Ethics Ambassadors Archives - Page 3 of 7 - Engineering Professors Council

The Ethics Explorer is an interactive tool that was built to help engineering educators navigate the landscape of engineering ethics education. It is the newest resource in the Engineering Ethics Toolkit.

Whether you’re an ethics veteran or brand new to teaching ethics within engineering, the Ethics Explorer allows you to find your own path through what can sometimes seem like a wilderness.

Choose a path depending on what you want to do. Improve your own ethics learning? Plan for ethics learning? Integrate or assess an ethics activity? Each path leads you through content such as learning outcomes, graduate attributes, and accreditation criteria, while also pointing you to supporting activities and resources linked to the content.

The Ethics Explorer replaces the static engineering ethics curriculum map published in 2015, although there is also a printable version available in PDF form, that summarises content from the interactive Explorer.

The content in the Ethics Explorer is subject to changes in context and should be customised to suit the various forms that
an engineering degree can take. It is intended as a non-prescriptive resource – as a way of suggesting to educators how ethics might comprise a distinct theme in an engineering undergraduate degree. This version of the Ethics Explorer is focused on the UK higher education context, but it may be adapted for use in other countries.

The Ethics Explorer is a free to use resource, accessible to all. Start exploring here.

Want to contribute your own content to the Ethics Toolkit? Get involved here.

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“Educators who integrate ethics into their activities and modules may be unsure how to assess student learning in this area. Yet assessment of ethics learning is not only crucial for evaluating learning, but also for identifying ways to improve the teaching of ethics within engineering education.”

If you’re wondering where to start with your assessment of ethics learning, our Engineering Ethics Toolkit article Methods for assessing and evaluating ethics learning in engineering education offers some ideas, and these are expanded on by our Guidance and Rubrics article, and our Case Study Example.

These articles should be read by educators at all levels in higher education who wish to integrate ethics into the engineering and design curriculum, or into module design and learning activities.

We have a growing library of guidance articles available to support you as you expand your understanding of engineering ethics, and begin to embed it within the curriculum, and an interactive Ethics Explorer to get you started. We also have a library of case studies, for you to use and adapt in your teaching.

Want to contribute your own content to the Ethics Toolkit? Get involved here.

Who should make decisions about projects that affect nature on a global scale? What laws or regulations exist that govern internet constellations? What aspects of the natural world might be affected by this technology in both the short- and long-term?

These are some of the questions posed in our Engineering Ethics Toolkit case study Developing an internet constellation.

This case is about an experienced engineer leading a team at a tech start-up, and addresses two of AHEP 4’s themes: The Engineer and Society (acknowledging that engineering activity can have a significant societal impact) and Engineering Practice (the practical application of engineering concepts, tools and professional skills).

Now, as well as the activities within the original case study, we have provided an expansion on one of the activities in the form of a Case enhancement, Anatomy of an internet satellite.

We’ve provided this, and other case studies and case enhancements for you to use and adapt in your teaching. If you’re new to ethics, we have a growing library of guidance articles available to support you, and an interactive Ethics Explorer to get you started.

Want to contribute your own content to the Ethics Toolkit? Get involved here.

What is your initial reaction to using solar energy for oil and gas production? What might your initial reaction reveal to you about your own perspectives and values? What are the potential benefits and risks to implementing this technology?

These are some of the questions posed in our intermediate level Engineering Ethics Toolkit case study, Solar panels in a desert oil field, which addresses the ethical issues of respect for the environment, sustainability, honesty, and public good, and examines situations that professional engineers need to consider, such as communication, bribery, and working cultures.

This case requires an engineer with strong convictions about sustainable energy to make a decision about whether or not to take a lucrative contract from the oil industry.

Want to contribute your own content to the Ethics Toolkit? Get involved here.

“There is a great need to advocate for fellow engineers providing places to belong and empowering them to thrive in their chosen profession and career pathways. This includes people who are part of one or more underrepresented groups that have been historically, persistently, and systemically marginalised in society based on their identity, such as race, colour, religion, marital status, family status, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and age.“

Our Engineering Ethics Toolkit guidance article on Embedding equity, diversity and inclusion into a professional engineer’s lifestyle should be read by educators at all levels in higher education who wish to integrate social sustainability, EDI, and ethics into the engineering and design curriculum or module design. It will also help to prepare students with the integrated skill sets that employers are looking for.

We have a growing library of guidance articles available to support you as you expand your understanding of engineering ethics, and begin to embed it within the curriculum. We also have a library of case studies, for you to use and adapt in your teaching, and an Ethics Explorer to get you started.

Want to contribute your own content to the Ethics Toolkit? Get involved here.

We want to see ethics embedded in all engineering modules and courses, across all higher education institutions. But to see this achieved we need your help. There are many ways that you can promote the teaching of ethics within your institution and department, and we’ve listed just a few here to get you started.

Talk to your colleagues about the Engineering Ethics Toolkit.

Our toolkit resources are designed to help educators embed ethics in their teaching, even if they have no previous experience of teaching ethics. But we need educators to know that these resources exist and how to find them. We’ve provided some key talking points about the Engineering Ethics Toolkit that you can discuss with colleagues over a cup of coffee at lunchtime or some PowerPoint slides for something more formal.

Put up posters in your department.

Download our posters and put them up on staff noticeboards in your department. We have a poster for the Ethics Toolkit, the Ethics Explorer interactive tool, and our Ethics Ambassadors community. Spread the word!

Add a link to your department website’s resources.

The Engineering Ethics Toolkit is open access, and its teaching resources can be adapted to suit individual needs. We’d love for you to add us to your list of go-to resources.

Share our classroom materials and guidance on your social media.

Sharing on social media is a great way to spread the word about our guidance articles, case studies, case enhancements and blogs.

Run a collaborative learning session with a few colleagues on how to use one of our case studies in the classroom.

Often, all it takes is a bit of encouragement to give someone the confidence to start adding ethics to their teaching. We have advice on organising class sessions using our case studies; why not sit down with a couple of colleagues, get to grips with it, and make a plan?

Use our teaching materials in the classroom.

There’s no point just talking about it: at some point you have to do it! We have advice on how to integrate ethics into a module or course, how to organise class sessions using our case studies, how to tackle tough topics, and even how to teach ethics for the first time. We’ve believe we’ve got everything you need to get started, but if you think we’re missing something, let us know.

Run a training session for your department on integrating ethics into a class or curriculum.

Once you’ve got to grips with teaching ethics, you’re perfectly placed to teach your colleagues how to go about it. Tell them about your own experiences, what was easy, what was difficult, and where to find the resources they need!

Give us your feedback about teaching or promoting ethics within your institution.

Whether you feel like a seasoned pro or are still struggling to say ‘deontology debate’, we want to hear your experiences. You can submit a blog to the Toolkit, or complete our feedback form.

Adapt one of our case studies and publish it on your institution website.

Our case studies are published with a CC-BY-SA Creative Commons 4.0 license, meaning that you can (and are encouraged to!) share and adapt them, making them appropriate to your specific context. If you would like to send us a link to any adapted materials that you have published, we’ll add it to our resources.

Give a talk to your institution’s Student Union Engineering Society on Engineering Ethics.

Hopefully all of your institution’s engineering students will come across engineering ethics during their course. But if there are some modules or courses that don’t currently embed ethics, you could reach out to your institution’s SU Engineering Society and offer to give a brief talk with Q&A to discuss issues such as what ethics is, why it’s important in engineering, and how engineers can make ethical decisions. This way you are introducing keen engineers to a vital subject that they might miss out on elsewhere.

Talk to academic leadership about integrating ethics into your institution’s engineering curricula.

Engineering curricula can do more to help students effectively develop ethical awareness, reasoning, or motivation in future engineering professionals. Whilst individual educators can (and do) make a vast difference by embedding ethics across their own engineering modules, a top down approach from the institution making ethics integration mandatory across curricula would mean that all engineering teaching staff would have to embed ethics in their courses and modules. You could make ethical practice a unique selling point of your programme!

Use our open access and free to adapt teaching materials when planning your class, semester or year.

Need some teaching activities on the fly? Check out our case studies and case enhancements for last minute classroom materials that you can use when you haven’t had time to plan in advance! If you’re ready to take a more methodical approach to planning across the year or curriculum, you can start with our Ethics Explorer, read all of our advice and guidance, pick our juiciest case studies, and peruse our personal blogs.

Join Ethics Ambassadors and encourage colleagues to join.

Our community of practice is growing steadily, and we encourage you to join, and join in.

Become a reviewer for new Toolkit content and encourage colleagues to sign up.

We are seeking academics to review the various resources that are submitted to us for publication within the Engineering Ethics Toolkit. Our expectation is that we may ask you to review two or three pieces of content per year. You can apply to be a reviewer here.

Write or co-write a guidance article, case study, or other teaching material for the Toolkit.

We encourage academics to submit advice and guidance, personal blogs, case studies, enhancements and other teaching materials to us for publication in the Engineering Ethics Toolkit. Working with colleagues on this content spreads the word and doubles the expert value. You can find out more about submitting content for the Toolkit here.

Organise or take part in an event.

Ready to talk ethics? Organise an informal lunch or coffee meet up with department colleagues to share experiences and good practice in teaching engineering ethics. Going to a conference? Get ready to talk ethics to anyone who will listen! We’ve got some handy talking points for you to use. Keep an eye out for opportunities to share resources and expertise.

Tell us your ideas for promoting ethics within your institution or workplace. Email w.attwell@epc.ac.uk.

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Our original Engineering Ethics Toolkit case study, Business growth models in engineering industries within an economic system, addresses the ethical issues of justice, corporate social responsibility and accountability and examines situations that professional engineers need to consider, such as company growth, communication, and public health and safety.

This case study involves the CEO of a newly formed company that makes devices detecting water leaks. The CEO has been working hard to secure contracts for her new business and has a personal dilemma in structuring her business model. She must balance the need to accelerate growth by working with high revenue global corporations, with her desire to bring a positive impact to the communities with greatest need. By working with less wealthy local authorities, the company risks slower business growth.

Now, as well as the activities within the original case study, we have provided an expansion on one of the activities in the form of a Case enhancement: defending a profit-driven business versus a non-profit-driven business.

Want to contribute your own content to the Ethics Toolkit? Get involved here.

Elsevier’s James Harper has just written a valuable new guidance article for the Engineering Ethics Toolkit on Why information literacy is an ethical issue in engineering. We got together with him to discuss this further.

James, where did your passion for this issue originate and how can the resources available for information literacy be put to use both by faculty and students?

We live in a time marked by an unprecedented deluge of information, where distinguishing reliable and valuable content has become increasingly difficult. My concern was to help engineering educators meet the critical challenge of fostering ethical behaviour in their students in this complex world. Students are in real need of an ethical compass to navigate this information overload, and the digital landscape in particular. They need to acquire what we call ‘information and digital literacy’, specifically, learning how to research, select and critically assess reliable data. This is both a skill and a practice.

For students, how does this skill relate to the engineering workplace?

From observing professional engineers, it’s clear they require comprehensive insights and data to resolve problems, complete projects, and foster innovation. This necessitates extensive research, encompassing case studies, standards, best practices, and examples to validate or refute their strategies. Engineering is a profession deeply rooted in the analysis of failures in order to prevent avoidable mistakes. As a result, critical and unbiased thinking is essential and all the more so in the current state of the information landscape. This is something Knovel specifically strives to improve for the communities we serve.

Knovel – a reference platform I’ve significantly contributed to – was initially built for practising engineers. Our early realisation was that the biggest obstacle for engineers in accessing the best available information wasn’t a lack of resources, but barriers such as insufficient digitalisation, technological hurdles, and ambiguous usage rights. Nowadays, the challenge has evolved: there’s an overload of online information, emerging yet unreliable sources like certain chatbots, and a persistently fragmented information landscape.

How is Knovel used in engineering education? Can you share some insights on how to make the most of it?

Knovel is distinguished by its extensive network of over 165 content partners worldwide, offering a breadth of trusted perspectives to meet the needs of a range of engineering information challenges. It’s an invaluable tool for students, especially those in project-based learning programs during their Undergraduate and Master’s studies. These students are on the cusp of facing real-world engineering challenges, and Knovel exposes them to the information practices of professional engineers.

The platform is adept at introducing students to the research methodologies and information sources that a practising engineer would utilise. It helps them understand how professionals in their field gather insights, evaluate information, and engage in the creative process of problem-solving. While Knovel includes accessible introductory content, it progressively delves into more advanced topics, helping students grasp the complexities of decision-making in engineering. This approach makes Knovel an ideal companion for students transitioning from academic study to professional engineering practice.

How is the tool used by educators?

For educators, the tool offers support starting in the foundational years of teaching, covering all aspects of project-based learning and beyond. It is also an efficient way for faculty to remain up-to-date with the latest information and data on key issues. Ultimately, it is educators who have the challenge of guiding students towards reputable, suitable, traceable information. In doing so, educators are helping students to understand that where they gather information, and how they use it, is in itself an ethical issue.

To learn more about the competence of information literacy check out our guidance article, Why information literacy is an ethical issue in engineering.

Knovel for Higher Education is an Elsevier product. As a publisher-neutral platform, Knovel helps engineering students explore foundational literature with interactive tools and data.

46% of EPC members already have access to Knovel. To brainstorm how you can make the best use of Knovel in your classroom, please contact: Susan Watson, susan.watson@elsevier.com.

Faculty and students can check their access to Knovel using their university email address at the following link: Account Verification – Knovel

Get Knovel to accelerate R&D, validate designs and prepare technical professionals. Innovate in record time with multidisciplinary knowledge you can trust: Knovel: Engineering innovation in record time

This blog is also available here.

Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professors’ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.

What are the top ethical issues in engineering today, and how can you incorporate these in your teaching?

In our Engineering Ethics workshop at the 2023 SEFI Conference at TU Dublin, we asked participants what they felt were the top ethical issues in engineering today. This word cloud captured their responses, and the results reveal concerns ranging from AI and sustainability to business and policy and beyond.

When incorporating ethics into a lesson or module, educators might want to find teaching resources that address a topic that’s recently been in the news or something of particular relevance to a group of students or to a project brief. But how can this be done efficiently when there are now so many teaching materials available in our Toolkits?

Fortunately, sifting through available resources in the Ethics Toolkit is now easier than ever, with the release of the new Toolkit search function. The Toolkit search allows users to:

Choose from a list of suggested keyword tags;
Search by multiple keyword tags or their own search terms;
Refine the search results by one of more of the following filters: engineering discipline; educational level; type of content.

It even pulls resources from across different toolkits, if so desired.

Not only will this help you discover and find materials that are right for your educational context, but the search function could even become a teaching tool in itself. For instance, you could poll students with the same question we used in the SEFI Workshop, asking them what they think the top ethical issues are in engineering today, and then design (or co-design) a lesson or activity based on their responses and supported by resources in the Toolkit. If you don’t find resources for a particular issue, that could be a great learning opportunity to0 – why might these topics not be addressed? Of course, you can always create a resource that fills a gap and submit it to be a part of the Toolkit: we would love to see a student-developed case study or activity.

Let us know how you have used the Toolkit search function, and if there are ways we could improve it. Happy searching!

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