2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As sociotechnical ethical perspectives become more and more integrated into engineering education and popular writing, students are increasingly exposed to social and political contexts of engineering work – often through critique of existing projects. While this serves to combat the overly objective and neutral view of engineering, it introduces students to a new dilemma: How can engineers move forward in the face of overwhelming flaws in engineering culture and practice, and try to participate in more ideal projects, rather than abandoning engineering entirely? One aspect of this dilemma that we focus on in this work is students’ capacities to remain hopeful that a better future can exist. As part of a sociotechnical data science ethics course, we presented students with materials related to both making incisive critiques of technology, and also maintaining hope and making change in the face of those critiques. Notably, materials related to change-making were not limited to more ethical engineering practices, but also included bottom-up social modes of change such as community organizing, student protest, and labor organization. Through qualitative analysis of reflection assignment responses throughout the semester, we find that students highlighted this material as critical in motivating them to view a better technological future as possible. Particularly, discussing change-making work being done by social justice organizations, as well as hosting a panel of local community leaders combating oppressive technologies, inspired several students to adopt a more hopeful view. A few engineering students even acknowledged that other technology ethics courses they took through their department left them despondent, whereas this material gave them ideas for concrete action they can take that is aligned with their critical worldview. These results suggest that presenting students with frameworks for making social change, as well as real-world examples of that work, may be important for maintaining the hopeful attitudes crucial for acting ethically in the face of critical sociotechnical understandings.