Unlearning anxieties of the unfamiliar: teaching advanced sociological topics to engineering students

• Autores: Nilanjan Raghunath, Timothy Li
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 32, no. 2 (Parte A ), 2016, págs. 640-653
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Learning new concepts outside one’s domain can be challenging due to the complexity of the content, the method ofdelivery, and the assessment process. However, learning new concepts is a necessary part of education and individualgrowth. This paper outlines this challenge in the context of undergraduate and engineering students taking a sociologycourse entitled, ‘‘Who Gets Ahead: Sociology of Social Networks and Social Capital’’. We review some of the existingliterature focused around teaching new concepts to unfamiliar students, as well as discuss some of the literature aroundteaching the topic of sociology to engineering students. Finally we will describe our approach taken to teach a sociologycourse to engineers, as well as some of the observations taken during the course. The outcome of the course showed thatmany of the student’s concerns of the course’s requirements stay the same from the beginning to the end, however theirperceptions of sociology change to a highly positive one when they are able to apply theories and concepts to real-lifeexamples such as their internships or interpersonal relationships and concrete empirical studies. The challenge is to getthem to consider multiple interpretations of social phenomena, as there is a tendency to look for one right answer.Eventually, the success of any sociological course is on how these concerns can be met through innovative teachingmethods.