seminar, 2 SWS, 3 or 4 Credits,
Wednesdays, 15.00-16.30, Room PK 4.4 (Pockelsstr.)
This course is highly suitable for students (at any level) in engineering, natural sciences and culture of the techno-scientific world.
This course introduces students to the professional and disciplinary cultures of engineering. The course prepares students for working in transnational and interdisciplinary teams. In addition to enhancing skills in presenting, reading and debating, the students will be enabled to work effectively with people who define problems differently.
During the 1980s only top-level managers usually worked in transnational and interdisciplinary teams. Nowadays this also applies to engineers in mid-level management. Working effectively with people who define problems differently is a challenge for engineers for which they are inadequately prepared during their studies. The course investigates the dominant image and public understanding of engineering cultures from cross-cultural and gender-analytic perspectives. Comparative studies indicate that what counts as engineering knowledge and what it means to be an engineer is significantly influenced by national professional cultures. For this purpose, it is necessary to simultaneously understand one's own - usually implicit - professional culture and to develop sensibilities for other professional cultures.