Teaching engineering ethics in the United States

The present academic discipline of engineering ethics originated in the mid-1970s when engineering and philosophy professors began to consider ethical problems facing engineers. In addition to the role played by these two primary disciplines, disciplines such as law, history, behavior and management sciences, and religious studies shaped the emerging field, as did parallel developments in other applied ethics fields treating professional responsibility, such as medical, legal, and business ethics. Courses in engineering ethics were developed at a number of universities. In addition to stand-alone courses in engineering ethics, many universities incorporated ethical components into technical or nontechnical courses. The article summarizes significant developments at a number of top engineering schools in the US, spurred in part by National Science Foundation funding. In addition, a spring 1997 search of the World Wide Web uncovered developments at a wide range of universities and colleges. Not all schools provide information on the Web. In addition, information on the Web is constantly changing and Web searches are imperfect. Nevertheless, the information provided here gives a good picture of the kinds of initiatives in engineering ethics pedagogy that now exist     

Is engineering ethics optional?

As engineering work becomes more complex, an understanding of engineering ethics becomes as important to the proper education of engineers as their knowledge of differential equations. In the engineering world of the future, a sound understanding of the theoretical and practical sides of engineering ethics will be as necessary to the proper education of engineers as a knowledge of differential equations is today, if not more so. The author supports this assertion with three arguments: 1) engineering ethics is now a mature, practical academic discipline whose practitioners deal primarily with real engineering cases, not just abstract philosophical theories; 2) engineering work is now more complex than ever, and its ethical, social, and cultural effects can no longer be dealt with on the "seat-of-the-pants" basis that sufficed when engineered systems were simpler; 3) while most engineering students come to college with a working understanding of general ethical principles already, they need classroom practice to understand and deal with the complex and subtle issues of professional responsibility in engineering before they encounter ethical problems in the real engineering world     

Conducting online course dialogue on the ethics of weapons design

ABET Engineering Criteria (EC) 2000 specify that engineering colleges and universities must ensure that all students understand their professional and ethical responsibilities upon graduation. While there are many ways that engineering educators and institutions can address this requirement, recently a one credit online engineering class was developed for the Virginia Tech Engineering Education department and piloted in 2001 and 2002. There were many lessons learned both in the development of the ethics and weapons lecture as well as the in the delivery of a course through a Web-based medium. Web-based course delivery technology, while making great improvements over the past few years, can add a layer of complexity for both students and instructors. Specific to the actual ethics and weapons development lecture, because of historical events and a changing global climate, a lecture on engineers and design of weapons need to include a discussion of ethical implications of terrorism as they relate to just war criteria and changes in technology. Lastly, a difficult but important area for future exploration would be the determination of how these engineering ethics modules come into conflict with other values implicitly or explicitly taught in other engineering courses.     

Heroes or Sibyls? Gender and engineering ethics

Interest in gender as an analytical category in the study of engineering has grown rapidly through continuing concerns about the low numbers of women in the profession. What would a gender-informed engineering ethics look like? In exploring this question, my aim is to think about how these concerns translate into engineering ethics and thereby to demonstrate that certain constructs may not serve men and women equally well. Hence, exploring such tensions and making novel connections between engineering ethics and feminist ethics can offer the beginnings of a gender-aware and ultimately more inclusive ethics for engineering. To achieve this, I examine one aspect of contemporary thinking in engineering ethics in terms of the “moral hero”. The moral hero tends to be not only strongly masculine but also very individualistic. However, as recent writings on feminist ethics argue against hegemonic masculinity and the inherent individualism it often entails, I offer two alternatives. The first is a consideration of the possibilities inherent in care ethics for a more collective and less overtly masculine theme for engineering and technology ethics. The second is a classical concept, in terms of the “Sibyl”, the ancient prophetess or oracle, which may be particularly useful in understanding the historical exclusion of women from technical disciplines, and which also may inspire alternative moral decision heuristics, although she is not a symbol that emphasizes collectivity in ethics     

Of Classrooms and Contexts: Teaching Engineers to Write Wrong

Classrooms, especially engineering classrooms, can be poor places for students to learn about writing. By their very nature as training grounds, engineering classes establish a misleading context for writing. Through the writing done for these classes, students learn to ignore their readers, to misunderstand the purpose of the writing they will do on the job, and to misconstrue the crucial process of revising their texts. Nevertheless, despite the liabilities that may hamper their efforts to teach students about writing, professors of engineering must not abandon their efforts to encourage clear writing. Neither teachers of engineering nor teachers of writing can alone turn students into capable writers. Working together, however, they may succeed.     

Engineering ethics education on the basis of continuous education to improve communication ability

This paper proposes an engineering ethics education method for students on the basis of continuous education to improve communication ability. First, through the process of debate, the students acquire the fundamental skills necessary to marshal their arguments, to construct rebuttals, and to summarize debates. Second, the students study the fundamental techniques to make a presentation on technical subjects related to electrical engineering. Following these classes, in lectures on engineering ethics, the students probe the causes of various accidents and consider better approaches for avoiding such accidents with each other. In most cases, the students can express good and commonsensical opinions from an ethical standpoint. However, they can hardly make judgments when the situations, such as the human relations in the above accidents, are set up in concrete terms. During the engineering ethics class, the students come to know that the human relations behind the case make ethical matters more complicated. Furthermore, they come to understand that facilitating daily communications with co‐workers and/or supervisors is very important in order to avoid such accidents. The recognition of the students is primarily the result of the continuous education during 3 years. It can be said that the engineering ethics education thus constructed increases in the students this kind of spontaneous awareness as well as their ethical qualities as engineers. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 183(3): 1–8, 2013; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.22283     

Applying an interdisciplinary approach to teaching computer ethics

The question of who should teach courses on ethical aspects of technology continues to be debated in the computer ethics literature. A central question is whether such courses should be taught by philosophy faculty or by computer science/engineering faculty. This analysis focuses on computer ethics instruction within the undergraduate computer science curriculum.     

Role of Engineering Schools in Promoting Design Safety

The nature of the responsibility that engineers bear for producing safe designs is outlined. and some ideas about evaluating safety levels are discussed. It is suggested that engineering schools introduce these ideas through courses on engineering ethics or technology and society. presentations made at apropriate points in regular technical courses, occasional colloquia, and brief statements made to their classes by faculty members. The importance of inculating habits of carrying out routine work carefully is also pointed out.     

Three kinds of ethics for three kinds of engineering

The phenomenon of the engineering enterprise stands within a web of contextual relationships, and the elements of (1) the engineer, (2) engineering and (3) the engineered stand out as fundamental to the engineering enterprise. Each element is contextual in the sense of being integrated into a more or less coherent realm of discourse consisting of thoughts, actions, words, things, roles and goals. That realm of discourse indicates the contexts that condition and are conditioned by the engineering enterprise. Corresponding to each of the three elements of the engineering enterprise is an appropriate and distinct type of ethics. (1) Virtue ethics is appropriate to the engineer who engineers the engineered. It asks how the engineer can be good in a moral sense. (2) Conceptual ethics is appropriate to engineering, which aims at the production of the engineered and requires the engagement of engineers. It asks how engineers can do good engineering. (3) Material ethics is appropriate to the engineered, which follows from the engineering process via the efforts of the engineer. It asks how engineering can make products that contribute to the common good in a convivial society. Being, doing and making are all bound up in the statement “The engineer engineers the engineered”. We cannot separate the engineer, engineering and the engineered, either from each other or from the contexts in which they are embedded, but we can distinguish them, and with each we can associate a different kind of ethics     

Effectiveness of computer-aided learning as a direct replacementfor lecturing in degree-level electronics

The application of computer-aided learning as a direct replacement for, as opposed to an adjunct to, lecturing is still in its infancy in higher education. This paper examines some of the reasons for its slow uptake and then describes a project to develop courseware for a large proportion of the electronic engineering syllabus within several UK higher education institutions. The first modules to be completed cover the area of computer engineering. The authors describe the philosophy and design of this courseware, and then report a series of tests in which the examination performance of students using it was compared with that of control groups taught in traditional lectures. The results clearly suggest that carefully designed courseware can lead to a large reduction in teaching time, with no significant difference in learning. They then describe the development of this courseware into what is believed to be the first degree-level electrical engineering course module to be replaced in its entirety by computer-based self-teaching. They discuss the impact of this development on the course structure, and show how the time gained has been used for additional practical work and tutorial support. Animated excerpts from this material are available by anonymous FTP     

Using history and sociology to teach engineering ethics

An overview is given of the academic discipline of engineering ethics in the United States, describing how the subject has been taught in the US, and suggesting a new method that uses the history and sociology of science and technology to teach ethical issues in engineering. Traditionally, engineering ethicists have focussed on accidents to analyze both ethical conduct and social implications of engineering. The new approach attempts to move beyond this concern with what might be called "disaster ethics" to study the ethical and social aspects of everyday engineering practice     

Making connections: engineering ethics on the World Wide Web

This paper focuses on the use of the World Wide Web in courses and course units dealing with engineering ethics and/or the social implications of engineering. Course materials and other resources for use by students and faculty are discussed and a new website, the Web Clearinghouse for Engineering and Computing Ethics, is introduced. Course materials and resources found on the Web include: ethics centers that focus on engineering ethics and/or other fields of professional ethics; case studies and other instructional materials; course syllabi; codes of engineering ethics; ethics pages of professional societies; papers, articles and reports with relevance to engineering and computer ethics; on-line ethics journals and newsletters; and primary source archives. The Web lends itself for use as a place to post a “living” course syllabus, with hypertext links to on- and off-site material containing course information and assignments as well as information on content and pedagogical techniques of interest to faculty who are developing and teaching courses in engineering and computing ethics. By illustrating in real-time the interconnectedness of information from engineering, the humanities and the social sciences, the Web serves as a tangible metaphor for the interdisciplinary approach necessary for a complete examination of ethics in engineering     

Restructuring an electrical engineering program in Quito, Ecuador

The Department of Electrical Engineering at the Escuela Politecnica Nacional, in Quito, Ecuador, has undertaken the task that started two years ago, of bringing engineering education into the next century in a very limited environment. The problems to be faced are first described, starting from dealing with a severe shortage of funding and resources due to lack of interest by government and industry, to having to work with students with large amounts of knowledge of physics and mathematics, but with very little creativity due to all their educational background. A new curricula is discussed, where there is a special emphasis on reducing student course load, bringing together classes and lab work, fully integrating a variety of new computational tools to the teaching-learning process, and giving students more freedom to choose from a diversity of specialized fields. The new Department structure is also presented, eliminating the current departmentalized organization based on three major electrical engineering fields, i.e., power systems, control, and communications. The issue of lack of funding is finally addressed, as are some of the creative ways that are being used to solve this problem     

Engineers without borders and their role in humanitarian relief

Since the foundation of the first national Engineers Without Borders (EWB) organization, or Ingenieurs San Frontieres (ISF-France), EWB-affiliated national organizations have been formed in many countries around the world. All EWB-affiliated organizations share the same vision: a world where all people have access to basic resources and knowledge to meet their self-identified engineering and economic development needs. EWB members want to contribute to new and ongoing development projects around the world in an effective way and at the same time promote new dimensions of experience for engineering students and practicing engineers. The mission of all EWB-affiliated organizations is to support disadvantaged communities in improving their living standard, welfare, livelihood, and quality of life through the implementation of environmentally and economically sustainable engineering projects, while developing internationally responsible engineering students and professionals. EWB members believe in change that can contribute positively to the communities in which they work, in common action to provide new solutions, and in working to interrupt the cycle of poverty that contributes to terrorism and the rejection of democracy. A deeper cooperation between the national EWBs within the framework of EWB-International will also be valuable for students wanting to participate in projects in the third world. This international cooperation could consist of an exchange of experience, allowing project team members from other countries and support to students from other countries wanting to utilize infrastructure and local contacts at a specific site developed by a national EWB organization.     

Aiming at a More Rigorous Understanding in Electrical Insulating Materials Research

Professors Inuishi, Ieda and Yahagi were pioneers of research in dielectrics in Japan. Their philosophy was that in order to understand a certain property of a material or to clarify the mechanism of a phenomenon, research must be done with scientific rigor and a scholarly approach. Here, the author wishes to illustrate their philosophy through a number of examples of his own research on both inorganic and organic materials and on topics ranging from vacuum discharge, through defect centers in inorganic glasses, to the water tree degradation phenomena in insulating polymers. Finally he will make some comments upon the way in which fundamental research can be useful in an engineering context.     

Engineering licenses are not for everyone

A license to practice engineering is a privilege granted by a state to call oneself an “engineer” and to practice “engineering” before the public. In most states, these are protected terms having very specific meaning to the public. To become licensed as an “engineer”, an individual has to be willing to meet a minimum standard of education, experience, and examination to demonstrate their technical competence and their concern for the welfare of the public. The educational requirement is provided by an institution offering an engineering program that has been reviewed and accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). The degree awarded by such an institution allows one to claim that one is a graduate of an accredited engineering program but not that one is an engineer. The experience requirement is satisfied by engaging in the “practice of engineering” as defined in the empowering statutes of each state engineering licensing board. The examination requirement is met by passing two eight-hour national examinations prepared by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES), which are offered twice each year. The philosophy and content of the national examinations is the subject of this article     

Engineering ethics cases for electrical and computer engineeringstudents

Rarely is electrical technology at the focus of the classic case studies used in engineering ethics courses and textbooks. This makes it sometimes difficult to excite and to motivate electrical and computer engineering students to study and discuss these cases. In teaching engineering ethics to these students, it can be valuable to employ case studies that involve technical issues that electrical and computer engineers have already studied in other courses. In this paper, four engineering ethics case studies covering topics that have been shown to interest electrical and computer engineering students are presented     

Agile software development: human values and culture

Software engineers need to know how to evaluate different methods of developing software. A group of new development methods have emerged under the general label "agile development." These techniques are sometimes called "light weight" as opposed to "heavy weight" techniques such as those based on the waterfall model. Two classic ethical techniques - utilitarian and deontological analyses - can offer insights into the arguments surrounding, agile methods. These and other applied ethics techniques offer software engineers a more precise language for articulating their ideas about software engineering issues that involve human values.     

Full course of benefits offered by the IEEE Carleton University Student Branch

This paper discusses the full course of benefits offered by the IEEE Carleton University Student Branch to all students attending this institution of higher learning in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. That approach serves as a way to gain new members and to retain current members. The member learns from the technical content of the events that the institution holds, they get a chance to network with fellow engineering students, professors, and industry representatives.