Exploring new technology's meaning for a sustainable future via collaborative science-fiction prototyping: A novel method for the engineering curriculum

In technology management and engineering, university students learn how to drive technology, develop new solutions and bring them to market. Once they enter the labor force, they develop a vital part of the solutions available for shaping a sustainable future for our society. But technology cannot be considered apart from the inter-disciplinary systems it is embedded in. Therefore, universities need to equip their students with the skills and drive necessary to reflect on new technology's interplay with our society, incorporating this holistic awareness into their work process. How can they enable these tech-workers-to-be to integrate a sustainability mindset into the development of novel technologies right from the start, empowering them to contribute to a desirable future as efficacious members of our society? This paper presents a collaborative learning format (and accompanying analysis and evaluation) developed for students from various disciplines and semesters at the University of Stuttgart, aiming to provide guidelines for educators to use. Through combining science-fiction prototyping and storytelling games, students learn how to approach complex problems in the context of the factory of the future and its associated technologies, developing their own sustainable "worlds". Students cooperatively explore futuristic ideas, reflecting on their implications on a societal as well as technological level, which facilitates holistic solution-finding and communication skills for complex questions of our common future.