Speaker: Prof. Kristin Boudreau | Humanities & Arts | Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Coauthor: Laura Hanlan | Research & Instruction Librarian | Worcester Polytechnic Institute
The past two decades have seen a transition in expectations for well-educated engineers. Since 1997, ABET has called for “the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context” (ABET 2011). As any city engineer knows after appearing at a public hearing, the technically perfect solution to an engineering problem may be unfeasible for any number of reasons. Furthermore, it’s not sufficient to have the correct answer: engineers must know how to form arguments based on data sets and present them persuasively to audiences that don’t share their engineering expertise.
For over 40 years WPI has implemented a project-based curriculum allowing students to apply technical knowledge in authentic settings where social context is part of the challenge. However, project-based learning is complex and costly. How can we reach students in institutional contexts where project-based work is impractical?
We report on the first phase of an experiment simulating project-based learning in classrooms through role playing. We investigate the effectiveness of teaching critical information literacy skills through a pedagogical role-play game called “Worcester [Massachusetts] in 1899: The Sanitary Engineering Challenge.” This game enables students to explore a historical challenge, understanding it from a particular vantage point through original research; through dialogue and collaboration students then work on a communally acceptable solution.
Our inspiration is the “Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) series of games pioneered by Barnard historian Mark Barnes. Unlike RTTP games, students playing our game must find primary sources, technical papers, and other peer-reviewed literature and incorporate these sources into the game in order to defend their actions and proposed solutions. We describe the development of the game and student assignments and examine a method of assessing the effectiveness of the game in teaching information literacy skills and grasp of historical context.