We are seeking academics and other engineering professionals to review the various case studies, enhancements, guidance articles and other resources that are submitted to us for publication within the Engineering Ethics Toolkit.
What you can expect as an Engineering Ethics Toolkit content reviewer:
That we will treat you as the professional and subject matter expert that you are.
That we will not ask you to review an unreasonable amount of content (our expectation is that this will not exceed two or three pieces of content per year).
That we will be clear about your assignments and deadlines.
That, once you have completed your first review assignment, we will recognise your academic citizenship by adding your bio and photo to our Contributors page.
What we expect from you:
That you will act professionally within this role and bring your expertise to the table when reviewing content.
That you will follow the applicable reviewer guidance document(s).
That you will ask us for support if you feel that the content of the review assignment exceeds your expertise.
That you will abide by any applicable rules, regulations or laws, including those regarding privacy and data protection.
That you will maintain confidentiality about the content of the review assignment until it is published.
That you will work to agreed deadlines once you have accepted a review assignment.
You can read our current Guidance for Reviewers document here.
To become a volunteer reviewer for the Engineering Ethics Toolkit, please complete this application form.
We’re excited to share with you that we are starting work on a Complex Systems Toolkit, aimed at supporting educators in their teaching of the subject. Toolkit development will start in early 2025. The Complex Systems Toolkit is supported by Quanser. Read on to learn more and find out how you can get involved.
WHY is the EPC developing a Complex Systems Toolkit?
Complex systems shape our lives and day-to-day realities more than most people realise. At the intersection of computing, robotics, and engineering, ever more technology is dependent on complex systems, from AI to biomedical devices to infrastructure.
Understanding both complexity and systems is critical to today’s engineering graduates, especially as the UK seeks to position itself as a leader in areas like advanced manufacturing and autonomous systems.
Engineers increasingly work in environments where they are required to connect different disciplines, perspectives, and skills, to understand and navigate sociotechnical systems, and to communicate complexity to diverse audiences.
Employers today seek graduates who understand not just interdisciplinary engineering work, can work with teams, and understand complexity from different fields and specialisations, but also who can work with non-engineers on products and projects and translate that complexity effectively.
Systems thinking competency is seen as critical to education for sustainable development, and when integrated holistically, complex systems in engineering teaching can align with national and international initiatives that promote social and environmental responsibility.
Accreditation frameworks increasingly refer to complex problems and systems thinking in outcomes for engineering programmes.
Learning approaches for integrating complex systems knowledge, skills, and mindsets in engineering supports educators in their own professional development, since many may have not learned about this topic that they are now expected to teach.
WHAT is a Complex Systems Toolkit?
The Complex Systems Toolkit will be a suite of teaching resources, which may include a scaffolded framework of learning objectives, lesson plans, guidance, case studies, project ideas, and assessment models. These are intended to help educators integrate complex systems concepts into any engineering module or course.
The Toolkit’s ready-to-use classroom resources will be suitable for those who are new to teaching complex systems, as well as those who are more experienced.
Teaching materials will focus on the development of relevant knowledge, skills, and mindsets around complex systems and contain a variety of suggestions for implementation rooted in educational best practice.
Toolkit resources will help educators to understand, plan for, and implement complex systems learning across engineering curricula and demonstrate alignment with AHEP criteria and / or graduate attributes.
Guidance articles will explain key topics in complex systems education, highlighting existing resources and solutions and promoting engagement with a network of academic and industry experts.
HOW will the Toolkit be developed?
The Toolkit materials will be created and developed by diverse contributors from academia and industry, representing a variety of fields and coming from multiple continents.
The resources will be presented so that they can be used in many different settings such as online and hybrid teaching, lecture sessions, and problem-based learning scenarios.
The Toolkit will be a community-owned project, and anyone can suggest or submit a new resource or get involved.
The Toolkit will be developed by the Engineering Professors’ Council and is supported by Quanser.
WHO is involved in Toolkit development?
The development of the Toolkit will be managed by a Working Group of subject experts from academia and industry, put together by the EPC and Quanser.
At the Engineering Professors Council (EPC), we believe that inclusivity should be embedded into the heart of engineering education. One of the key areas where this is essential is supporting individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. We are proud to be a supporter of the the Engineering Deaf Awareness Project (E-DAP), a pioneering initiative established by Dr. Emma Taylor, focused on making Deaf Awareness a standard practice within engineering, both in academia and industry.
Why This Matters in Engineering Education and Workplace Settings.
A recent study by the University of Manchester and University of Nottingham, published in the International Journal of Audiology revealed that deafness and hearing loss affects 18 million people in the UK—around one-third of adults. Despite its prevalence, many educational institutions and industries, including engineering, face challenges in making environments fully accessible to deaf or hard of hearing individuals. The E-DAP project highlights a crucial issue: without deaf awareness, talented engineering students and professionals face significant barriers that limit their ability to contribute fully in all aspects of their daily personal, academic and professional lives.
Gaining Momentum
The E-DAP has gained significant momentum through increased collaboration and has expanded its reach, engaging a wider audience in conversations about accessibility in engineering. This growth culminated in a recent visit to Google’s Accessibility Discovery Centre (ADC) in London, where next generation Engineering Leaders Scholarship (ELS) awardees from the Royal Academy of Engineering joined forces with a diverse community to explore how technology can drive meaningful change.
Hackathon Innovating for Deaf Awareness at Google’s Accessibility Discovery Centre (ADC)
At the ADC, the team toured the latest tech and heard a keynote presentation by award-winning EDI lead Maria Grazia Zedda, followed by a hackathon focused on developing new ideas for accessible tech in engineering.
The hackathon hosted by Ellie Hayward (leading in implementing deaf awareness in start-up environments) and judged by Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor Dr. Emma Taylor, brought together the best next generation engineering minds to tackle real-life deaf accessibility challenges. Working in pairs, they focused on how they could develop technologies to break down barriers and develop integrated technology support for deaf individuals, in both academic and professional environments. The hackathon participants came from diverse engineering disciplines (biomedical, aerospace, software, manufacturing, mechanical, structural and spacecraft) and included;
The team was supported by Stella Fowler and Professor Sarah Hitt of the Engineering Professors Council. Stella is also an Honorary Research Fellow at UCL and Sarah is Professor of Liberal Studies at NMITE, which focuses on a real-world, holistic and contextual approach to engineering.
The team also benefited from valuable advice and sustained support provided by RNID, a Google ADC partner, whose expertise supported the accessibility focus of the hackathon. For further insights on fostering inclusive environments, RNID’s guidelines on accessible meetings are an essential resource.
The hackathon sparked a wide range of innovative ideas, inspired by the ADC visit and Maria’s keynote speech, and these will be further refined in a future hackathon later this year.
Voice isolation technology for hearing aids
Projected real time captioning onto a wearable device
Real-time sign language translation that integrates with existing meeting tools
An AI assistant and digital hub for best use of accessibility settings
Looking Forward
In the coming months, the E-DAP will collaborate on a series of outputs including hackathons, a webinar and the development of a manifesto for change outlining key recommendations for integrating deaf awareness into education and industry. It’s evident that the momentum of the E-DAP will continue to build, with a strong focus on two key areas;
Increased focus on enabling deaf awareness to ensure better engineering life long education delivery for all using current tech: By integrating the latest accessibility technologies, the project aims to create more inclusive learning environments, ensuring those who are deaf or have hearing loss have equal opportunities to participate and thrive in engineering education and industry across all modes of learning, from apprenticeships to workplace based learning.
Developing future concepts and tools through direct, engineering-led design hackathon activities and more: These events and collaborations will empower engineers to innovate and develop cutting-edge solutions, focusing on real-world applications that address accessibility challenges.
A Shared Vision for Change
At the EPC, we recognise inclusivity benefits everyone. By supporting the E-DAP, we aim to create an environment where all can thrive and contribute to the future of engineering. Together, we can ensure that deaf awareness is not just an initiative but a standard practice in our field. We look forward to bringing more updates to the EPC community over the coming months.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Have YOU used the Engineering Ethics Toolkit? We’re trying to understand the impact that this educational resource has had since its launch in 2022. Understanding impact is key to our ability to further develop and expand the Toolkit’s reach.
You can help us by answering a few questions (below) and by forwarding this questionnaire to anyone you know who might also have used the Ethics Toolkit. There is no deadline for submitting this form; we are interested in your ongoing experiences.
If you would like to submit a blog post on your experience of teaching ethics or using the Engineering Ethics Toolkit, you can do so here.
Have YOU used the Sustainability Toolkit? We’re trying to understand the impact that this educational resource has had since its launch in March 2024. Understanding impact is key to our ability to further develop and expand the Toolkit’s reach.
You can help us by answering a few quick questions (below) and by forwarding this questionnaire to anyone you know who might also have used the Sustainability Toolkit. There is no deadline for submitting this form; we are interested in your ongoing experiences.
If you would be interested in contributing a blog on teaching sustainability or your use of the Sustainability Toolkit, please contact Sarah Hitt for further discussion.
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.
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
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!
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.
Dr Emma A Taylor, founder of the Engineering Deaf Awareness Project (E-DAP), Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor, Cranfield University, and Professor Sarah Jayne Hitt, PhD SFHEA, NMITE, Edinburgh Napier University, discuss embedding ethics in engineering education through wide use of deaf awareness: a gateway to a more inclusive practice.
“An ethical society is an inclusive society”. This is a statement that most people would find it hard to disagree strongly with. As users of the EPC’s Engineering Ethics Toolkit and readers of this blog we hope our message is being heard loud and clear.
But hearing is a problem:
One in five adults in the UK are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus. That is 12 million adults or 20% of the population. In the broader context of‘ ‘communication exclusion’ (practices that exclude or inhibit communication), this population figure may be even larger, when including comprehension issues experienced by non-native speakers and poor communication issues such as people talking over one another in group settings such as during meetings.
This ‘communication exclusion’ gap is also visible in an education context, where many educators have observed group discussion and group project dynamics develop around those who are the most dominant (read: loudest) communicators. This creates an imbalanced learning environment with the increased potential for unequal outcomes. Even though this ‘communication exclusion’ and lack of skills is such a huge problem, you could say it’s hidden in plain sight. Identification of this imbalance is an example of ethics in action in the classroom.
Across all spheres, we suggest that becoming deaf aware is one way to begin to address communication exclusion issues. Simple and practical effective tips are already widely disseminated by expert organisations with deep in the field experience (see list of resources below from RNID). Our collective pandemic experience took us all a great step forward in seeing the benefits of technology, but also in understanding the challenges of communicating through the barriers of technology. As engineering educators we can choose to become more proactive in using tools that are already available, an action that supports a wider range of learners beyond those who choose to disclose hearing or understanding related needs. This approach is inclusive; it is ethical.
And as educators we propose that there is an even greater pressing need to amplify the issue and promote practical techniques towards improving communication. Many surveys and reports from industry have indicated that preparing students for real world work environments needs improving. Although they often become proficient in technical skills, unless they get an internship, students may not develop the business skills needed for the workplace. Communication in all its forms is rightly embedded in professional qualifications for engineers, whether EngTech, IEng, CEng or other from organisations such as the UK’s Engineering Council.
And even when skills are explicitly articulated in the syllabus and the students are assessed, much of what is already being taught is not actually being embedded into transferable skills that are effectively deployed in the workplace. As education is a training ground for professional skills, a patchy implementation of effective and active practice of communication skills in the education arena leads to variable skill levels professionally.
As engineers we are problem solvers, so we seek clarification of issues and derivation of potential solutions through identification and optimisation of requirements. The problem-solving lens we apply to technology can also be applied to finding ways to educate better communicators. The “what” is spoken about in generic terms but the “how”, how to fix and examine root causes, is less often articulated.
So what can be done? What is the practical framework that can be applied by both academics and students and embedded in daily life? And how can deaf awareness help get us there?
Our proposal is to work to embed and deploy deaf awareness in all aspects of engineering education. Not only because it is just and ethical to do so, but because it can help us see (and resolve) other issues. But this won’t, and can’t, be done in one step. Our experience in the field shows that even the simplest measures aren’t broadly used despite their clear potential for benefit. This is one reason why blogs and toolkits like this one exist: to help educators embed resources and processes into their teaching practice.
It’s important to note that this proposal goes beyond deaf awareness and is really about reducing or removing invisible barriers that exist in communication and education, and addressing the communication problem through an engineering lens. Only when one takes a step back with a deaf awareness filter and gets the relevant training, do your eyes (and ears) open and see how it helps others. It is about improving the effectiveness of teaching and communication.
This approach goes beyond EDI principles and is about breaking barriers and being part of a broader student development approach, such as intellectual, emotional, social, and personal growth. The aim is to get students present and to be in the room with you, during the process of knowledge transfer.
As we work on making our engineering classrooms better for everyone, we are focusing on understanding and supporting students with hearing impairments. We are taking a step back and getting re-trained to have a fresh perspective. This helps us see things we might have missed before. The goal is not just to be aware but to actually improve how we teach and communicate.
We want our classrooms to be inclusive, where everyone’s needs are considered and met. It is about creating an environment where all our students, including those with hearing impairments, feel supported and included in the learning process. And stepping back and taking a whole human (“humanist”) view, we can define education as an endeavour that develops human potential—not just an activity that produces nameless faceless quantifiable outcomes or products. As such, initiatives such as bringing forward deaf awareness to benefit broader communication and engagement provide a measurable step forward into bringing a more humanistic approach to Engineering Education.
So what can you do?
The first step is always awareness. Inform yourself, raise awareness amongst yourself and your colleagues, and make improvements where you can in your daily education practice
Consider how you might incorporate deaf awareness in your teaching case studies, and consider how deaf awareness can improve the quality of your group work discussions
We’re pleased to report that we are aiming to launch an EDI Toolkit project soon, building on the work that we’ve begun on neurodiversity. Soon we’ll be seeking people to get involved and contribute resources, so stay tuned! (i.e. “If you have a process or resource that helped your teaching become more inclusive, please share it with us!”).
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.
Mike Murray, [Senior Teaching Fellow in Construction Management], discusses how he developed and implemented a teaching resource in the Sustainability Toolkit, and what he’s learned from integrating it into his modules over the years.
It has been said that ‘pedagogical innovation stems from very personal origins within the university teacher, who appears to seek to move towards their pedagogical ideal’ (Walder, 2014). So, please bear with me as I travel back along the path to where the story begins.
I introduced the coursework on Developing Intercultural Competence in my Engineering and Society module in 2015, and nine years on I am unable to recall why! It may have been an epiphany. I now carry a notepad in case I forget. I travel to university by train, and this affords an opportunity to gaze through the picture frame windows at the Perthshire countryside, and to daydream. Some of my best pedagogical interventions have been developed on train journeys, and more often than not they are informed by my readings of books and papers (and highlighting, see my penchant for stationery later!) on pedagogy in higher education. So, the intervention was not a macro-level programme intervention, it was not a meso-level case of Action Research, rather it was bottom-up micro-level, a do-it-yourself, intuitive pedagogy. No permission requested, no questions asked. Indeed, many of the teaching resources in the Sustainability Toolkit fall into this category. I rather like the idea of punk, guerilla, and pirate pedagogy (Murray,2023). However, on reflecting on the matter, I can see that my fascination with internationalising the curriculum has been a slow burner.
“We’re all Jock Tamson’s Bairns”
This is a colloquial conversational term used in Scotland to denote that we are all the same; we are all equal. On a global scale it suggests we are all world citizens. It has resonance with the UNSustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and it sits comfortably in my outlook on life. It reflects my own maxim for academics in higher education- to treat each student as if they were your son, daughter, niece or nephew. That is, I have sought to reduce the power that I am granted as an expert and to see my students as co-learners travelling the same path. This is not a case of ‘sparing the rod to spoil the child’, it is not about ‘killing my students by kindness’, it is not about encouraging student to satisfice. Rather, it is a belief that universities should not be a sort of exam factory schooling that depends on many sages on the stages. I seek to introduce my students to the spirit and soul of learning, to ‘learn along the way’, to focus on the journey and not solely the destination. In these learning spaces, students can develop habits of mind consistent with lifelong learners such as curiosity about the world and other cultures and people.
This then is an apt moment to explain the title of this blog. The quote is taken from the Scottish novelist and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson, grandson of lighthouse builder Robert Stevenson. For me, it says something about how we should look upon our planet and its people. Whilst it would be naively optimistic to suggest that our planet has no travel boundaries (i.e. North Korea) we all have something in common given we share space on our planets surface. This is everyone’s link to humanity. Whilst our cultures and customers may be different, we are global citizens on planet earth.
My Internationalisation at home
My journey to intercultural competence started long before I reached university. As a sixteen-year-old apprentice plumber attending Perth Technical College (1980-1984), I witnessed students from Uganda, Iran, and Iraq, who were enrolled on an air training course. Whilst I recall being somewhat envious of these students, thinking that they were cool and quite exotic, I know now they must have had their own issues settling into studies in a foreign country. My next exposure to international students came when I was a lecturer at North East Surrey College of Technology (1988-1992). In addition to my teaching role, I was a live in warden in a small student hostel, accommodating twelve male students each year. With students from Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Lesotho, my knowledge of the African continent was enhanced.
In my current role at Strathclyde I was involved in a European Union (EU) Tempus project (2004-2006) to establish a MSc Construction Management programme for the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Aleppo, Syria. Visting Syria, and hosting academics and students from Syria in Scotland, was a lesson in the generous hospitality extended to guests in Muslim societies. The project also involved partner academics from universities in France and Germany and all meetings were undertaken with a great sense of collegiality and conviviality. This project conveyed a sense of ‘brotherhood’ in learning, and a mission to improve industry practice and society in Syria. It was a great sense of personal disappointment to me when the war in Syria began in 2011, and thereafter when the UK populace voted to leave the EU in 2016. Of late, my students who hail from Syria, and the Ukraine (with refugee status) have helped my first-year students to see past the media coverage of their countries as only war-torn.
These episodes, and others, have shaped my professional interest in internationalisation. I have a healthy disrespect for treating our international guests as “cash cows” for UK Higher Education. In 2014 I established an International Society for students in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, with associated annual events (Robert Burns lunch) and a social calendar with visits to engineering projects. And in 2015 I introduced the internationalisation at home coursework for my first-year students.
Flags, Flags, Flags
Since 2015 the coursework has involved 147 international mentors, representing sixty nationalities*. Reading the list, I imagine the flags of these countries on poles, fluttering proudly in the wind above my university campus, a symbolic image that conveys a sense of a ‘United Nations’. Given the revised coursework brief places added importance on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) it is important to recognise the disparity that is evident in this list vis-à-vis the SDGs. There are significant complexities and contradictions in hosting internation students from countries who are at war with each other, who have opposing religious and / or political views, who hail from countries damaged by climate change because of another country’s pollution. I have to confess that to date I have avoided this arena. I have not courted conflict and sought out divergent views on global issues. I have assumed (wrongly!) that all students are somewhat neutral.
When I heard that the Sustainability Toolkit was seeking examples of coursework that integrates ESD and the SDGs in engineering, I was eager to share this resource. Now, I hope others can learn from my experience as well as from the challenges I faced in implementing it and the lessons I’ve learned in doing so.
*Afghanistan, Angola, Australia, Austria Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, China, Croatia, Democratic Republic Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia Eritrea, Estonia, Ghana, Hungary, Finland, France, Germany, Guyana, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Ireland, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuanian, Luxembourg, Malawi, Malta, Malaysia Netherlands, Nepal, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Turks and Caicos Islands, , USA, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, Zimbabwe.
Time for Reflection
Academic writing for publication is typically peer reviewed by critical friends. The process for submitting resources to the Toolkit was no different and has been subject to a ‘review-revise-resubmit’ process. This afforded an opportunity for self-reflection and to improve the coursework brief. The revised brief bolsters the link between Intercultural Competence (IC) and ESDthrough more explicit cognizance of SDGs. Moreover, given the original purpose of the coursework was to improve students IC, the revised coursework has a symbiotic link to engaging students in a decolonisation of the engineering curriculum, and for them to consider social justice and climate justice in engineering practice.
Challenges
Post-Brexit, there are fewer EU students across our undergraduate programmes. Over the past nine years I have sought assistance from students studying on our MSc & PhD programmes. However, a sizeable number of these students do not have an undergraduate civil engineering qualification. With a little persuasion, I explain to these students that they only require a general tourist guidebook knowledge of their home countries buildings and infrastructure. With the revised coursework brief putting more emphasis on theSDGs, it is to be expected that the conversations between students will become more exploratory.
The international mentors include students from across our programmes. It is not possible to coordinate the various timetables for them to meet the first-year students in the Engineering and Society class in which the coursework is assigned. I request that each first-year group nominates a point of contact with the international mentor. As I have circa twenty-two groups each year, I adopt a hands-off approach and resolve problemsas they arise. Micromanaging this process through a sign-up system may be appropriate, but it will also make a ‘rod for your own back’ and there are many other daily tasks competing for our time!
Communication between student peers, and between the groups and their international mentors can be troublesome. Despite emphasising the need for students to read their emails daily, and for prompt responses, not all students appreciate the need for professional and collegiate behaviour. This is a perennial issue, despite emphasising to students how employers value professional behaviours. Helping students to accept their agency and become independent learners is problematic if they are treated as passive learners, abused by a banking model of learning!
Some students may consider the task to be ‘edutainment’ and that such playful learning lacks the rigour they expected in a civil engineering degree. Feedback (reflective writing) suggests that on completion of the poster, these students tend to re-evaluate their views, signifying a shift in their personal conceptions of learning. There is much work still to be done in engineering education on finding time to consider student’s epistemic beliefs, and for them to build these into their Personal Development Plans!
Lessons Learnt
One key development was to introduce a session on sketching to help raise students’ self-confidence in preparing the final deliverables. Some students have graphical communications skills from school. However, there appears to be a general fear of sketching and embarrassment amongst the first-year cohorts. As an essential skill for engineers (and an important way to communicate), sketching should be more dominant throughout our programmes.
Scalability
In this example there are circa 80-100 students (20-25 groups) each year. Increasing the cohort size would not present a significant burden on the time to assess the submissions. However, a major challenge would be securing additional international mentors. The mentors receive a thank you letter for their support, and this is evidence of their own Initial Professional Development (IPD) during their studies. It is conceivable that that this may be a sufficient attraction to invite international students from other engineering disciplines (interdisciplinary) or from other faculties (transdisciplinary) such as humanities. The latter would provide an early opportunity to introduce students to the ‘liberal engineer’ with the associated knowledge of Government policy, politics, finance, and human behaviour issues.
Suggestions for Transferability
Whilst the poster deliverable for my module focuses on buildings and structures, this coursework could be easily replicated by other engineering disciplines. With modification on the subjects to be sketched, there is potential to consider engineering components / artifacts / structures, such as naval vessels / aeroplanes / cars, and wide number of products and components that have particular significance to a country (i.e., Swiss Army Knife).
No matter what adaptations you make to this or any other resource in the Sustainability Toolkit, it’s essential that we emphasise how intercultural competence informs a globally responsible approach to the role of an engineer. Using the Sustainability Toolkit to help our students develop these mindsets is a very good way to do that, and I recommend it to all educators – the wealth of the resource cannot be understated in its support to a teacher’s session design and, most importantly, to a student’s learning.
You can find out more about getting involved or contributing to the Sustainability 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 Professors’ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
We are seeking academics and other engineering professionals to review the various case studies, enhancements, guidance articles and other resources that are submitted to us for publication within the Engineering Ethics Toolkit.
We are seeking academics and other engineering professionals to review the various case studies, enhancements, guidance articles and other resources that are submitted to us for publication within the 
