Integrative Learning toward Social Responsibility in Teaching Engineering

Abstract

Technical University of Madrid, within the Spanish context, has profited of the introduction of a System of Internal Quality Assurance to build a road on the grounds of previous work on the culture of ethics in engineering. This way may drive the students training to incorporate in their curricula instruments leading to the recognition and acquisition of social responsibility. The road is paved with various educational elements, either mandatory such as the Mentoring project (aiming to minimize the gap in the transit between high school and university from a logistical point of view), or optional such a set of three: Monitoring (a system of academic support for improving the performance of in the students in their learning outcomes when face difficulties), Service Learning and Social Entrepreneurship, Ethics and Values in Engineering. This strategy combined with the convergence to the European Higher Education Area allows the selection of students able to integrate in their professional assets the idea and the commitment of making the human development more sustainable.

Integrative Learning Toward Social Responsibility in Teaching Engineering

“…This has been carried out under the umbrella of specific consequentialist ethics, which has been developed and adopted to meet the vision and mission of UESEVI. The resulting applied ethics, named interethics, is a hybrid sustained on the principles of an ethics of responsibility (and commitment), while its dynamics stands in a case by case, cost-benefit analysis taking into account the ethical dimensions of the actors involved to get social sustainable action (Martín-Sánchez et al, 2016). The UESEVI team works to educate people in values that may adapt their professional performance towards a social leadership in the general field of education as well as in the case of engineering students.…”

“…However the evolution of the teaching ethics program in the ETSIME-UPM under the Spanish context revealed the need to introduce changes from the model along the path. The initial proposal was turned out into the integrative learning toward social responsibility for introducing in teaching engineering as illustrated in this chapter and in its previous version (Martín-Sánchez et al, 2016) The ETSIME-UPM approaches the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed for 2030, through the quality assurance in the universities (EHEA) that is articulated through the System of Internal Quality Assurance (SIQA). These systems are validated by different national, European and global agencies, through the achievement of different criteria, among which are the ethical and social criteria that are developed in the activities and itineraries proposed in this article.…”