Designing Engineering Curricula as Socio-Technical Systems: A Practice-Informed ST+EHoM Model.

Abstract

Electrical and electronic engineering graduates increasingly need to work with complex socio-technical systems involving technical, human, organisational, environmental and ethical dimensions. This creates a curriculum design challenge: programmes must develop technical depth while also helping students recognise interdependencies, frame problems, work with uncertainty, iterate solutions and adapt to changing constraints. This paper develops and illustrates a curriculum design process that combines systems thinking with Engineering Habits of Mind (EHoM). It argues that systems thinking can function both as a curriculum design logic and as an integrative engineering habit, while EHoM provides a language for translating this logic into learning outcomes, pedagogy, assessment and reflection. The paper adopts a practice-informed conceptual design case approach, drawing on the design and early implementation of an undergraduate engineering degree apprenticeship curriculum in a new higher education provider in England. The case is used to examine how the ST+EHoM model supported curriculum coherence, academic-workplace integration, assessment alignment and adaptive redesign, while also surfacing tensions around accreditation, staff capacity, student expectations and the balance between technical depth and disposition-oriented learning. The paper contributes a practical, conceptually grounded model for designing engineering curricula that prepare students to think and act as engineers within complex socio-technical systems.