The EPC Board considered its own ethical responsibility – including representing our members’ views, supporting good practice and as an organisation – at its retreat in January 2020.

This led to the clear action for the EPC to promote engineering ethics more proactively and adopt clear ethical positions.

A key aspect of this is enabling the embedding of ethical best practice into the UK engineering higher education curriculum through creation of an ‘Engineering Ethics Toolkit’.

Please find a wide selection of resources related to this campaign below, including the Engineering Ethics toolkit (created by the Engineering Professors’ Council with support from the Royal Academy of Engineering).

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Media release

15th June 2023

The Engineering Professors’ Council today announced the launch of innovative new content for their Engineering Ethics Toolkit, an online resource that helps educators to build ethics directly into their engineering teaching.  

Created by the Engineering Professors’ Council (EPC) with support from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Engineering Ethics Toolkit addresses the issue that relatively few university engineering courses explicitly embed ethics teaching throughout the curriculum.   

The ability to tell right from wrong – and better from worse – is as vital to an engineer as maths or design skills, yet many UK higher education institutions fall short in effectively developing these abilities in future engineering professionals. The Engineering Ethics Toolkit solves this problem with a suite of interactive resources, guidance and teaching materials that aim to engage educators, and enable them to introduce ethics into the education and training of every engineer, allowing the UK to position itself as a leader in promoting engineering as a force to improve the world for people and the planet.  

As well as offering advice to educators who want to teach ethics but are not sure where to begin, the Toolkit features ready-to-use classroom resources that are rooted in educational best practice and align with the Accreditation of Higher Education Programmes (AHEP) criteria, which are the conditions for courses to receive professional accreditation.   

These case studies and other teaching materials highlight current and emerging real-world issues and can be used and adapted by anyone. The latest additions to the Engineering Ethics Toolkit include the interactive Ethics Explorer, which helps educators understand, plan for and implement ethics learning, and 30 new academic guidance articles, case studies and comprehensive classroom activities created and developed by academic and industry professionals.  

Dr Rhys Morgan, Director of Education and Diversity at the Royal Academy of Engineering, comments: “There has never been a more crucial time to ensure that the next generation of engineers have the skills and training to critically address ethical questions around issues such as artificial intelligence and sustainability. It is vital for the future of our profession, as well as the future of our society and planet, that every engineer develops the ability to make responsible and informed decisions regarding the ethics of their work.”  

Raffaella Ocone OBE FREng FRSE, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Heriot-Watt University and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, remarks: “As engineers and as educators we want to improve the world. When we teach ethics within our engineering degrees, we teach the ability to determine what is wrong and what is right, what is a mistake and what is an improvement. The Engineering Ethics Toolkit makes it easy to include ethics in our teaching. It is a treasure trove for educators.”  

The Engineering Ethics Toolkit is a free to use suite of resources, available at epc.ac.uk/resources/toolkit/ethics-toolkit   

To hear about forthcoming Engineering Ethics Toolkit webinars and workshops, join the EPC’s Ethics Ambassadors community by emailing press@epc.ac.uk   

Ends

Notes to editors

Contact

Contact: Johnny Rich
Email: press@epc.ac.uk
Phone: 0781 111 4292
Website: epc.ac.uk/resources/toolkit/ethics-toolkit
Twitter: @EngProfCouncil
#EngineeringEthicsToolkit
#EngineeringEthics

 

This post is also available here.

Welcome to the reports and studies pages of EPC’s Engineering Ethics toolkit, produced in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering. Click here for the toolkit homepage.

 

Reports:

 

Studies:

Coming soon.

Welcome to the Ethics Explorer, an interactive tool to help engineering educators navigate the landscape of engineering ethics education, finding their own path through what can sometimes seem like a wilderness. The Ethics Explorer is part of the Engineering Ethics Toolkit, created with support from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

If you are having issues accessing the Ethics Explorer below, please click here.
Please report any issues with the Ethics Explorer using this form.

 

In this blog, Dr Matthew Studley, Associate Professor of Technology Ethics at UWE, looks at using case studies from the Engineering Ethics Toolkit to engage students.

Over the last two years, I have been part of the team that created the Engineering Ethics Toolkit for the Engineering Professors Council and the Royal Academy of Engineering. The toolkit is based around case studies, which let students flex their ethical muscles on problems concerning a variety of applications of technology in different fields, and are structured for delivery with examples of exercises, discussion points, and further reading.

We have integrated ethics teaching into all our programmes in the School of Engineering at UWE, Bristol, and this has given me the chance to build lessons on the case studies.  I first delivered a session to around 100 Degree Apprentices from a variety of industrial backgrounds.  This was exciting!

We first warmed up by discussing how ‘ethics’ is different from ‘morals’, and I suggested that we could view ethics in some ways as like any engineering process; we’re optimising for moral good, rather than cost, strength, or some other non-functional metric.  The big difference of course is that it’s hard to determine moral value – how do we measure it?

We discussed if ideas of good and bad are culturally determined and change with time, and whether there might be any universally accepted definitions.  We agreed that it would be hard to argue against a course of action if my opinion holds the same weight as yours.  Not only is ‘good’ hard to measure, but we can’t agree what it is.  So what’s the answer?

The big revelation.  The advantage of applied ethics is that we can call upon an external standard which solves part of this problem for us, defining the behaviours and outcomes which are desirable. The Engineering Council and the Royal Academy of Engineering have created a Statement of Ethical Principles for all engineers, which gives weight to our arguments about moral worth.  We now know what ‘good’ is.

I used one of the case studies in the toolkit to frame an open discussion in the lecture theatre, with groups discussing the points suggested by the authors.  Although our students were from a variety of backgrounds, it wasn’t a disadvantage to use the same case study for all. Feedback from the module leader suggested that the students found the session enjoyable and engaging (apparently, I should do a regular podcast).

After this pilot we have delivered a similar session on a wider scale by tutors to groups of all our final year students.  My colleagues suggested that some students were less engaged. I think we might use some role-play next time; get them moving round the room, get them to use their bodies, get them to own the issues. Ethics should engage the heart!

The great biologist E. O. Wilson said, “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.” With more people, having greater resource needs, and the possibility that AI will accelerate our technological development still faster, it seems to me more important than ever to train engineers who are confident and empowered to make ethical decisions.

Please join us on Friday 31st March for our free webinar, where we will launch new case studies, case enhancements, and guidance articles, as well as giving you a first look at some of our other forthcoming features. If you would like to contribute a resource to the Engineering Ethics Toolkit, you can find out how to get involved here.

 

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.

“When I started to teach ethics, many years ago now, I felt alone… today we are a community who help and support each other. Together we can make ethics in engineering the core of the way we teach and practice engineering. This is why I would like to invite you to join such a vibrant and inclusive community.”
– Raffaella Ocone, Chair of the Engineering Ethics Advisory Group

Use this form to submit a case enhancement to the EPC’s Engineering Ethics Toolkit.

You can download our contribution guidelines here. Further information can be found on our Get involved page.

Note: If you worked with co-authors, they must complete this form.

For example Sarah Jayne Hitt, Ph.D. SFHEA (NMITE, Edinburgh Napier University) or Professor Sarah Hitt (NMITE)
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