2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This study explores how first-year engineering students engage with sociotechnical thinking in introductory design courses. Engineering is innately a sociotechnical endeavor, yet students often begin their undergraduate studies having limited understanding of the value of sociotechnical skills. This study examines how introductory engineering courses can better prepare students to see sociotechnical dimensions as essential to engineering practice.

The research draws on mixed-methods data collected from 385 first-year engineering students enrolled in a two-semester introductory engineering course at a large public mid-Atlantic research-focused university during Fall 2024 and Spring 2025. Likert scale data from pre/post surveys measured participants' valuation of themes of communication, teamwork, sociotechnical skills, ethical reasoning, and concern for society. The qualitative data included over 200 written responses to questions about those same themes as applied to the participants' project work. All students responded to these questions as part of a final reflection, and a subset of the 385 total participants consented for us to use their reflections in this research. Analysis combined deductive and inductive coding to identify themes across reflections. Inter-rater reliability strengthened the reliability of our coding, and the themes identified from the qualitative analysis were further supported by trends identified by statistical tests in the quantitative data.

Quantitative results reveal that participants demonstrated significant growth in valuing communication and teamwork over sociotechnical skills, ethical reasoning, and concern for society. Qualitative results highlight the benefits participants derived from collaboration and exposure to diverse perspectives in design projects and indicate that participant engagement with sociotechnical thinking was less developed. The reflections demonstrate that many of our student participants found it challenging to balance technical feasibility with broader social considerations. In reflecting about their future careers, participants often prioritized financial security or social prestige rather than societal contribution.

These findings reveal a generative tension: participants are open to developing sociotechnical skills but lack prior exposure and frameworks to integrate these perspectives into their identity of engineering. Structured reflection questions and course designs that explicitly foreground sociotechnical factors may help alleviate this tension. Embedding sociotechnical inquiry into the earliest stages of engineering education was critical for developing professional skills and for countering the tendency to treat social dimensions as secondary to technical problem-solving. Such efforts made space for participants to imagine engineering as a practice that is accountable to both technical rigor and social responsibility.

Future work will expand this research to include longitudinal assignments on participants’ life and career perspectives and investigate how emerging technologies such as AI may shape or hinder the development of sociotechnical skills. By making sociotechnical integration central to first-year curricula, engineering programs can equip participants to sustain sociotechnical skills, ethical reasoning, and concern for society throughout their professional formation.