Collins, GJ;
(2022)
Can Decolonising the Curriculum Provide an Enhanced Engineering Education?
In:
Can Decolonising the Curriculum Provide an Enhanced Engineering Education?
(pp. pp. 1085-1094).
SEFI
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Abstract
Decolonisation is defined and discussed. University College London has several initiatives to decolonise the curriculum and enhance diversity and inclusion. In 2022, a series of online flipped lectures were developed for the postgraduate software engineering module. The aim was to provide a range of perspectives on artificial intelligence (AI) ethics. Teaching was through the decolonisation lens, highlighting historical viewpoints and imbalances in power. Students could reflect on the ethics of AI systems and how these systems perpetuate colonial biases. Students had previously indicated their interests in AI, environmental and social issues, including climate change. Before lectures, students completed questionnaires, providing an understanding of their prior knowledge of topics. A qualitative analysis of the reading material using coding within ATLAS.ti provided insight to select schemas to scaffold students’ knowledge. The suggested reading was then adapted to ensure a greater diversity of viewpoints. The analysis also indicates that adding these additional perspectives may not increase cognitive load. Lectures include real-world perspectives from guest speakers from diverse backgrounds, reinforcing the importance of different opinions. Students greatly valued the different perspectives and opportunities to discuss ethical dilemmas. Students’ answers, following ethics discussions, indicated an improved understanding of engineering concepts. This study suggests that incorporating a range of views can enhance the topics students want to learn. Providing different perspectives can also deliver a more balanced engineering pedagogy. Adopting a decolonisation approach that recognises the past but provides alternative narratives may strengthen opportunities for engagement with other universities: creating new scenarios in engineering education.
| Type: | Proceedings paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Can Decolonising the Curriculum Provide an Enhanced Engineering Education? |
| Event: | 50th Annual Conference of The European Society for Engineering Education |
| Location: | Barcelona, Spain |
| Dates: | 19th-22nd September 2022 |
| ISBN-13: | 978-84-123222-6-2 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.5821/conference-9788412322262.1359 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.5821/conference-9788412322262.13... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author 2024. Original content in this paper is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Decolonising the curriculum, AI ethics, curriculum development, engineering education, cognitive load |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196072 |
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