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. Since then the Toolkit has continued to grow.
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 feedback, testimonials or blogs, whether that be a couple of sentences or paragraphs, or a full article with diagrams, or anything in between.
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.
Authors: Dr. Jude Bramton (University of Bristol); Elizabeth Robertson (University of Strathclyde); Sarah Jayne Hitt, Ph.D. SFHEA (NMITE, Edinburgh Napier University).
Keywords: Collaboration; Pedagogy.
Who is this article for?: 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.
How to organise class sessions:
Engineering educators can find a wealth of ethics case studies in the Engineering Ethics Toolkit. Each one focuses on different disciplines, different areas of ethics learning, and different professional situations, meaning there is almost certainly a case study that could be embedded in one of your classes.
Even so, it can be difficult to know how to organise the delivery of the session. Fortunately, Toolkit contributors Jude Bramton of the University of Bristol and Elizabeth Robertson of the University of Strathclyde have put together diagrams that demonstrate their approaches. These processes can act as helpful guides for you as you integrate an Ethics case study in one of your engineering class sessions.
Jude Bramton’s class session organisation looks like this:
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.
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 today’s students who are tomorrow’s engineers. However, there are lots of other articles that will do it much better than I can. All I’d say in short is that as educators, we know it’s important, our graduate employers tell us it’s important, and our accrediting bodies are looking for us to include it through our curriculum because they know it’s 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 – 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 students’ 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 I’ve used
During the last academic year we used the case study ‘Glass safety in a heritage building conversion’ with my first year groups, and that’s 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 ‘distracted’ 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 – 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 ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ 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: ‘Smart homes for older people with disabilities’. 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 – so much so that this year we’re 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 – 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 session’s 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 it’s a very good places to start. That means first asking the students their current understanding of what ethics is – we did this first by using a word association activity, and asked what came to mind when they hear the term ‘ethics.’ 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 – 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 ‘phases’, each with a bit more of the story that I’d briefly talk over, which we gave them printed and electronically. The phases often include a ‘dilemma’ 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 ‘dead air’.
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 I’m 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 ‘right’ answer. My third-year cohort knew that a class on ethics was in the schedule – 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 weren’t prepared for was that in the end I wasn’t going to tell them a ‘right’ answer.
All the students I have worked on ethics with were somewhat disappointed when in the end they were not offered the ‘right’ 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. It’s useful here too to point students to where they’ll 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. It’s 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 ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ (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 ‘middle’ – 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.
It’s essential that tomorrow’s graduate engineers understand that ethics is not a ‘tack on’ 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 – 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 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 Professors’ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
The workshop 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.
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.
This call for contributions has now closed. However, if you wish to develop materials to contribute, become a reviewer, or suggest links to online resources that we can add to our growing database of engineering education resources for sustainability, please see our Get Involved page for updated guidance and contact details.
Background
Building capacities of educators and trainers is Priority Action Area 3 in UNESCO’s roadmap of Education for Sustainable Development. While many excellent resources explain the sustainability knowledge, skills, and mindsets essential for 21st century engineers, very few resources exist that support engineering educators to integrate these into their teaching in a comprehensive and effective way or indeed to upskill educators to be able to deliver this teaching.
To address this gap, a Sustainability Toolkitis being developed by the Engineering Professors’ Council with support from Siemens and the Royal Academy of Engineering. Its development is guided by a Steering Group comprised of academic, industry, and advocacy organisation experts.
If you have already registered an interest and we are expecting your submission, please do submit your contributions using this form by 3rd November 2023. If you wish to develop materials to contribute beyond this, we will be opening the next cycle in early 2024. However, if you wish to become a reviewer or suggest links to pages or online resources that we can add to our growing database of engineering education resources for sustainability, please contact us via sustainability@epc.ac.uk.
The Sustainability Steering Group seeks contributors to develop resources for inclusion in the toolkit. These resources will fit into two categories (Click on the arrows to expand the sections):
(1) Write guidance articles (Submit a guidance article)
The Sustainability Toolkit Steering Group seeks contributors to write guidance articles. These articles should connect the why (why must sustainability issues be central in engineering education?) to the how (how can this be done efficiently and effectively?).Through these tools, we aim to help upskill UK engineering educators so that they feel capable of and confident in integrating sustainability into their engineering teaching. Particularly, we invite guidance articles that explain the connection between engineering and sustainability. These may have the following foci:
1. An overview of why sustainability issues and the SDGs are entangled within engineering projects, products, and processes.
2. Explanations of the connections between sustainability issues and specific engineering disciplines such as Chemical, Mechanical, Electrical, Computing.
3. An explanation of how sustainability concerns are linked to different stages of the engineering process such as the design/concept stage, the manufacturing/production stage, the disposal/reuse stage, etc.
4. Explanations of the connections between sustainability in engineering and:
a. Legal, regulatory, policy, and/or political issues.
b. Ethical issues and/or engineering ethics.
c. Issues of equality, diversity, and inclusion.
5. An explanation of this new conception of engineering “from hubris to humility”.
6. Examples of how sustainability has been woven into a conventional subject.
Step 1: Read the guidance for submitting a guidance article
Guidance #1: Research Guidance #2: OverviewGuidance #3: PurposeGuidance #4: ContentGuidance #5: References and resourcesGuidance #6: Format
Research:
Before you begin, you may want to review guidance articles that form a part of the EPC’s Ethics Toolkit, since we hope that contributions to the Sustainability Toolkit will be fairly consistent in length, style, and tone.
Guidance articles are meant to be overviews that a reader with no prior knowledge of sustainability could refer to in order to develop a baseline understanding and learn where to look for additional information. They should be understandable to students as well—imagine that an educator might excerpt content from the article to provide their students context on a project or learning activity.
They should be approximately 500-1000 words and reference relevant open-source resources.
Overview:
The articles are meant to be able to stand on their own as a piece of guidance on a topic; they are also meant to work alongside other guidance articles so that taken together they form a sort of sustainability in engineering handbook.
Purpose:
Each article should inform, explain, and provide guidance on the topics. Put yourself in the perspective of an engineering educator who is new to sustainability.
Content:
The content of the article should be organised and well developed. That is, it should be presented in a logical way and thoroughly explained. Please click here for more details on the content that we’re seeking.
References and resources:
Where additional explanation could be given, it might point to other resources, and where information is presented from another source, it needs to be properly referenced.
Format
Guidance articles should follow this format:
Premise
Body of article, divided up into headed sections as necessary.
Does the article both make sense as a single piece of guidance as well as fit in with the rest of the articles to be developed?
Would someone new to sustainability understand the information presented and would it help them?
Do you need to expand on any ideas or reorganise them to make them clearer?
What additional resources or references have you included?
Before you submit your contribution, have you registered as a contributor? If not, please register your interest here.
Step 3: Submitting your guidance article
Guidance articles should be submitted in Word file format (.doc / .docx). Any corresponding images should be submitted in either (.jpeg, .jpg or .png)
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 4.0 International 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.
You may download a PDF version of the guidelines (as outlined in Step 1) here.
Please submit your guidance article by clicking the following button:
(2) Develop teaching tools such as case studies, project briefs and technical tools (Submit a teaching tool)
The Sustainability Toolkit Steering Group seeks contributors to develop teaching tools such as case studies, project briefs and technical tools. These tools should explain pedagogies and teaching methods through resources (e.g. case studies, project briefs, and technical tools) that provide examples of the ways that sustainability issues can be embedded within technical problems and engineering practice. Through these tools, we aim to help upskill UK engineering educators so that they feel capable of and confident in integrating sustainability into their engineering teaching. Section Aprovides details about submitting a case study, Section Bprovides details about submitting a project brief, Section Cprovides details about submitting a technical tool.
SECTION A
Step 1: Read the guidance for submitting a case study
Guidance #1: Research Guidance #2: Overview Guidance #3: Authenticity Guidance #4: Complexity of issue Guidance #5: Activities and resourcesGuidance #6: Educational levelGuidance #7: Format
Research
You may develop the case in any way you see fit, but you should mimic the length, style, and tone of existing case studies found in the EPC’s Ethics Toolkit (scroll to the bottom of this page to view the subset of case studies from the EPC’s Ethics Toolkit which feature themes related to sustainability). While sustainability cases may not have the same learning outcomes as ethics cases, the format and approach should be similar. Remember that the audience for these case studies is educators seeking to embed sustainability within their engineering teaching.
The case study should be presented as a narrative about a sustainability issue in engineering. This issue should allow educators to address large-scale concerns (the SDGs and/or social, regulatory, economic, or environmental concerns) as well as small-scale concerns (individual issues such as personal choices, daily practice, relationships, etc.). Additionally, there should be enough emphasis on the engineering part of the case so that technical material could be introduced. Further ideas for case study topics could include approaches for maintaining / mending rather than new products, e.g. right to repair, up-to-date case studies from industry, understanding the sustainability implications within educational practice (e.g. 3D printing, cloud use, energy, whiteboards), etc.
Case studies are most effective when they feel like they are realistic, with characters that you can identify or empathise with, and with situations that do not feel fake or staged. Giving characters names and backgrounds, including emotional responses, and referencing real-life experiences help to increase authenticity.
Complexity of issue
Many cases are either overly complicated so that they become overwhelming, or so straightforward that they can be “solved” quickly. A good strategy is to try to develop multiple dimensions of a case, but not too many that it becomes unwieldy. Additionally, complexity can be added through different parts of the case so that instructors can choose a simpler or more complicated version depending on what they need in their educational context.
Activities and resources
You should provide a variety of suggestions for activities to engage learners as well as resources to both help educators prepare and to enhance students’ learning.
Educational level
When writing your case study, you should consider which level it is aimed at. A Beginner-level case is aimed at learners who have not had much experience in engaging with complex sustainability topics, and usually focuses on only one or two dimensions of a dilemma. An Advanced-level case is aimed at learners who have had previous practice in engaging with sustainability issues, and often addresses multiple levels of complexity. An Intermediate case is somewhere in between.
Format
The case study should follow the following format:
Learning and teaching notes: This is an overview of the case and its dilemma, and how it relates to AHEP’s themes.
Learning and teaching resources: You should provide a list of reliable, authoritative open-source online resources that relate to the case and its issue(s). These can be from a variety of sources, such as academic institutions, journals, news websites, business, and so on. We suggest a minimum of five sources that help to provide context to the case and its issues. You may want to flag up certain resources as suggested pre-reading for certain parts of the case, if you feel that this will enrich the learning experience.
Summary: This sets out the case’s initial situation and characters.
Issue – Part one: This elaborates on the case and provides a dilemma for the character.
Questions and activities: This is where you provide suggestions for discussions and activities related to the case and the dilemma.
Further issues: Some case studies are sufficiently complex at one dilemma, but if the case requires it you can provide further parts (up to a maximum of three).
Further questions and activities: After each part, you should provide further suggestions for discussions and activities related to the case and the issues.
If possible, suggest assessment opportunities for activities within the case, such as marking rubrics or example answers.
Step 2: Before you submit, review this checklist:
Is there a strong narrative to the case?
Can the topic be addressed at both a large and small scale?
Are there places where technical topics could be integrated?
Does the case have authentic characters and situations?
Is there a clear dilemma in the case?
Does the case provide enough complexity to challenge users, but not so much that people might avoid engaging with it?
Are there sufficient activities and resources suggested?
Before you submit your contribution, have you registered as a contributor? If not, please register your interest here.
Step 3: Submitting your case study
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 4.0 International 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.
Case studies should be submitted in Word file format (.doc / .docx). Any corresponding images should be submitted in either (.jpeg, .jpg or .png)
You may download a PDF version of the guidelines (as outlined in Step 1) here.
Please submit your case study via the following button:
Step 1: Read the guidance for submitting a project brief
Guidance #1: Overview
Guidance for project briefs will be added in due course. Please check back soon. If you have any additional questions please contact s.hitt@epc.ac.uk or c.nwagboso@epc.ac.uk.
Step 2: Before you submit, review this checklist:
A checklist for project briefs will be added in due course. Please check back soon. If you have any additional questions please contact s.hitt@epc.ac.uk or c.nwagboso@epc.ac.uk.
Before you submit your contribution, have you registered as a contributor? If not, please register your interest here.
Step 3: Submitting your project brief
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 4.0 International 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.
Project brief’s should be submitted in Word file format (.doc / .docx). Any corresponding images should be submitted in either (.jpeg, .jpg or .png)
Please submit your project brief via the following button:
Step 1: Read the guidance for submitting a technical tool
Guidance #1: Overview Guidance #2: Research
Overview:
An array of technical tools has been developed to support more sustainable engineering practices. These include:
Life cycle assessments or analysis (LCA) (e.g. single use plastics or health care packaging),
Life cycle inventory,
Embodied carbon calculators and assessments,
Sustainability assessment tools.
We are seeking examples of open-source technical tools that have been effectively integrated into engineering teaching explained through a lesson plan or guide for use.
Research:
The scientific and mathematical calculations that underpin engineering also offer an opportunity to integrate sustainability issues. Micro-insertion is a technique that introduces sustainability concerns into technical problems by providing context for what is already being taught. Most widely known as an approach for integrating ethics into engineering, we are seeking examples of micro-insertions of sustainability into common technical problems found in:
Chemical engineering,
Computing,
Mechanical engineering,
Civil engineering,
Electrical engineering,
General engineering modules
Step 2: Before you submit, review this checklist:
A checklist for technical tools will be added in due course. Please check back soon. If you have any additional questions please contact s.hitt@epc.ac.uk or c.nwagboso@epc.ac.uk.
Before you submit your contribution, have you registered as a contributor? If not, please register your interest here.
Step 3: Submitting your technical tool
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 4.0 International 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.
Technical tools should be submitted in Word file format (.doc / .docx / .csv / .xlsx). Any corresponding images should be submitted in either (.jpeg, .jpg or .png)
You may download a PDF version of the guidelines (as outlined in Step 1) here.
Please submit your technical tool via the following button:
[Deadline extended] If you have already registered an interest and we are expecting your submission, we have extended the deadline to submit first drafts to 3rd November 2024. If you wish to develop materials to contribute beyond this, we will be opening the next cycle in early 2024. However, if you wish to become a reviewer or suggest links to pages or online resources that we can add to our growing database of engineering education resources for sustainability, please contact us via sustainability@epc.ac.uk.
Additional information:
In undertaking this work, contributors will become part of the growing community of educators who are helping to ensure that tomorrow’s engineering professionals sustainability skills, knowledge, and attributes that they need to provide a better 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 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.
As part of the toolkit project, we are also developing tools for collaborating with our steering group, in-house. Stay tuned for further details.
Learn more about the Sustainability Toolkit:
Those interested in contributing to the Sustainability Toolkit should fill out this form and we will be in touch. [Update: For this cycle, this call has now closed. If you have already registered an interest and we are expecting your submission, please do submit your contributions by 3rd November 2023. If you wish to develop materials to contribute beyond this, we will be opening the next cycle in early 2024. However, if you wish to become a reviewer or suggest links to pages or online resources that we can add to our growing database of engineering education resources for sustainability, please contact us via sustainability@epc.ac.uk.]
Learn more about the members of the Sustainability Toolkit Steering Group, here.
Find out more about the Sustainability Toolkit development process in a blog post written by Siemens, here.
Please note: the Ethics Ambassadors community is being reorganised and the information below is no longer current.
Do you want to champion the teaching of ethics within engineering?
Do you want to help shape the future of the Engineering Ethics Toolkit?
Do you need support with integrating ethics into your own engineering teaching?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then you should join our new Ethics Ambassadors community.
Ethics Ambassadors was launched in March 2023 in order to expand and develop the work and recommendations of the Engineering Ethics Advisory Group, whose expertise and advocacy was instrumental during the creation and development of the Engineering Ethics Toolkit.
The aims of the Ethics Ambassadors community are:
to champion the teaching of ethics within engineering courses and modules;
to support educators integrating ethics teaching within engineering courses and modules;
to share best practice in engineering ethics teaching;
to identify and address needs within engineering ethics teaching;
to source, review, develop and publish new materials for the Engineering Ethics Toolkit.
An initial meeting of Ethics Ambassadors was held in June 2023 and we are currently in the process of nominating and voting for key roles within the community.
You can learn more about Ethics Ambassadors here.
To join Ethics Ambassadors, please fill out this Membership request form.
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 a suite of interactive resources, guidance and teaching materials that enables educators to easily introduce ethics into the education of every engineer. We would like to ensure that all universities with Engineering departments are aware of the toolkit and able to make use of it.
To this end, we’ve produced a pack of resources that can be distributed to relevant departments and staff members such as Engineering department heads, staff and administrators, as well as Vice-Chancellors, Deans, and anyone else who may find our resource useful in teaching or curriculum development.
We would be very grateful if you could share these resources, and encourage you to explore and use them in your teaching.
Our pack of resources to help you present and promote the Engineering Ethics Toolkit contains the following files, and can be downloaded individually below, or as a pack from 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 January 2022, GoodCorporation was tasked with undertaking a Review of Ethical Culture and Practices in UK engineering. The need for the review was one of several actions identified in a report by the Engineering Ethics Reference Group (EERG), whose remit is to provide leadership and advice to help develop an enhanced culture of ethical behaviour in UK engineering.
The overall objective was to develop a benchmark from which the UK engineering profession can periodically audit and report on ethical performance in UK engineering and identify areas for improvement in ethical culture and practice. The exercise would also allow benchmarking against other professions and identify relevant learnings from them.” – The Royal Academy of Engineering
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.
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.”
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
The Engineering Professors’ Council (EPC) is the UK’s representative body for engineering academics in higher education.
The Royal Academy of Engineering is committed to supporting ethical practice in the engineering profession. Ethics is part of other behaviours such as inclusivity and sustainability, which ensure that both individuals and organisations are globally responsible. These behaviours help secure an inclusive economy and sustainable society for all. For more information on the Academy’s work in this area see https://raeng.org.uk/ethics
The Ethics Explorer is an interactive tool that was built to help engineering educators navigate the landscape of engineering ethics education. It is the newest resource in the Engineering Ethics Toolkit.
Whether you’re an ethics veteran or brand new to teaching ethics within engineering, the Ethics Explorer allows you to find your own path through what can sometimes seem like a wilderness.
Choose a path depending on what you want to do. Improve your own ethics learning? Plan for ethics learning? Integrate or assess an ethics activity? Each path leads you through content such as learning outcomes, graduate attributes, and accreditation criteria, while also pointing you to supporting activities and resources linked to the content.
The Ethics Explorer replaces the static engineering ethics curriculum map published in 2015, although there is also a printable version available in PDF form, that summarises content from the interactive Explorer.
The content in the Ethics Explorer is subject to changes in context and should be customised to suit the various forms that
an engineering degree can take. It is intended as a non-prescriptive resource – as a way of suggesting to educators how ethics might comprise a distinct theme in an engineering undergraduate degree. This version of the Ethics Explorer is focused on the UK higher education context, but it may be adapted for use in other countries.
The Ethics Explorer is a free to use resource, accessible to all. Start exploring here.
Have you used the Ethics Explorer? Tell us about your experience – what you loved, what is missing, and what could be improved.
Have you used our Engineering Ethics Toolkit in your teaching? We want to hear from you!
Have you used our Engineering Ethics Toolkit in your teaching? We want to hear from you!
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.
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“In January 2022, GoodCorporation was tasked with undertaking a Review of Ethical Culture and Practices in UK engineering. The need for the review was one of several actions identified in a report by the Engineering Ethics Reference Group (EERG), whose remit is to provide leadership and advice to help develop an enhanced culture of ethical behaviour in UK engineering.