This paper describes the development of a mini-module focused on sustainability and timber engineering as a component of a strategic partnership designed to broaden Transnational Education, increase staff/student mobility, and further develop industry and community links within two universities. Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) draws students from around the world and is internationally recognised for timber construction and wood science. The New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) is a new higher education provider in England pioneering an innovative approach to engineering education integrating business, engineering, the liberal arts, and professional skills. ENU and NMITE leveraged these strengths to develop a strategic partnership that brings together staff, students, industry, and the community for opportunities that create impact beyond traditional learning approaches. This can be seen through the development of a Sustainability Enrichment Week hosted by NMITE’s Centre for Advanced Timber Technology (CATT) and attended by ENU Master’s in Environmental Sustainability students. Students investigated interfaces between buildings, humans, and nature through experiential learning based around the construction of the CATT building, which has been developed as a Living Lab. Each day featured activities aligned to identified learning outcomes and was themed around one of five sustainability competencies: systems thinking, values thinking, strategic thinking, future thinking, and collaboration. The Sustainability Enrichment Week also served as a trial for a short course soon to be offered as part of a Timber Technology, Engineering, and Design programme. This project could be a model for other universities seeking to create similar strategic partnerships and learning experiences.
This paper aims to call attention to the potential of using film in engineering ethics education, which has not been thoroughly discussed as a pedagogical method in this field. A review of current approaches to teaching engineering ethics reveals that there are both learning outcomes that need more attention as well as additional pedagogical methods that could be adopted. Scholarship on teaching with film indicates that film can produce ethical experiences that go beyond those produced by both conventional methods of teaching engineering ethics and more arts-based methods such as fiction, as well as connect ethics learning outcomes and issues to the lifeworld of a person. The paper further illustrates the potential of using Miyazaki Hayao’s film The Wind Rises for highlighting a range of ethical issues pertaining to engineering. It also discusses the important role educators play in how film can be used effectively in the classroom. Synthesizing a range of sources from film theory to the use of film in business and medical education, the paper makes the case for using film in engineering ethics education and calls for more research on the use of this method.
This article discusses two multidisciplinary courses created at the Colorado School of Mines that were developed to integrate ethics into the first-year engineering curriculum: "Nature and HumanValues" (NHV) and "Innovation and Discovery in Engineering, Arts, and Sciences" (IDEAS). In both NHV and IDEAS, our objectives are to meaningfully integrate personal and professional ethics within a larger context of integrating humanities and social sciences with engineering curricula. We teach students how to apply ethical reasoning in support of engineering solutions through user empathy, problem definition, stakeholder engagement, communication of outcomes, and analysis of contexts and impacts. In the process, we emphasize personal morals, professional ethics, and environmental ethics via literary readings and case studies that have a strong central narrative of engineering and / or environmental impacts. Students practice close reading and analysis, communication in many rhetorical modes, and evaluation of and reflection about the wider contexts and effects of design solutions.These practices, as well as course assessments, enable a focus on synthesis across learning outcomes.Collaboration between faculty from many disciplinary areas as well as student teamwork and group projects also supports this synthesis, and reflective portfolios encourage students to explore their ideas at different learning stages and to review their own perceptions and decisions over time. Our overall theory of change is to simultaneously infuse engineering problem solving with values-sensitive analysis and design, requiring communication skills and ethical reasoning at every step.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.