Siddharth is an Assistant Professor and Lead, Human-Technology Interaction (HTI) Lab at Plaksha University. Before joining Plaksha, he worked as a Senior Human Factors researcher at the Human Factors Center of Excellence, Microsoft USA. Dr. Siddharth received his PhD in Electrical Engineering (Intelligent Systems, Robotics, and Control) from the University of California San Diego in 2020. For more information about him, please visit https://ssiddharth.in/about-me
Ms. Rukmani Keshav Plaksha University [biography]

Rukmani is a Teaching Fellow and researcher at the Centre for Thinking, Language and Communication at Plaksha University, India. She's a passionate advocate for bridging the gap between engineering and the humanities. Rukmani designs and delivers innovative teaching methods (pedagogy) to equip 21st-century engineers with the skills they need to thrive in a complex world. Her unique blend of expertise stems from her B.Tech in Biotechnology from SRM University and a postgraduate diploma in Liberal Studies from Ashoka University, a prestigious institution known for its focus on the humanities. Leveraging her four years of work experience in curriculum development and student instruction, Rukmani's current research and work centers around creating integrated curriculum that weaves engineering principles with a strong foundation of humanities.

Download paper (2.06 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session