Learning materials for community engagement in engineering design courses

Engineering students' increasing interest in addressing real community-based challenges underscores the need for ethical community engagement in engineering design courses. This paper explores the development and integration of learning materials across all three levels of the Environmental Engineering program at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Collaborative efforts between instructors, a project assistant, and the Office of Regional and International Community Engagement led to the customization of course materials, aligning them with the specific learning objectives and teaching methods of each course. Customization resulted in a greater breadth of unique content. While the materials appeared to generally enhance student understanding of ethical community engagement practices, topics that deviate from traditional engineering design content, such as Indigenous ways of knowing and power imbalances, were less clearly demonstrated in student outputs. The collaborative approach illuminates the potential for positive incremental outcomes in engineering education, emphasizing the iterative nature of educational reform within content-rich curricula.