École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Centre for Learning Sciences/Teaching Support Centre, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2023 Feb 7;29(1):6. doi: 10.1007/s11948-022-00426-w.
What training should engineering students receive to enable them to contribute to reducing bias, discrimination and the persistent lack of diversity in engineering? Collaboration is central to professional engineering work and, consequently, teamwork and group projects are increasingly present in engineering curricula. However, the influence of unconscious bias on interactions within teams can negatively affect women and underrepresented groups and is now recognised as an important engineering ethics issue. This paper describes a workshop designed to enable engineering students to work equitably in diverse teams. Key features of the workshop include (1) the emotionally safe, empowering and warm environment created, (2) the creation of opportunities for students to discuss and apply the issues raised to their own engineering projects, and (3) the opportunities to practice the use of both proactive and reactive strategies to address bias and discrimination in teams. The evaluation of the workshop suggests that engineering students regarded both onsite and online formats as providing useful skills that they intended to apply in practice. Follow-up evaluations suggest that the workshop leads to behavioural change, especially the use of proactive teamwork strategies intended to reduce the impact of unconscious bias.
工科学生应该接受什么样的培训，才能有助于减少工程领域的偏见、歧视和持续缺乏多样性？协作是专业工程工作的核心，因此，团队合作和小组项目在工程课程中越来越普遍。然而，无意识偏见对团队内部互动的影响可能会对女性和代表性不足的群体产生负面影响，现在已被认为是一个重要的工程伦理问题。本文描述了一个旨在使工科学生能够在多元化团队中公平工作的研讨会。该研讨会的主要特点包括：（1）营造出情感安全、赋权和温暖的环境；（2）为学生提供讨论和将提出的问题应用于自己的工程项目的机会；（3）有机会实践使用主动和被动策略来解决团队中的偏见和歧视问题。对研讨会的评估表明，工科学生认为现场和在线两种形式都提供了他们打算在实践中应用的有用技能。后续评估表明，研讨会导致了行为的改变，特别是使用主动的团队合作策略来减少无意识偏见的影响。
