SASEE Conference Report
The 6th Biennial South African Society for Engineering Education (SASEE) conference was held in Johannesburg in July 2023. The theme for the conference, Humanity in Engineering Education, aligned closely with the Engineers without Borders work – working on socially responsible projects, sustainability, human-centred design, and aiming to inspire engineering students to have agency and purpose.
As the Project Manager for the Engineering for People Design Challenge, Robyn Clark facilitated a workshop at the conference, entitled “Advocating for change in Engineering Education: Reflections from EWB’s Engineering for People Design Challenge.”
The audience was introduced to the organizational purpose and work done by Engineers without Borders South Africa. Then the Engineering for People Design Challenge was presented as our flagship educational offering, aimed at influencing undergraduate engineering students through a Design Challenge project, to become globally responsible engineers.
The initial workshop discussion centred on the differences between global and social responsibility. Robyn introduced the concept of Doughnut economics and related this to the global sustainable development goals as well as the global responsibility competency compass recently published by EWB-UK. The global responsibility competency, which speaks about the principles of global responsibility is seen below.
Each principle in the Global responsibility competency compass is further broken down into three colour-coded associated competencies: one Knowledge (green), one Skill (teal), one Mindset (orange). More about the Global responsibility competency compass can be found here: https://www.ewb-uk.org/global-responsibility-competency-compass/
The last part of the workshop focused on how to foster an understanding of global responsibility in the engineering classroom, and where educators are in their current teaching practices. Below shows a “temperature gauge” of integrating global responsibility into education, and further down shows the results of where educators currently are, and where they would like to be in the future.
The above shows that there is the desire for further workshops and support to further train engineering educators on implementing global responsibility into the curriculum. One way in which EWB-SA is supporting educators in this regard, is by running the Engineering for People Design Challenge. The Design Challenge is perfectly placed to foster an understanding of Globally responsible engineering. (Link to design challenge page here).
For more information on the Design Challenge, please email Robyn at robyn.clark@ewbsa.org.
