WIP: Towards Human-Centered Engineering: Integrating Engineering Psychology Early in the Engineering Curriculum through General Education

This work in progress innovative practice paper describes a new course, Introduction to Engineering Psychology, designed to introduce engineering students to concepts of human factors and human-centered design early in the curriculum through a general education course. Conceived as an alternative to Introduction to Psychology (a staple of general education programs), the course focuses on human perception, cognition, and action applied to the design of technology. This paper expands upon the motivation for the course, the curriculum, and the preliminary outcomes. It concludes with a discussion of how general education curricula might be re-designed to better complement engineering and computing, helping students to draw connections between courses in the social sciences, humanities, and arts with their own discipline to more effectively address the problems facing society in a technology-enhanced world.