In March 2023 we published further guidance articles and case studies, as well as enhancements on some of the classroom activities suggested within our original cases. June 2023 saw the launch of the interactive Ethics Explorer, which replaced the static engineering ethics curriculum map from 2015.
More and more engineering educators are telling us that they use these resources, and are finding them invaluable in their teaching. A brave few have contributed blogs, detailing their methods of using and adapting our case studies and classroom activities, and giving an honest appraisal of their own learning curve in teaching ethics.
We would love to publish more of this type of content. We want to hear your experiences, good or bad, along with tips, potential pitfalls, what you added to our content in your teaching, and what you and your students got out of the experience. If you have students who are enthusiastic about sharing their thoughts, we would love to hear from them too.
We’d like you to send us your blogs and testimonials, whether that be a couple of sentences or paragraphs, or a full article with diagrams, or anything in between.
You can submit your blog post or testimonial here, or email Wendy Attwell to discuss your submission first.
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 â 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.
Have you used the Ethics Explorer? Tell us about your experience – what you loved, what is missing, and what could be improved. Fill out our feedback form, or email w.attwell@epc.ac.uk.
You are an early career engineer working in the civil nuclear industry for Ultra Nuclear. Your manager has assigned your first major project which involves making the plans for the development of a new power plant. To complete your project successfully, you are expected to ensure community approval for the new nuclear power plant. How will you go about this?
This case study asks students to identify and define an open-ended problem in engineering and develop a socially acceptable solution, and addresses AHEP 4 themes.
Weâve provided this, and other case studies, for you to use and adapt in your teaching. We also have a growing library of guidance articles available to support you in your teaching, and an Ethics Explorer to get you started.
If you would like to give feedback on this or any other Engineering Ethics resource, or submit your own content, you can do so here. We also have a newly created community of practice that you can join, where we hope that educators will support each other, and share their success stories of teaching engineering ethics. You can join our Ethics Ambassadors community here.
The workshop, in which over two dozen engineering educators from around the world participated, showcased the Engineering Ethics Toolkit and introduced a pragmatic approach to integrating ethics content into teaching, using examples and a detailed and interactive curriculum map, which connects the elements of the toolkit.
Elizabeth Robertson, Teaching Fellow in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at The University of Strathclyde, discusses how we need to move past our discomfort in order to teach ethics in engineering.
I could wax lyrical about the importance of engineering ethics for todayâs students who are tomorrowâs engineers. However, there are lots of other articles that will do it much better than I can. All Iâd say in short is that as educators, we know itâs important, our graduate employers tell us itâs important, and our accrediting bodies are looking for us to include it through our curriculum because they know itâs important too.
The task for us as educators then is to demonstrate the importance of ethics to our students and to offer students a learning experience that is relevant to them at whatever stage they are and that that will also offer the most impact â but as with so many things, that is easier said than done.
Getting comfortable with what the toolkit is and how to use it
I have used the Engineering Ethics Toolkit since its launch, and I cannot be a bigger proponent for its usefulness for staff or its impact on studentsâ learning. Educators are always challenged to design sessions that are engaging, participatory and have real student impact. With its range of case studies and really useful advice and guidance documents, the Engineering Ethics Toolkit does all three.
The suite of broad engineering ethics case studies means that there is a case study for a range of student needs (and there are often new ones on the horizon too). In my teaching that means sometimes I use case studies that are related to discipline-specific learning the students are currently undertaking so they can pull in technical knowledge and experience they have, and in other cases I choose something totally removed in order to allow students to spend more time with the ethical dimensions of a case and not get preoccupied with the technical.
The case studies Iâve used
During the last academic year we used the case study âGlass safety in a heritage building conversionâ with my first year groups, and thatâs pretty far removed from the electrical, mechanical and computer science modules they take. That decision was intentional; the aim was to get students to concentrate on the principles of ethics, stakeholder mapping, stakeholder motivations and interpersonal dynamics and not be âdistractedâ by the technical aspects. This was one class in a module centred around a sustainable design challenge and we used the Ethics toolkit to help students develop an understanding of the importance of economic, environmental and social factors. Working with a case study not in their exact engineering field helped students see that they must look beyond the technical to understand people â be they stakeholders, end users or community members. Students worked to make decisions on actions with honesty and integrity and to respect the public good. The students engaged really well in the session and there were some vibrant discussions on which actions were ârightâ or âwrongâ and vitally the students grasped how stakeholder dynamics and dynamics of power in projects can affect outcomes.
In comparison, for my third year undergraduate students I intentionally chose a case study that would link to their hardware/software project that was upcoming, and connect closely to learning in their communications module: âSmart homes for older people with disabilitiesâ. This meant that alongside stakeholder mapping we identified technical factors looking into possible routes of data leaks. Students engaged so well and were actively debating possible actions to take covering ethical, technical and legal implications. It pained me every time I had to cut conversations short so we could cover the full case study â so much so that this year weâre going to try and give them longer than an hour for the process.
Getting comfortable with the students in the lead
I use a participatory teaching methodology often. This means starting our 50 minutes together with student reflection, having 5/10 minutes of introductory talk and then rounds of group discussions. The students are therefore in the driving seat in the classroom â students set the tone and the pace. If they are having valuable, meaningful and worthwhile discussions and demonstrating valuable ethical discussions, my plans change. This means maybe not covering all parts of the case study  maybe skipping a stage or two of discussions that were in my plans. As long as the sessionâs objective are met, the students can write their own journey.
What my sessions look like
As the song goes, we start at the very beginning as itâs a very good places to start. That means first asking the students their current understanding of what ethics is â we did this first by using a word association activity, and asked what came to mind when they hear the term âethics.â Their answers in the word cloud below demonstrate a good maturity of thought to work from in the session. We then moved on to discuss when we should consider ethics â for us as individuals, members of society and as engineers.
What they said:
Building on from our prompting questions we then introduced the Statement of Ethical Principles published by the Engineering Council and the Royal Academy of Engineering and covering the four fundamental principles of ethics defined therein.
From there we worked with the toolkit and our case study of choice. Most case studies come in 2-4 âphasesâ, each with a bit more of the story that Iâd briefly talk over, which we gave them printed and electronically. The phases often include a âdilemmaâ for the protagonist and some questions for provoking thought and discussion or more technical work as is suitable. The questions and activity prompts that are within the case studies are invaluable to educators and students in helping design the session and for giving student groups a place to start if they are not sure how to tackle part of the story. We worked on a think-pair-share model asking individuals to think, groups to discuss, and then asking a few groups to report back to the room. One thing I want to do more of is asking different groups to role play as different stakeholders. Asking students to embed themselves in different perspectives can lead to some very valuable insights.
Getting comfortable in a room of differing views
Students worked in small groups with the case study and an important stage was asking groups to report back their thoughts. These were volunteered rather than cold-called and in asking for more groups to share I would prompt if anyone had a different view to make sure that a range of perspectives were heard. Though in fairness to the students they engaged so readily and enthusiastically that I often ran short of time rather than being left with âdead airâ.
I have delivered ethics sessions to groups of 12, 30 and 100. In all cases it is important that all students feel heard and all views and perspectives respected. You need to make sure that an open, honest, and non-judgemental tone is set. This allows all students to feel they are free to ask questions and importantly share their perspectives, meaning that there is a big onus on the educator to act as a facilitator as much as a teacher.
Good facilitation is key. Some things to think about:
Consider room layout. – Flexible seating in small groups has worked best for me. If Iâm not using the whole space I place resources (printouts of the case study) on the tables I want used so no-one is left alone at the back of the room.
How do you build discussion groups? – Will established (friendship) groups all agree with each other and therefore discussions die, or will their knowledge of each other help them challenge each other?
How can you engage the whole room? – Cold-calling can challenge a neurodiverse audience, and so you need to consider ways to include everyone in discussions, but not put anyone on the spot.
How do you set the right tone? – This enables discussions to be open and honest and allows all voices and perspectives to be heard.
Getting comfortable with no absolutes
What is vital in running these sessions is offering some sort of conclusion when there is no ârightâ answer. My third-year cohort knew that a class on ethics was in the schedule â that I was going to get them to answer Menti polls, work in small groups and report back to the room. These are my established teaching styles and by halfway through the semester the students are well used to it. What they werenât prepared for was that in the end I wasnât going to tell them a ârightâ answer.
All the students I have worked on ethics with were somewhat disappointed when in the end they were not offered the ârightâ answer for the ethical dilemmas posed. What I did do though was still offer them a conclusion to their learning. I point out some of the excellent examples of consideration and thought offered by groups to highlight themes from the four principles. Itâs useful here too to point students to where theyâll apply their learning from the session in the short and long term. For my students their future projects all require ethics, inclusion and sustainability statements. Itâs important though to also evidence where the learning will go beyond the classroom.
There are examples of cases that in hindsight there are clear cases of ârightsâ and âwrongsâ (you can pull examples of fields relevant to you, often cited is the Challenger tragedy and Ford Pinto Memo). What we conclude on though is getting comfortable with a lot of decision making professionally being in the âmiddleâ â a complex space with multiple competing factors. Engineers need to work with the principles of ethics to guide us to make sound and well-informed judgements.
Itâs essential that tomorrowâs graduate engineers understand that ethics is not a âtack onâ statement at the end of a project proposal but rather that ethics is a core part of the role of an engineer. Using the Engineering Ethics Toolkit to help integrate ethics into the core of their education today is a very good way to do that. I recommend the Engineering Ethics Toolkit to all educators â the wealth of the resource cannot be understated in its support to a teacherâs session design and, most importantly, to a studentâs learning.
You can find out more about getting involved or contributing to the Engineering Ethics Toolkit 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 Professorsâ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
“Discussing ethical issues can be a daunting prospect, whether one-to-one or with an entire classroom.”
This guidance article 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 Ethics Explorer to get you started. We also have a library of case studies, for you to use and adapt in your teaching.
If you would like to give feedback on this or any other Engineering Ethics resource, or submit your own content, you can do so here. We also have a newly created community of practice that you can join, where we hope that educators will support each other, and share their success stories of teaching engineering ethics. You can join our Ethics Ambassadors community here.
You have been selected as the Lead Engineer in a project to provide a bespoke design unmanned air vehicle to India. You identify some potential risk factors that could indicate your contractor is using forced labour in its workforce. What do you do?
Weâve provided this, and other case studies, for you to use and adapt in your teaching. We also have a growing library of guidance articles available to support you in your teaching, and an Ethics Explorer to get you started.
If you would like to give feedback on this or any other Engineering Ethics resource, or submit your own content, you can do so here. We also have a newly created community of practice that you can join, where we hope that educators will support each other, and share their success stories of teaching engineering ethics. You can join our Ethics Ambassadors community here.
Blogs should be written by academics and other engineering professionals. They can be on various topics related to engineering ethics education, including personal experience of using the Engineering Ethics Toolkit. Blog posts can be formal or informal, short and on a single topic, or longer and more considered. There are no hard and fast rules for blog content or style, as long as the theme is clear and related to engineering ethics, and the content will useful to engineering educators. You can see examples of the personal blogs that we publish here.
“Consideration needs to be given to improving our studentsâ ethical learning throughout their course or programme. We argue that ethics can and should be embedded into most modules in a natural way, giving as much or as little time to it as necessary. A more sophisticated understanding will be arrived at over time by exposing learners to more and more complex cases where the outcome is not obvious. A graduate engineer should be able to give a considered response to an employerâs question about an ethical position during an interview.”
This article should be read by educators at all levels in higher education who wish to integrate ethics into the engineering and design curriculum or module design. It will also help prepare students with the integrated skill sets that employers are looking for. Â
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 Ethics Explorer to get you started. We also have a library of case studies, for you to use and adapt in your teaching.
If you would like to give feedback on this or any other Engineering Ethics resource, or submit your own content, you can do so here. We also have a newly created community of practice that you can join, where we hope that educators will support each other, and share their success stories of teaching engineering ethics. You can join our Ethics Ambassadors community here.
In this case study a professional engineer must give advice to a friend about whether or not they should install a smart meter. It addresses issues of ethical and environmental responsibility as well as public policy, financial burdens and data privacy, and helps to uncover values that underlie assumptions that people hold about the environment and its connection to human life and services. It also highlights the way that those values inform everyday decision-making.
If you would like to give feedback on this or any other Engineering Ethics resource, or submit your own content, you can do so here. We also have a newly created community of practice that you can join, where we hope that educators will support each other, and share their success stories of teaching engineering ethics. You can join our Ethics Ambassadors community here.