Using Small Groups To Promote Active Learning And Student Satisfaction In A Required Engineering Ethics Course

A learning experience in professional ethics has become increasingly important for engineering majors for several reasons. Chief among them are (1) ABET EC-2000's learning outcome which states that engineering programs “must demonstrate that their graduates have an understanding of professional and ethical responsibilities,” (2) the trend of campuses to include some variation of ethics as a campus general education principle, and (3) the increasingly complexity of the working world which necessitates the inclusion of professional ethics in the curriculum. It is not surprising, then, that the call for engineering schools to offer ethics related courses has been sounded by Stephen H. Unger . He goes so far as to say, “Every engineering 1