2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Great Ideas for Teaching, and Talking with, Students (GIFTS) paper presents a classroom activity designed to address bias in engineering design and foster social responsibility among first-year engineering students. The authors describe how the "Bias in Design" activity is integrated into an introductory engineering course and provide a reflection on its implementation, challenges, and impact on student learning.
Engineering education plays a crucial role in shaping future professionals who will design and develop technologies that impact society. However, unconscious biases and lack of diverse perspectives in design processes can lead to products and systems that exclude or harm certain populations. The activity, titled "Bias in Design," is motivated by the need to increase student awareness of bias in design as well as the ethical implications of their work. The primary objectives of this activity are to expose students to real-world examples of bias in an engineering design context, develop students' ability to identify and analyze the impact of biased design on diverse populations, and encourage critical thinking about ethical considerations in engineering practice.
The activity employs a jigsaw classroom technique where students are placed in "home groups" and assigned specific topics related to bias in design. They then form "expert groups" to dive deeper into their assigned topics before returning to their home groups to share their findings. Throughout the activity, students address key questions about the design or technology they're examining, including how it exhibits bias, which populations are excluded or harmed, the ethical implications, and potential strategies for mitigation. The activity concludes with a discussion and reflection where students brainstorm ways to make engineering and design more socially responsible, sharing their thoughts with their peers.
This paper provides a summary of the "Bias in Design" activity, along with faculty perspectives on its implementation and perceived impact on student learning. The authors outline the specific topics covered (such as crash test dummies, facial recognition technology, and smart watches) and describe the structure of the activity. Analysis of student reflections demonstrates the activity's effectiveness in helping students recognize their responsibility to create inclusive engineering solutions while developing specific strategies for preventing, detecting, and mitigating bias in their future engineering practice. This activity can be readily adapted for use in other engineering courses, particularly those focused on design thinking, ethics, or professional practice. The structure allows flexibility in both the specific cases examined and the depth of analysis based on course level and available time.