Digital Blue Engineering - Course in English at TU Berlin

Contact

English@blue-engineering.org

What? - Interactive course on the social and ecological responsibility of engineers

Blue Engineering is an international and innovative seminar-style course provided by Technische Universität Berlin - a leading university of technology in Germany. It focuses on ecological and social responsibility. The course facilitates creative, interdisciplinary and sometimes heated debates on the issues posed by technology in society and in nature. The course creates an inclusive and open learning environment which offers a refreshing alternative to teacher-centered instruction. In times of digital university it enables the students to network beyond their university and even beyond national borders while exchanging ideas and getting ready to act. The course concept is already implemented at seven universities in Germany and reaches every semester over 250 students.

Who can attend? - Everyone, from any university/college

The course was originally developed for future engineers wanting to think outside the box. However, students of any background are encouraged to enroll as a diverse student body adds new dimensions to the discussion. If you are interested in the intersection of technology, society and ecological responsibility you are welcome to join the course. Profound technical knowledge is not required. As we will try to overcome any language barriers, a high level of English is not mandatory.

How is it taught? - Student-driven course design where students co-create their learning

The idea behind Blue Engineering is to enable students to shape their own learning process at university. Therefore student tutors facilitate and guide the weekly sessions, and the participants themselves involve by developing their own teaching units as a semester project.

When? - Mondays - 14.00 > 16.00

The course starts on Monday 28th of September 2020. From then on a weekly video conference will take place on Mondays at 14.00 Central European Summer Time. The whole course is online only. The last session will be on the 21st of December 2020.

Where? - Video Conference and Forum

The weekly sessions consist of a preparation via a learning platform, a 120 minute interactive video conference to facilitate a discussion based course and a follow up exercise.

The video conference is based on Zoom provided by TU Berlin
We are going to use a forum for our activities

What is it about? - Sustainability and Technology

As the course focuses on sustainability, topics such as technology assessment, engineers' responsibilities, neutrality of technology, plastics, gender/diversity and self-chosen topics of the participants' teaching units will be covered. It features one core reading namely The Productivity Worldview which helps to frame the course.

How is the course graded? - 6 ECTS - Certificate of Performance

The course is credited with 6 ECTS points. The summative (graded) coursework consists of two parts: a personal learning journal (50%) and the semester project, which is to develop, perform and document a teaching unit (building block) in a team (50%). Upon successful completion a certificate of performance is issued which may count towards one’s own studies.

How do I sign up? - English@blue-engineering.org

The course is provided for free by Technical University Berlin. In order to receive a certificate of performance you must register as a visiting student, details will be provided in the first session of the course. You are welcome to send us an e-mail to register or ask further questions. English@blue-engineering.org

Blue Engineering in short

The interdisciplinary Blue Engineering Course offers prospective engineers a look beyond their horizons and an (inter-)active approach to their social and ecological responsibility. This gives them the opportunity to become aware of their own values and reflect them with others. In addition, the teaching/learning process is essentially shifted to the students, so that they assume responsibility co-conducting own course and at the same time co-develop the whole course for the future semesters. All in all, the students complement their specialist knowledge from their regular study programs with orientation skills and competences that help them to know their role in terms of technology and society and to shape it together with others.

Learning Outcomes

The Blue Engineering seminar has five basic learning outcomes:

The students...

analyze and evaluate the present reciprocal relations of technology, individuals, nature, society and democracy by taking different perspectives. Based on this analysis and evaluation, they are able to state their personal perspective and values of the reciprocal relations and act accordingly.
cooperate with others to analyze and evaluate in a democratic process the present reciprocal relations of technology, individuals, nature, society and democracy. Based on their analysis and evaluation, they are able to work out a collective understanding with regard to their collective values and democratise the reciprocal relations.
acquire 12 key competences of an Education for Sustainable Development: 1) perspective-taking; 2) anticipation; 3) gaining interdisciplinary knowledge; 4) deal with incomplete and overcomplex informations; 5) cooperation; 6) cope with dilemmas of individual decision-making; 7) participation; 8) motivation; 9) reflect principles; 10) act morally; 11) act independently; 12) support of others
design their co-conduct their own course and contribute to the further development of the entire Blue Engineering Course.

Building Blocks

To raise awareness of and to facilitate discussion on the different aspects of social and ecological responsibility, the Blue Engineering-Group developed the idea of teaching units. These units - named building-blocks - are typically designed for one lesson of 60 or 90 minutes and address a complex issue, e.g. whistle-blowing, ethical codes, technology as problem-solver, social businesses and cooperatives. Through the use of a wide variety of teaching methods the learning outcome depends more on the students as individuals and as a group than on the teachers. Consequently, the people responsible for the course don't function as experts who lecture but rather as moderators of group- and learning-processes. In fact, students may even be included in teaching by letting them prepare and conduct a building-block for the rest of the class. In addition, building-blocks may easily be used by a group of engineers working together in a company for their own continued education.

A short description of two building-blocks may help to better grasp the whole idea:

In the first phase of the block "Greenwashing or Decision Aids - Labels, Certificates and the like", the participants get to know the "seven sins" of greenwashing. Based on this, they develop in small groups creative advertisement for a fictional product by excessively using methods of greenwashing. The advertisement is presented to the entire group and rounded up with a brief discussion. In the second phase of the block the small groups work through brochures of widely known labels and certificates and discuss if they are reliable.

The participants of the block "Technology as a Drama - Technology in Drama" read passages of "The Physicists" by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and "Life of Galilee" by Bertolt Brecht. In small groups they rephrase the key messages in their own words and use them to improvise small scenes. The small groups present their best scenes to the whole group and lead a discussion on their interpretation.

There are now more than 140 such modules, which are regularly used in the Blue Engineering Seminar and outside. They will are freely accessible on the homepage since June 2017.

Structure of the Digital Blue Engineering Seminar

Structure of one Session

The weekly sessions consist of a preparation, a 120 minute interactive video conference and a follow up.

In order to be ready to analyse and discuss during the video conference, students are asked to familiarize themselves with the building block’s topic beforehand. Preparation takes place via a learning platform. Methods and tasks vary with each building block. The video conference takes place via Zoom. Instead of teacher-centered instruction the students analyse, discuss and work in teams most of the time. As a follow-up students reflect upon the topic of the past session in their personal learning journals and might be assigned some further tasks via the learning platform.

Structure of the entire Course

It consists essentially of three phases:

In the first phase, tutors facilitate vive fundamental building blocks. That way participants get to know the general character and didactic approach of the teaching units.
In the second phase, the participants organise themselves in small groups and develop, perform and document an own building block on a topic of their choice. They will facilitate it for their fellow students and receive peer-to-peer feedback.
In the third phase, the existing groups improve the quality of their building blocks by incorporating their peers’ feedback. These building blocks are presented again and then added to the growing list of existing building blocks.

Semester Schedule

Session 1 - Introductory Session - (28/09/20)

Introductory Blue Engineering Session
100 Points - Demand on Technology Design - shortened version

Session 2 - Plastics - (05/10/20)

Bisphenol A and Plastics – Should they be banned or allowed?

Session 3 - Technology Assessment/Finding groups and pitching topics - (12/10/20)

Technology Assessment - shortened version

Session 4 - The Productivity Worldview - (19/10/20)

The Productivity Worldview by Otto Ullrich

Session 5 - Responsibility and Codes - (26/10/20)

Responsibility and Codes
first submission of learning journal (not graded)

Session 6, 7 and 8 - Semester Projects - (02/11/20, 09/11/20, 16/11/20)

students present their own building blocks

Session 9 - one additional building block facilitated by the tutors - (23/11/20)

Session 10, 11 and 12 - Semester Projects - (30/11/20, 07/10/20, 14/12/20)

students present their improved building blocks

Session 13 - Last Session - Opportunities to Network - (21/12/20)

Structure of the Blue Engineering Seminar

The Blue Engineering Course at the TU Berlin has a total capacity of 100 participants per semester. The seminar is designed in such a way that the participants sometimes meet and work together in one room and at other times they are split up into several rooms. This is done to allow for intensive group work and discussions as well as to present external speakers to all of the participants. The course takes four hours per week and covers the whole semester of 15 weeks. It consists essentially of three phases:

In the first phase, tutors carry out six core modules, so that the participants get to know the general character of the Blue Engineering Course as well as well as its content and didactic approach. The topics here include technology assessment, ethical codes, technology as a problem solver and the productive world view.

In the second phase, the participants organise in small groups to conduct an existing building block for their fellow students. By doing this, they learn how to actively organise a demanding and meaningful teaching/learning unit that does not follow conventional teaching approaches. The topics here include:"Gender, Diversity & Technology", Stromopoly, Nuclear-Power-Anno Domini, Peak Everything,"Work, Society and Trade Unions", Automation vs. Good Workplaces, Virtual Water and Land Grabbing. These building blocks are taken from the list of over 150 existing building blocks.

In the third phase, the small groups present a building block that they have newly developed over the entire semester. The topic and methods are usually set by the participants themselves. For quality assurance they receive feedback from fellow students and student tutors several times over the course of the whole semester. These building blocks are than added to the growing list of existing building blocks.

Assessment Criteria

The 6 ECTS Credit Module is completed by three exam-equivalent study achievements

the weekly learning journal serves for student’s own reflection and where the different topics over the course are connected and linked to. newspaper articles, conversation with friends or family etc.
the conduction and documentation of a newly developed building block

Evaluation

Approximately 90% of the participants state that they will recommend the course to others in a final survey. Therefore about 50% of the participants enroll on the basis of a recommendation.

The proportion of female students is approximately 25%. Particularly noteworthy in this context, however, is the fact that the proportion of female students of mechanical engineering, information technology in mechanical engineering and physical engineering is 50% higher than the respective cohort. This suggests that the emphasis on ecological and social relevance can increase the attractiveness of engineering sciences.

The teaching units developed by students are generally of a very high quality. They can be used outside of class without any hesitation. Many building blocks even testify to an intensive study of topics that are often (still) barely noticed by the general public. At the same time, there are seemingly no limits to the creative implementation through games, role plays, videos and the like.

The learning objectives are also examined by a quantitative evaluation at the end of the semester. For this purpose, the students are asked to assess their competences at the beginning and end of each semester. In almost all 12 key competences for sustainable development, the participants note an increase of about 1 point on a 6-point-scale.

History and Implementation at other Universities

In the seminar “Soziologie im Ingenieursberuf“ at the Technical University of Berlin a few students noted in 2009: "We need more social and ecological responsibility in engineering education and profession. This is our idea..."

Therefore they developed a seminar concept in a project workshop within two years. The first Seminar took place in 2011/2012 with 25 participants. From then on the course was offered every semester. In the past digital semester of 2020 there were 120 participants guided by three tutors.

In the meantime Blue Engineering has been established at further universities (HAW Hamburg, HTW Berlin, TU Hamburg, HS Düsseldorf, TU Dresden, HS Ruhr West, Uni Stuttgart, TH Köln). This Semester an international Blue Engineering course is launched in English.

English