**Whilst this call has now closed, you can still submit guidance articles, case studies, case enhancements, blogs, and other resources to the Engineering Ethics Toolkit. Please see our Get involved page for details.**

The Engineering Ethics Toolkit is a new resource for engineering educators to help them integrate ethics content into their teaching. It has been produced by the UK’s Engineering Professors’ Council (EPC) for the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) as part of the profession’s ongoing work to embed ethical practice into the culture of engineering. 3 guidance articles and 12 case studies designed for classroom use have been developed in a first phase of work. Explore these resources on both the EPC and the RAEng websites.

 

The Engineering Ethics Toolkit Advisory Group seeks contributors to add to and develop these resources who can:

 

Write additional guidance articles

The Ethics Toolkit Advisory group seeks contributors to write guidance articles on various topics related to engineering ethics education, shown below. These articles are meant to be overviews that a reader with no prior knowledge could refer to in order to develop a baseline understanding and learn where to look for additional information. They should be approximately 500-1000 words and reference relevant resources, especially existing resources in the Ethics Toolkit. They may be written by a single author or by a team of authors. Single authors may be paired with other authors who have volunteered to write on the same topic. See the existing guidance articles for examples of style, tone, and approach. Use Harvard referencing. 

You may propose a topic to write about, but the Ethics Advisory Group will prioritise contributions of articles on the following topics:

  1. What is Ethics?
  2. Why Integrate Ethics in Engineering?
  3. How to Integrate Ethics into a Module/Course?
  4. Tackling Tough Topics in Discussion OR How to Lead a Discussion
  5. How Ethics Links to Other Competencies and Skills
  6. Getting Comfortable with Open-Ended Problems/Questions Related to Ethics
  7. Learning Taxonomies and Ethics Education

Unless otherwise stated, to ensure that everyone can use and adapt the Toolkit resources in a way that best fits their teaching or purpose, this work will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License. Under this licence users are free to share and adapt this material, under terms that they must give appropriate credit and attribution to the original material and indicate if any changes are made.

Create case enhancements that develop teaching materials for activities suggested in the case studies

Case enhancements are teaching materials and resources that help educators to employ the ethics case studies and lead the activities referenced within them. Enhancements provide crucial guidance for those who may be teaching ethics-related material for the first time, or who are looking for new and different ways to integrate ethics into their teaching. They may take the form of discussion prompts, debate or role play scripts, technical content related to the ethical dilemma, worksheets, slides, or other similar materials. Enhancements may be written by a single author or by a team of authors. Single authors may be paired with other authors who have volunteered to contribute to the same case.

The Ethics Advisory Group seeks at least one case enhancement per published case study, outlined below. You may propose additional or different enhancements according to your background and expertise. You may want to familiarise yourself with the relevant cases in order to determine where you can best contribute. 

  1. Business Growth Models. Enhancement desired: Activity: In a group, split into two sides with one side defending a profit-driven business and the other defending a non-profit driven business. 
  2. Facial Recognition. Enhancement desired: Prompts to facilitate discussion activities.
  3. Choosing a Career in Climate Change Geoengineering. Enhancement desired: Activity: map the arguments of the three professors. Whose perspective might be the most persuasive and why?
  4. Glass Safety. Enhancement desired: Activity: Debate whether or not the engineer has an ethical or professional responsibility to warn relevant parties.
  5. Internet Constellation. Enhancement desired: Activity: Anatomy of an internet satellite – use the Anatomy of an AI case study as an example of a tether map, showing the inputs and outputs of a device. Create a tether map showing the anatomy of an internet satellite.
  6. Industrial Pollution from an Ageing Pipeline. Enhancement desired: Generate scripts for discussion prompts.
  7. Power to Food. Enhancement desired: Create a sample group project specification for developing an ethical assessment of the following activity with suggested marking/evaluation criteria. Activity: Identify different aspects of the production process where ethical concerns may arise, from production to delivery to consumption. Which ethical issues do you consider to be the most challenging to address?
  8. School Chatbot. Enhancement desired: Activity: Undertake stakeholder mapping to elicit value assumptions and motivations.
  9. Water Wars. Enhancement desired: Work up a script for the following activity. Activity: Role-play the council meeting, with students playing different characters representing different perspectives.
  10. Smart Homes for Older People. Enhancement desired: Create a sample data set for technical analysis.
  11. Installing a Smart Meter. Enhancement desired: Generate typical smart meter data so that students can analyse it.
  12. Solar for Oil. Enhancement desired: Produce example calculations in chemical and/or electrical engineering related to carbon offset and solar installations.

Unless otherwise stated, to ensure that everyone can use and adapt the Toolkit resources in a way that best fits their teaching or purpose, this work will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License. Under this licence users are free to share and adapt this material, under terms that they must give appropriate credit and attribution to the original material and indicate if any changes are made.

Develop and write new case studies

The Ethics Toolkit Advisory group seeks contributors to write new case studies on various topics related to engineering ethics. These case studies should be written in a similar format and style to the existing case studies in the Toolkit. The audience for these case studies is educators seeking to embed ethics within their engineering teaching. They may be written by a single author or jointly by a team of authors. Single authors may be paired with other authors who have volunteered to write on the same topic. Authors are encouraged to speak to the project manager for consultation and guidance during the writing process.

Case studies on any topics related to engineering ethics are welcome. Ideas for new cases have been suggested to the Advisory Group; you may select or adapt one of these shown below, or choose your own.

  1. Design / disposal of medical waste such as home Covid tests or masks, pill packaging, etc;
  2. Genetically engineering mosquitoes or other animals to reduce or eliminate their reproduction;
  3. Design / implantation of devices that control human health or biology, such as sleep/wake cycles, etc. (or another transhumanist topic);
  4. Balancing human safety in public spaces at night with dark sky or animal health initiatives;
  5. Transport issues (infrastructure, access, safety, etc.);
  6. Sustainable materials in construction (homegrown timber, supply chain, etc.)
  7. Materials sourcing and circularity;
  8. Artisanal or deep-sea mining and the connection to indigenous rights;
  9. Dealing with contracts or subcontracts with potential slave or forced labour;
  10. Creation and deployment of emotion detection systems;
  11. Issues related to competitive tendering or overseas procurement;
  12. Equity and impact of flood or erosion mitigation solutions;
  13. Responsibility for micro- and nano-plastics in the environment and human bodies.

Unless otherwise stated, to ensure that everyone can use and adapt the Toolkit resources in a way that best fits their teaching or purpose, this work will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License. Under this licence users are free to share and adapt this material, under terms that they must give appropriate credit and attribution to the original material and indicate if any changes are made.

In undertaking this work, contributors will become part of the growing community of educators who are helping to ensure that tomorrow’s engineering professionals have the grounding in ethics that they need to provide a just and sustainable future for us all. Contributors will be fully credited for their work on any relevant Toolkit materials, and will be acknowledged as authors should the resources be published in any form. Developing these resources will provide the chance to work with a dynamic, diverse and passionate group of people leading the way in expanding engineering ethics teaching resources, and may help in professional development, such as preparing for promotion or fellowship. If contributors are not compensated by their employers for time spent on this type of activity, a small honorarium is available to encourage participation. After a revision process these will be published as part of the Toolkit online.

If you are interested in contributing to our Engineering Ethics Toolkit, fill out this form by the 12th September 2022 and we will be in touch with additional details.

**Whilst this call has now closed, you can still submit guidance articles, case studies, case enhancements, blogs, and other resources to the Engineering Ethics Toolkit. Please see our Get involved page for details.**

 

Prof. Raffaella Ocone, Chair (r.ocone@hw.ac.uk)

Prof. Sarah Jayne Hitt, Project Manager (sarah.hitt@nmite.ac.uk)

Engineering Ethics Toolkit Advisory Group Members:

This post is also available here.

Welcome to the EPC’s Enterprise Collaboration Toolkit – formerly known as the Crucible Project. Here you will find EPC’s landmark project supporting university and industry collaboration in engineering by showcasing and sharing the keys to success.

Some toolkit content is available to members only. For best results, make sure you’re logged in.

The Enterprise Collaboration Toolkit was inspired by the EPC’s landmark 2020 Annual Congress, Industry & Academia: Supercharging the Crucible, which highlighted five areas of mutual interest.

This toolkit includes case studies from a wide range of HE institutions and industry partners, focusing on these 5 themes which can all can be accessed via the links below:

These case studies are aimed at:

Advisors and contributors

In 2021 the EPC called for case study contributions to build this toolkit to help our members forge stronger industry links by sharing experiences and developing resources. We were delighted to receive nearly 50 applications to contribute case studies, exploring one or more of the Crucible Projects five main themes. These submissions were reviewed in detail by the EPC’s Research, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer Committee (RIKT) and 25 were shortlisted to present at our very successful Crucible Project online launch event on the 16th February 2022. With over 100 attendees joining us throughout the full-day event we saw presentations of a fantastic range of the case studies now available in this toolkit. We would like to extend our greatest thanks to the RIKT committee for all their enthusiasm and hard work on this project, in addition to all those who presented at the event and/or contributed case studies to make this an extensive, and what we hope will be a very useful, resource.

More to come

This is just the beginning of the Crucible Project toolkit – this will be a living and growing resource to provide best practice examples of academic-industry partnerships to help you find research funding, place graduates in employment, create work-based learning and many other collaborations. To ensure the continuous growth of this resource, members will soon be able to contribute their own, or further case studies.

 

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.

The Engineering Ethics Toolkit is produced by the Engineering Professors’ Council with support from the Royal Academy of Engineering as part of the profession’s on-going work to embed ethical practice into the culture of engineering. Click here for the toolkit homepage

 

Advisory Group

The Ethics Advisory Group worked on Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Engineering Ethics Toolkit.

A list of the Engineering Ethics Advisory Group members can be found below, and full bios can be found here.

The Group was chaired by Prof. Raffaella Ocone and the project managed by Prof. Sarah Jayne Hitt with the support of the Engineering Professors’ Council and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

See our blog ‘Welcome to the Engineering Ethics Toolkit‘ for an introduction and thoughts from the EPC’s President.

Meetings

The Ethics Advisory Group met between March and December 2022, as a full group and sub-groups.

You can see details of their meetings below.

 

Evolution

The Ethics Advisory Group disbanded in December 2022.

The Ethics Ambassadors community was launched in March 2023 to continue to promote the Ethics Toolkit and embedding ethics in engineering teaching.

EPC President Prof Mike Sutcliffe introduces an ambitious new initiative to ensure engineering education is a force for good: the EPC’s Engineering Ethics toolkit, produced in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Engineering can have significant impact on society and the environment, both positive and negative.  Harnessing the power of engineering to build a sustainable society that works for everyone requires us to navigate complexity, uncertainty and challenging ethical issues.

Understanding ethical issues and behaving in an ethical manner underpins other behaviours such as inclusivity and sustainability, ensuring that individual practitioners, professions and organisations are globally responsible. To maximise positive impact these behaviours must become instinctive – golden threads running through everything that engineers think and do.

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’.

There is growing advocacy for bringing engineering ethics to the fore in engineering programmes – alongside technical skills – as we equip future engineers with the skills and mindset they need to succeed.  At the policy level, this is evident in three general areas:

  1. The UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence and Commitment (UK-SPEC; 4th edition) and accreditation bodies identifying ethics as one of the core learning outcomes and competencies in accreditation documents;
  2. The inclusion of more descriptive competencies that expand on the understanding and practical application engineering ethics; and
  3. The Accreditation of Higher Education Programmes in engineering (AHEP, 4th edition) standards reflecting the importance of societal impact in engineering.

Today we are pleased to launch the first milestone in the development of the EPC’s Engineering Ethics toolkit – a range of case studies and supporting articles to help engineering educators integrate ethics content into their teaching.

This will allow engineering students to be able to identify ethical issues, exercise ethical thinking and use ethical judgement within their projects and coursework.

Producing this first phase of the toolkit has been a fabulous team effort – the high priority placed on creating this exemplified by remaining on track and producing a high-quality resource despite the challenges faced from Covid-19.  Everyone has done an amazing job.

This would not have been possible without the generosity and support of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Engineering Council with whom they are partnering.  As chair, Raffaella Ocone (Heriot-Watt) is doing a wonderful job of guiding us – getting us off to a flying start with her previous trailblazing work on embedding ethics into the curriculum. And Sarah Jayne Hitt (formerly NMiTE) is doing an absolutely fabulous job of keeping us focused, on track and producing high-quality resources informed by best practice.

This achievement is a wonderful example of how, as engineers, we work most effectively when we work together to design effective solutions – a team I enjoy working with and am proud to be a part of.

We hope you find these resources for embedding ethics into the curriculum useful.  Do let us know how you get on and keep an eye out as we continue to expand these resources into a more comprehensive toolkit for engineering educators.

 

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.

In September 2015 the first university-business co-developed Degree Apprenticeship programmes were launched – having been designed and eligible for funding under the government’s new model for apprenticeship training (Apprenticeship Standards), and expected to be resourced via the so called “apprenticeship Levy”.

Whilst still at a relatively small scale and early stage, as at March 2016, Apprenticeship Standards are ‘ready for delivery’ at the Degree Apprenticeship level in three discipline areas – two of which are engineering-related.  A further seven are awaiting approval, five of which are engineering-related.

Some toolkit content is available to members only. For best results, make sure you’re logged in.

Contents:

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.

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