2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) since the emergence of ChatGPT has been overwhelming. The swift transformation that such powerful and disruptive tools brought to the industry urges engineering educators to prepare their graduates not only with the skills to use these new tools, but with an understanding of the ethical and moral implications involved in their applications. Inspired by Marcus Aurelius’ quote "To predict the future, we must look at the past," a one-hour tech elective course in a General Engineering program was designed to give students the opportunity to examine historical cases and learn modern tools, equipping them for the workplace in the AI era.
This paper presents a dual-pronged approach used to achieve these goals: (A) studying historical technology and business cases, and (B) learning how to use powerful AI tools such as ChatGPT.
(A) Learning from History: In small, randomly assigned groups, students were asked to watch episodes of the documentary series The Men Who Built America and read selected articles from the book Inspiring Technology: 34 Breakthroughs. They then presented their findings to the entire class and engaged in Q&A sessions. The documentary explored how Gilded Age tycoons (Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, etc.) dominated industries such as railroads, oil, steel, and automobiles, highlighting the development, cost, and consequences of this industrial growth. The articles from the book showcased experiments and competitions that led to key technological breakthroughs (ex. Maxwell equations, electricity generation, integrated circuits.) over the last two centuries, reshaping modern life. Both sources illustrated the collision of new ideas, technological impact, economic considerations, and political battles, while also exemplifying complex moral and ethical dimensions of these innovations.
(B) Learn AI tools: For a hands-on course project, students were challenged to explore the potential of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. They learned how to craft prompts for ChatGPT to generate MS-Excel macros, which they then used to process, visualize, and present data from an engineering problem of their choice.
At the end of the semester, a survey was conducted to poll students' perception on how the course prepared them in terms of their awareness of, preparedness for, and willingness to further learn about these tools. A focus group was conducted to collect student opinions on similar subjects. Results from both assessment approaches supported that, after the class, the students believed that they are better prepared for a future with AI and aware of the potential challenges when this tool is applied.
While work introduced here shows promise in addressing the gap that engineering students may experience between their academic preparation and upcoming workplace expectations, a more rigorous course design and thorough assessment are needed for future iterations. This article seeks to share the work-in-progress with conference audiences to gather constructive feedback.