Work in Progress: Teaching Science Fiction to Engineering Students

This presentation describes a course in science fiction for engineering students that encourages participants to use imaginative literature as a scenario for examining the many contextual issues of technological progress. The pedagogy of the course comes from conjoining of Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives and William Perry's Scheme of Intellectual Development. The talk includes samples of assignments derived from the combination of Bloom's and Perry's educational models. Appropriate works of science fiction have been selected so as to illustrate four topic areas: (1) globalization and cultural sensitivity, (2) environmental interdependencies, (3) reciprocity between society and technology, and (4) qualities of leadership