Teaching the global, economic, environmental, and societal foundations of engineering design through product archaeology

Abstract

Many engineering departments often struggle with meeting "the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context" (Outcome h) that is required by ABET. The already packed curricula provide few opportunities to offer meaningful experiences to address this outcome, and most departments relegate this requirement to an early cornerstone or later capstone design experience as a result, making these courses an ineffective "catch all" for many ABET requirements. In this paper, we address this issue in a novel way by synthesizing concepts from archaeology with advances in cyber-enhanced product dissection to implement new educational innovations that integrate global, economic, environmental, and societal concerns into engineering design-related courses using product archaeology. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.