Teaching Engineering Students How to Recognize and Analyze Ethical Scenarios

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.