As academics know, itâs been âconference seasonâ recently, with the usual rush of meetings and symposia and events that mark the beginning of summer. Weâre pleased that the Engineering Ethics Toolkit has been featured at several of these, both home and abroad:
At the SEFI Spring School, held at TU Berlin the 10th â 12th April, the SEFI Ethics and Sustainability Special Interest Groups convened to consider âDemocracy in Engineering Educationâ, and the Ethics Toolkit was featured in a workshop on the knowledge, skills, and mindsets of engineering educators.
At the EPC Annual Congress, held at Cardiff University the 9th-11th June, the Facial Recognition case study was mentioned during conversations about AI Ethics, and the Constructive Alignment tool was showcased as a way to plan for weaving ethics into almost any learning outcome.
At the UK and Ireland Engineering Education Research Network Annual Symposium, held at Ulster University in Belfast the 17th â 18th June, the Guidance Articles were presented as a great place to get started in learning more about teaching engineering ethics.
At the American Society of Engineering Education conference, held in Portland, Oregon the 23rd-27th June, Sarah Jayne Hitt presented an impact study that she and Sarah Junaid conducted on use of the Ethics Toolkit, featuring both website data analytics as well as information from user interviews.
Between January and April 2024 the Ethics Toolkit had just shy of 10,000 views, so we know you’re looking at it, but we also want to know where youâre talking about the Ethics Toolkit! Have you featured a resource in a conference presentation or meeting? Tell us about how the resources have helped you over the past yearâweâd love to feature your story.
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? Â
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 âinformation and digital literacyâ, specifically, learning how to research, select and critically assess reliable data. This is both a skill and a practice. Â
For students, how does this skill relate to the engineering workplace?Â
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.Â
Knovel â 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. Â
How is Knovel used in engineering education? Can you share some insights on how to make the most of it?Â
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.Â
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.Â
How is the tool used by educators?Â
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.Â
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.Â
46% of EPC members already have access to Knovel.âŻTo brainstorm how you can make the best use of Knovel in your classroom, please contact: Susan Watson,âŻsusan.watson@elsevier.com. Â
Faculty and students can check their access to Knovel using their university email address at the following link:Â Account Verification â 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 Professorsâ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
Keywords:Information literacy; digital literacy; misleading information; source and data reliability; ethical behaviour; sustainability.Â
Who is this article for?: This article should be read by educators at all levels in higher education who wish to integrate technical information literacy into the engineering and design curriculum or module design. It will also help to provide students, particularly those embarking on Bachelorâs or Masterâs research projects, with the integrated skill sets that employers are looking for, in particular, the ability to critically evaluate information.Â
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Introduction:
In an era dominated by digital information, engineering educators face the critical challenge of preparing students not just in technical skills, but in navigating the complex digital landscape with an ethical compass. This article explores how integrating information and digital literacy into engineering education is not only essential for fostering ethical behaviour but also crucial for ensuring sustainability in engineering practices.Â
The intertwined nature of information and digital literacy in engineering is undeniable. Engineering practitioners need to be able to select and critically assess the reliability of the information sources they use to ensure they comply with ethical practice. The Engineering Council and Royal Academy of Engineering’s Joint Statement of Ethical Principles underscores the need for accuracy and rigour, a core component of these literacies. Faculty members play a pivotal role in cultivating these skills, empowering students and practitioners to responsibly source and utilise information.Â
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The challenge of information overload:
One of the challenges facing trained engineers, engineering faculty and students alike is that of accessing, critically evaluating, and using accurate and reliable information. Â
A professional engineer needs to gather insights and information to solve problems, deliver projects, and drive innovation. This involves undertaking as much research as possible: looking at case-studies, standards, best practices, and examples that will support or disprove what they think is the best approach. In a profession where the analysis of failures is a core competence, critical, dispassionate thinking is vital. In fact, to be digitally literate, an ethically responsible engineer must know how to access, evaluate, utilise, manage, analyse, create, and interact using digital resources (Martin, 2008).Â
Students, while adept at online searching, often struggle with assessing the credibility of sources, particularly information gleaned on social media, especially in their early academic years. This scenario necessitates faculty guidance in discerning reputable and ethical information sources, thereby embedding an ethical approach to information use early in their professional development.Â
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Accuracy and rigour:
Acquisition of âinformation literacyâ contributes to compliance with the Statement of Ethical Principles in several ways. It promotes the âaccuracy and rigourâ essential to engineering. It guarantees the basis and scope of engineering expertise and reliability so that engineers effectively contribute to the well-being of society and its safety and understand the limits of their expertise. It also contributes to promoting ârespect for the environment and public goodâ, not just by ensuring safety in design, drawing up safety standards and complying with them, but also by integrating the concept of social responsibility and sustainability into all projects and work practices. In addition, developing studentsâ capacity to analyse and assess the accuracy and reliability of environmental data enables them to recognise and avoid âgreen-washingâ, a growing concern for many of them.Â
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Employability:
In the workplace, the ability to efficiently seek out relevant information is invaluable. In a project-based, problem-solving learning environment students are often confronted with the dilemma of how to refine their search to look for the right level of information from the very beginning of an experiment or research project. By acquiring this âinformation literacyâ competence early on in their studies they find themselves equipped with skills that are âworkplace-readyâ. For employers this represents a valuable competence and for students it constitutes an asset for their future employability.Â
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Tapping into specialised platforms:
In 2006 the then-CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt famously said “Google is not a truth machine”, and the recent wave of AI-powered chatbots all come with a stark disclaimer that they âmay display incorrect or harmful informationâ, and âcan make mistakes. Consider checking important information.â Confronted with information overload and the difficulty of sifting through non-specialised and potentially unreliable material provided by major search engines, students and educators need to be aware of the wealth of reliable resources available on specialised platforms. For example, Elsevierâs engineering-focused, purpose-built platform, Knovel, offers trustworthy, curated engineering content from a large variety of providers. By giving students access to the same engineering resources and tools as professionals in the field it enables them to incorporate technical information into their work and provides them with early exposure to the industry standard. For educators, it offers support for the foundational years of teaching, covering all aspects of problem-based learning and beyond. It is also an efficient way of remaining up-to-date with the latest information and data on key issues. The extensive range of information and data available equips students and engineers with the ability to form well-rounded, critical perspectives on the various interests and power dynamics that play a role in the technical engineering challenges they endeavour to address.Â
Conclusion:
By embedding information and digital literacy into the fabric of engineering education (such as by using this case study), we not only promote ethical behaviour but also prepare students for the challenges of modern engineering practice. These skills are fundamental to the ethical and sustainable advancement of the engineering profession.Â
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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. Â
46% of EPC members already have access to Knovel.⯠If you donât currently have access but would like to try Knovel in your teaching or to brainstorm how you can make the best use of Knovel in your classroom, please contact: Susan Watson,⯠susan.watson@elsevier.com. Check out this useful blog post from James Harper on exactly that topic here.
Faculty and students can check their access to Knovel using their university email address at the following link:Â Account Verification â Knovel
References:
Martin, A. (2008). Digital Literacy and the âDigital Societyâ. In C. Lankshear, & M. Knobel (Eds.), Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies, and Practices (pp. 151-176). New York: Peter Lang.Â
Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professorsâ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
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 thatâs 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 donât 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 Professorsâ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
In developing the resources for the EPC’s Sustainability Toolkit, we took into account recent scholarship and best practices and reviewed existing material available on sustainability in engineering. You can find links to these online resources in our ever-growing library of engineering education resources on sustainability below. Please note, the resources linked below are all open-source. If you want to suggest a resource that has helped you, find out how on our Get Involved page.
To view a page that only lists library links from a specific category type:
Listed below are links to tools designed to support educatorsâ ability to apply and embed sustainability topics within their engineering teaching. These have been grouped according to topic. You can also find our suite of learning activities and case studies, here.
Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professorsâ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
Author: The Sustainability Resources Library was produced by Crystal Nwagboso (Engineering Professors Council).If you want to suggest a resource that has helped you, find out how on our Get Involved page.
The EPC’s Engineering Ethics Toolkit is supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering. This resource is designed to help engineering educators integrate ethics content into teaching.
Contents
The toolkit currently includes the following, but it is a growing resource and we are currently working on further content.
Ethics Explorer: An interactive tool to help educators navigate the landscape of engineering ethics education. Start here and find your own pathway for embedding ethics.
Advice and guidance: A library of expertise in engineering ethics and how best to embed learning into teaching practice.
Case studies: Worked examples of real and hypothetical situations presenting ethical engineering challenges for use in teaching scenarios.
Case enhancements: Teaching materials and resources that help educators to employ the ethics case studies and lead the activities referenced within them.
Reports and studies: The latest research on ethics within engineering education and the engineering profession.
Blogs: Personal experience, news and updates on the Engineering Ethics Toolkit.
Get involved: A guide to how you can contribute to the Engineering Ethics Toolkit and community.
Contributor biographies: We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to making the Toolkit such a useful and vital resource.
Our supporters: We would like to thank the Royal Academy of Engineering, which has supported the Engineering Ethics Toolkit since its inception.
Our supporters
These resources have been produced by the Engineering Professorsâ Council in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering as part of the professionâs on-going work to embed ethical practice into the culture of engineering. See our blog ‘Welcome to the Engineering Ethics Toolkit‘ for an introduction and thoughts on these resources from the EPC’s Vice President.
Licensing
To ensure that everyone can use and adapt the toolkit in a way that best fits their teaching or purpose, most of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Under this licence you are free to share and adapt this material, under terms that you must give appropriate credit and attribution to the original material and indicate if any changes are made. Some of these materials are also available as PDF documents on the RAEng website.
More to come
This is just the beginning â we are already working on expanding this toolkit with future projects, including: developing more case studies, devising a system to make the case studies searchable by engineering discipline, ethical issues and so on. Additionally, we are looking to create ‘enhanced’ versions of each case study, including specific teaching materials such as lesson plans, presentations and worksheets. For more information, see our Get involved page.
Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professorsâ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
Have you used our Engineering Ethics Toolkit in your teaching? We want to hear from you!
In March 2023 we published further guidance articles and case studies, as well as enhancements on some of the classroom activities suggested within our original cases. June 2023 saw the launch of the interactive Ethics Explorer, which replaced the static engineering ethics curriculum map from 2015.
More and more engineering educators are telling us that they use these resources, and are finding them invaluable in their teaching. A brave few have contributed blogs, detailing their methods of using and adapting our case studies and classroom activities, and giving an honest appraisal of their own learning curve in teaching ethics.
We would love to publish more of this type of content. We want to hear your experiences, good or bad, along with tips, potential pitfalls, what you added to our content in your teaching, and what you and your students got out of the experience. If you have students who are enthusiastic about sharing their thoughts, we would love to hear from them too.
We’d like you to send us your blogs and testimonials, whether that be a couple of sentences or paragraphs, or a full article with diagrams, or anything in between.
You can submit your blog post or testimonial here, or email Wendy Attwell to discuss your submission first.
Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professorsâ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
Authors: Sarah Junaid (Aston University); Yann Serreau (CESI); Alison Gwynne-Evans (University of Cape Town); Patric Granholm (Ă land University of Applied Sciences); Kathryn Fee (Queen’s University Belfast); Sarah Jayne Hitt, Ph.D. SFHEA (NMITE, Edinburgh Napier University).
Keywords: Pedagogy.
Who is this article for?:Â 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
Using a constructive alignment tool to plan ethics teaching:
Incorporating ethics into an already-packed engineering curriculum can be an overwhelming prospect. But as more accreditation bodies are requiring engineering programmes to evidence the inclusion of ethics, this activity is becoming essential. Recently, a planning tool has been developed by a team of academics that you can use to constructively align your learning outcomes with activities and assessments that positively reinforce the inclusion of ethics.
For instance, in a year 2 Mechanical Engineering course, an existing outcome might read: âUse CAD modelling and additive manufacturing in the product development process and embed control sensors, actuators and physical hardware into a complete system.â As it is written, it contains no reference to ethics. But after comparing this outcome against language found in AHEP4, the CDIO Syllabus, and the Learning Landscape found in this Toolkitâs Ethics Explorer, you might revise it to read: âUse CAD, modelling and additive manufacturing in the product development process and embed control sensors, actuators and physical sensors to design a safe and complete system to address a societal need.â The minor changes to the language (shown in italics) ensure that this outcome reinforces the ethical dimension of engineering and encourages the ethical development of engineers. These changes also then inform the language used in activity briefs and the criteria by which students are assessed.
This tool has been used in workshops at Aston University and the 2023 SEFI conference, and is endorsed by CDIO.
Stage1: Resources â Tabulate all relevant resources and their Learning Outcomes or Programme Outcomes:
What are your Learning Outcomes for the topic you will teach? Please list them here.
Do any of the accreditation requirements highlight any ethical requirements or competencies that includes key topics such as sustainability or equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)?
Are there any other national requirements or frameworks that highlight engineering ethics?
Are there any teaching frameworks or activities that you would like to implement? List them here.
Highlight the verbs in blue and the ethical topics in red; this will help highlight any potential gaps.
Program level (My module, course, class, or lecture)
Accreditation level
National or Professional level ethics map or framework (optional)
International level
Reference/ Source
[Your University and course title]
[Your national accreditation board]
[e.g. codes of conduct, code of ethics, ethical principles, suggested teaching approaches]
[e.g. CDIO Syllabus, ABET, Washington Accord]
Learning Outcome 1
[Write current Learning Outcome here]
[Copy and paste the relevant competency here]
[Copy and paste the relevant guidance here]
[Copy and paste the relevant competency/skill here]
Learning Outcome 2
Enter text here
Enter text here
Enter text here
Enter text here
Learning Outcome 3
Enter text here
Enter text here
Enter text here
Enter text here
Stage 2: Re-write Learning Outcomes (LOs):Â
Can one or more of the topic LOs be re-written to focus on a competency?
Can different verbs be used e.g. using Bloomâs Taxonomy below or another learning taxonomy to identify appropriate learning levels for this competency?
Can you explain your rationale for the changes you have made?
Learning Outcomes
Re-worded Learning Outcomes
Rationale
LO1.
[Copy and paste LO from Stage I table here]
LO1.
[Re-write LO and highlight verbs in bold here]
[Justify your changes or if unchanged, justify why here]
LO2.
LO2. Enter text here
Enter text here
LO3.
LO3. Enter text here
Enter text here
Stage 3: Ethics Teaching Tools â Evidence-based tools and resources to help with teaching engineering ethics:
What ethics teaching model will you adopt?
Can you fill the ethics-berg with both demonstratable and non-demonstratable principles?
What demonstrable factors (above the ethics-berg) are needed for the relevant LO?
What non-demonstrable factors (below the water) are important that underlie the above?
Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professorsâ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.
Authors: Dr. Jude Bramton (University of Bristol); Elizabeth Robertson (University of Strathclyde); Sarah Jayne Hitt, Ph.D. SFHEA (NMITE, Edinburgh Napier University).
Keywords:Â Collaboration; Pedagogy.
Who is this article for?:Â 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 Bramtonâs 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 Professorsâ 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 todayâs students who are tomorrowâs engineers. However, there are lots of other articles that will do it much better than I can. All Iâd say in short is that as educators, we know itâs important, our graduate employers tell us itâs important, and our accrediting bodies are looking for us to include it through our curriculum because they know itâs important too.
The task for us as educators then is to demonstrate the importance of ethics to our students and to offer students a learning experience that is relevant to them at whatever stage they are and that that will also offer the most impact â but as with so many things, that is easier said than done.
Getting comfortable with what the toolkit is and how to use it
I have used the Engineering Ethics Toolkit since its launch, and I cannot be a bigger proponent for its usefulness for staff or its impact on studentsâ learning. Educators are always challenged to design sessions that are engaging, participatory and have real student impact. With its range of case studies and really useful advice and guidance documents, the Engineering Ethics Toolkit does all three.
The suite of broad engineering ethics case studies means that there is a case study for a range of student needs (and there are often new ones on the horizon too). In my teaching that means sometimes I use case studies that are related to discipline-specific learning the students are currently undertaking so they can pull in technical knowledge and experience they have, and in other cases I choose something totally removed in order to allow students to spend more time with the ethical dimensions of a case and not get preoccupied with the technical.
The case studies Iâve used
During the last academic year we used the case study âGlass safety in a heritage building conversionâ with my first year groups, and thatâs pretty far removed from the electrical, mechanical and computer science modules they take. That decision was intentional; the aim was to get students to concentrate on the principles of ethics, stakeholder mapping, stakeholder motivations and interpersonal dynamics and not be âdistractedâ by the technical aspects. This was one class in a module centred around a sustainable design challenge and we used the Ethics toolkit to help students develop an understanding of the importance of economic, environmental and social factors. Working with a case study not in their exact engineering field helped students see that they must look beyond the technical to understand people â be they stakeholders, end users or community members. Students worked to make decisions on actions with honesty and integrity and to respect the public good. The students engaged really well in the session and there were some vibrant discussions on which actions were ârightâ or âwrongâ and vitally the students grasped how stakeholder dynamics and dynamics of power in projects can affect outcomes.
In comparison, for my third year undergraduate students I intentionally chose a case study that would link to their hardware/software project that was upcoming, and connect closely to learning in their communications module: âSmart homes for older people with disabilitiesâ. This meant that alongside stakeholder mapping we identified technical factors looking into possible routes of data leaks. Students engaged so well and were actively debating possible actions to take covering ethical, technical and legal implications. It pained me every time I had to cut conversations short so we could cover the full case study â so much so that this year weâre going to try and give them longer than an hour for the process.
Getting comfortable with the students in the lead
I use a participatory teaching methodology often. This means starting our 50 minutes together with student reflection, having 5/10 minutes of introductory talk and then rounds of group discussions. The students are therefore in the driving seat in the classroom â students set the tone and the pace. If they are having valuable, meaningful and worthwhile discussions and demonstrating valuable ethical discussions, my plans change. This means maybe not covering all parts of the case study  maybe skipping a stage or two of discussions that were in my plans. As long as the sessionâs objective are met, the students can write their own journey.
What my sessions look like
As the song goes, we start at the very beginning as itâs a very good places to start. That means first asking the students their current understanding of what ethics is â we did this first by using a word association activity, and asked what came to mind when they hear the term âethics.â Their answers in the word cloud below demonstrate a good maturity of thought to work from in the session. We then moved on to discuss when we should consider ethics â for us as individuals, members of society and as engineers.
What they said:
Building on from our prompting questions we then introduced the Statement of Ethical Principles published by the Engineering Council and the Royal Academy of Engineering and covering the four fundamental principles of ethics defined therein.
From there we worked with the toolkit and our case study of choice. Most case studies come in 2-4 âphasesâ, each with a bit more of the story that Iâd briefly talk over, which we gave them printed and electronically. The phases often include a âdilemmaâ for the protagonist and some questions for provoking thought and discussion or more technical work as is suitable. The questions and activity prompts that are within the case studies are invaluable to educators and students in helping design the session and for giving student groups a place to start if they are not sure how to tackle part of the story. We worked on a think-pair-share model asking individuals to think, groups to discuss, and then asking a few groups to report back to the room. One thing I want to do more of is asking different groups to role play as different stakeholders. Asking students to embed themselves in different perspectives can lead to some very valuable insights.
Getting comfortable in a room of differing views
Students worked in small groups with the case study and an important stage was asking groups to report back their thoughts. These were volunteered rather than cold-called and in asking for more groups to share I would prompt if anyone had a different view to make sure that a range of perspectives were heard. Though in fairness to the students they engaged so readily and enthusiastically that I often ran short of time rather than being left with âdead airâ.
I have delivered ethics sessions to groups of 12, 30 and 100. In all cases it is important that all students feel heard and all views and perspectives respected. You need to make sure that an open, honest, and non-judgemental tone is set. This allows all students to feel they are free to ask questions and importantly share their perspectives, meaning that there is a big onus on the educator to act as a facilitator as much as a teacher.
Good facilitation is key. Some things to think about:
Consider room layout. – Flexible seating in small groups has worked best for me. If Iâm not using the whole space I place resources (printouts of the case study) on the tables I want used so no-one is left alone at the back of the room.
How do you build discussion groups? – Will established (friendship) groups all agree with each other and therefore discussions die, or will their knowledge of each other help them challenge each other?
How can you engage the whole room? – Cold-calling can challenge a neurodiverse audience, and so you need to consider ways to include everyone in discussions, but not put anyone on the spot.
How do you set the right tone? – This enables discussions to be open and honest and allows all voices and perspectives to be heard.
Getting comfortable with no absolutes
What is vital in running these sessions is offering some sort of conclusion when there is no ârightâ answer. My third-year cohort knew that a class on ethics was in the schedule â that I was going to get them to answer Menti polls, work in small groups and report back to the room. These are my established teaching styles and by halfway through the semester the students are well used to it. What they werenât prepared for was that in the end I wasnât going to tell them a ârightâ answer.
All the students I have worked on ethics with were somewhat disappointed when in the end they were not offered the ârightâ answer for the ethical dilemmas posed. What I did do though was still offer them a conclusion to their learning. I point out some of the excellent examples of consideration and thought offered by groups to highlight themes from the four principles. Itâs useful here too to point students to where theyâll apply their learning from the session in the short and long term. For my students their future projects all require ethics, inclusion and sustainability statements. Itâs important though to also evidence where the learning will go beyond the classroom.
There are examples of cases that in hindsight there are clear cases of ârightsâ and âwrongsâ (you can pull examples of fields relevant to you, often cited is the Challenger tragedy and Ford Pinto Memo). What we conclude on though is getting comfortable with a lot of decision making professionally being in the âmiddleâ â a complex space with multiple competing factors. Engineers need to work with the principles of ethics to guide us to make sound and well-informed judgements.
Itâs essential that tomorrowâs graduate engineers understand that ethics is not a âtack onâ statement at the end of a project proposal but rather that ethics is a core part of the role of an engineer. Using the Engineering Ethics Toolkit to help integrate ethics into the core of their education today is a very good way to do that. I recommend the Engineering Ethics Toolkit to all educators â the wealth of the resource cannot be understated in its support to a teacherâs session design and, most importantly, to a studentâs learning.
You can find out more about getting involved or contributing to the Engineering Ethics Toolkit here.
Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed herein are solely that of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the Engineering Professorsâ Council or the Toolkit sponsors and supporters.