Teaching Engineering Students How to Recognize and Analyze Ethical Scenarios

Abstract

Insufficient formal training in how to identify and navigate ethical situations can leave undergraduate engineering students undervaluing the significance of ethics in their future professional lives. Based on previous literature, we hypothesized that integrating an ethics component into previously established engineering courses will highlight the relevance of ethics in technical studies and provide skills for ethical decision making. However, incorporating ethics into engineering curricula is often hindered a perceived lack of expertise in ethics by engineering faculty. Further, many engineering faculty feel they lack sufficient time to assemble ethics teaching materials. The goal of this work was to develop tools for engineering professors to efficiently and effectively integrate ethics modules into their engineering courses in partnership with experts in teaching ethics. Two student groups developed resources for incorporating ethics teachings into engineering curriculum and evaluated student response throughout various classes.Phase one of the project aimed to create a guide to allow engineering educators to assemble ethics assignments based on case studies. Two assignments assembled by the student group were given to a class and feedback was obtained. A majority of students reported that they gained an appreciation for the complexity of ethical decision making. Resources for implementing such ethics assignments into an engineering course were compiled in a handbook. Phase two was focused on a joint-venture approach, in which ethics and engineering professors were partnered. The modules were implemented in three engineering courses, with a philosophy professor leading a discussion of ethical theories in the context of a case study in each course. Feedback from the students and professors showed an overall positive response.In this study, the joint-venture method of teaching ethics in the context of engineering courses was perceived to be effective by students and professors. However, to integrate ethics modules more thoroughly across the engineering curriculum a systematic approach is required with proper accounting of teaching load for ethics/philosophy faculty who lecture in multiple courses. For efficiency, an ethics case-study database with assignment and discussion questions should be maintained, and an online module could be explored with in-class facilitated discussion.

Integrating Ethics into the Curriculum Through Design Courses

“…They recommend the inclusion of ethical theory course content that specifically includes this concept, as students do not gain this understanding through a typical case study based curriculum. This and other studies make a case for supplementing case study instruction with ethical instruction that is more closely tied with course content and every day decisions [5,10,11,12]. The use of case study examples where there is a correct answer and where there is a clear tragic outcome or heroic action suggests that ethical decisions are a once in a career event of major consequence.…”

“…So, how can this best be included in an engineering curriculum? Herkert [6] recommends that systematic inclusion of ethics within a curriculum is required, and studies have shown the effectiveness of across-the-curriculum models [10,11]. Survey results have also shown that faculty support ethics inclusion in multiple courses, and propose that ethics inclusion only in freshmen and senior classes can be detrimental by isolating ethics from the technical content, implying that students should prioritize the technical over the ethical [3,19].…”