Integrating Intercultural Communication into a Required Engineering Communication Course with a Critical and Activist Approach: towards Engineering Justice

This research suggests a critical and activist approach to integrating intercultural communication to a required engineering communication course. Through a grounded theory approach to analyzing the content of the participants’ three assignments, six categories of themes emerged, which include significance of effective communication, diversity awareness and sensitivity, and learning, transfer, and transformation. The findings demonstrate that this critical and activist approach that engages students in groupwork with culturally heterogeneous peers and marginalized cultural communities may increase students’ cultural awareness and sensitivity. Significantly, the approach can have students involved in engineering-related unjust issues existing in marginalized cultural communities, and students can employ their expertise to counter the issues and enact engineering justice.