Here’s How I’m Trying to Cultivate Socio-Technical Builders
Sharing a few ideas with hopes that they might apply in your contexts too
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The semester at Harvey Mudd wrapped up last week. I still have a bunch of grading to do, but rather than put my nose to the grindstone 24/7 to finish it up, I’m procrastinating by reflecting on this semester and planning for the next one.
As I continue to teach, one thing that’s become abundantly clear to me is the importance of character and imagination in the leaders shaping our world. However, these traits are often seen as byproducts rather than the primary outcomes of our courses, even if they are listed among the high-level desired outcomes of our programs. We spend a lot of time building a solid foundation of technical proficiency on which to build a career.
But the question remains, what career will our students build? This answer to this question is not shaped primarily by one’s resume but by one’s dreams.
To be sure there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The reality is that an optimal career is a one-size-fits-one kind of solution. But some general themes shape our aspirations.
For example, most students at Mudd are drawn, at least in part, by the institution's mission.
Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities, social sciences and the arts so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.
Students at Mudd are builders and they want to be part of building a better world. But what exactly is a better world? And how do we build it?
Socio-technical thinking as a foundation for building a better world
Our better world starts by examining our values and our dreams. What is our vision of the good and what is our place in moving toward it? As I think about my own work and classes, I want to make more and more space to talk about these visions and the societal impact of the work I’m training my students to do, even as I am training them to do it with excellence.
Unfortunately, there’s always a catch: if we want to put our money where our mouth is, we’ll need to sacrifice some technical content to make room to examine its societal impact. The standard engineering class curriculum is already subject to a thousand constraints that restrict the breadth and depth of the content that can be included. But if we choose not to devote time and energy to explore questions of societal impact, our students will get the message. They watch what we do at least as closely as they listen to what we say.
The societal impact if our work may be important to us, but if we don’t make it a priority in class, there is no conclusion to be made besides the obvious one: this material is less important than the technical stuff.
You might argue that a class on embedded systems is not the place for these kinds of questions. Perhaps we should focus only on the technical content. That argument is not without merit. There is certainly a place for this content to be covered in depth in humanities courses that focus on philosophy, history, and the far too undervalued field of science, technology, and society (STS). There are scholars who have devoted their entire careers to studying these issues and we should certainly not pretend that those of us who are outside that field can represent the fullness that is available in a course dedicated to that area.
And yet, we ought not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are plenty of opportunities to spark curiosity in our students about these topics and to invite them into deeper study.
Five ideas for integrating socio-technical thinking into your classes
As I think about next semester, here are several ways I’m thinking about deepening my students’ engagement with these ideas:
Engage current news and world events: Questions about the societal impact of technology are on the front page of the news almost every day. What are the ethical issues surrounding generative AI and energy, labor, and intellectual property? (There are many.) What are the challenges in the sourcing of the rare earth metals like lithium that power all of our electronics? There’s no need to have an answer to these complex questions, but just the simple step of posing them together can stimulate fruitful dialogue.
The history of the topics we teach. Who discovered the fundamental ideas and concepts we are learning? When were they discovered and what prompted the discovery? What inventions were downstream of those discoveries and what impact have those inventions had on our world? Taking a few minutes to talk about the people and places behind what we do can help remind us that our current didn’t come from nowhere. It was, like our future will be, the product of humans who had a dream.
Case studies. Case studies get a bad rap, mostly because they can feel dated. There are a set of classic case studies like the Challenger disaster, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse, the Ford Pinto fuel tank design flaw, and the Hyatt Regency Walkway collapse among others. Despite their age, these cases present many good questions for us to grapple with. There are many opportunities to think creatively about how we might engage students with them. The Havard Business School Carter Racing case study is one example, mapping the underlying data from a familiar study onto a new context that disarms whatever preconceived answers students may come to the case study with from background knowledge. (h/t to
for introducing me to that one in Chapter 11 of Range).Zoom in an expert. One of the wonders of our modern age is that almost anyone in the world is only an email away. Even better than that, many are willing to join your class over Zoom to give a guest lecture (I had two fantastic lectures at the end of my class this fall facilitated just by asking). Hearing the stories of professionals who have grappled with these issues in their own work has a way of making these questions come alive to students.
Personal low-stakes reflections. This idea requires more buy-in from students to work, but you might be surprised by how students will engage with these ideas if you give them an appropriate container within which to do so. I experimented this fall with asking my students to write weekly reflection blog posts. I was pleased with the results and the effort they put into them. Sometimes the most important thing is to give students the right venue to express their thoughts in a way that fosters authentic engagement (for example, by grading based on completion rather than a more stringent rubric). I’m considering how to experiment with this idea again in the spring to help students in my sophomore-level experimental engineering class reflect on their learning and engage with the societal impact of the tools we’re learning.
While this is a non-exhaustive list, I hope it might spark your thinking about how you might integrate socio-technical thinking into your contexts. If you are looking for some readings, assign some Neil Postman, Marshall McLuhan, or Ursula Franklin.
Our future will need a new generation of STEM leaders. I hope they’ll not only be smart but wise, equipped with the socio-technical tools to understand the technical merits of the work they do along with its impact on society.
Reading Recommendations
channels a warning from his newsletter’s namesake Ivan Illich to remind us of the importance of humility and awareness in our work to make the world a better place. 
If you didn’t already know it,
is sharp. If you don’t already read his Substack , you should. His most recent piece on the political economy of AI is the latest argument why.
The Book Nook
Working on a bit of a writing tune-up over the break so I picked up Everbody Writes by Ann Handley. Been enjoying it so far.
The Professor Is In
My students’ E155 final portfolio websites are in and posted. You can find them on the project page here and I’ve included the list below.
They all recorded short video demos of their projects, so I think you’ll enjoy checking them out!
Leisure Line
Harvey Mudd has a great program called the Leonard Fund which supports meals for student-faculty interactions in small groups. Last week a group of students from E155 invited me out for lunch. We had a great time at Daddyji in Claremont.
Still Life
Still drinking in the views of the skyline from Little Island during my trip to NYC. No place like New York.
I love this! As someone who started from a pure humanities background, your point about wisdom and imagination being as crucial as technical skills really hits home. I actually just launched a Substack called "The Humanist's Guide to AI" because I kept seeing this exact need - helping bridge the gap between technical development and human understanding.
Your blog assignment experiment particularly caught my eye. I'm finding that creating spaces for reflection, whether in the classroom or through writing, helps people process these massive technological changes in more thoughtful ways. Would love to hear more about how your students responded to having that space to think through the human side of their technical work.
Feel free to check out what we're exploring at The Humanist's Guide if you're interested in joining these conversations! Your perspective on building socio-technical thinking into STEM education would be really valuable.
I love the idea of bringing current events discussions into the classroom. I think this fundamental for helping students understand how the creation of new technologies ends up playing out in the real world (science & tech in society).
Among the many problems with tech today are 3 that stand out in my mind:
1. The tension between the interest of tech creators and that of tech users: As a case in point, Zuckerberg knows that his platform creates a lot of problems, especially among younger folks. Yet, he’s adamantly resisted making changes that would alleviate the problems he’s causing because that would not be in his own best financial interest.
2. The tension between ought and is: There are many frictions in the world that are at best uncomfortable and at worst painful. Yet, working through these frictions is how we grow as people. Many technologies have been created that eliminate frictions from everyday life prevent us from personal growth. Josh, your recent article discussing how to get your students to undertake difficult tasks that will help them learn, rather than simply having LLM do those tasks for them is on point.
3. Not thinking through the second order effects: Too many tech developers don’t think through all the probable first-, second-order effects of their technologies which may create positive direct effects, but much larger negative indirect effects. One example that comes to mind is pre-packaged individual servings of everything. While it saves on time to buy a bag of, say, individually packaged snack items, the excessive resource costs of all the extra packaging are socially wasteful. Part of the problem here is that people tend to value convenience above all, despite the potential negative tradeoffs the added convenience require.