Teaching Ethics to Engineering Students: From Clean Concepts to Dirty Tricks

Author(s):  
Otto Kroesen ◽  
Sybrand van der Zwaag
Author(s):  
Reena Cheruvalath

Most engineering colleges in India have integrated ethics courses into their curriculum for the reason that students may develop an ethical ability to engage in sound decision making. However, there are differences noticed in defining the concept of “ethics” by the engineering students and the teachers who teach them ethics. Often, it is observed that students' positions with regard to ethics courses are egoistic pragmatism while the teachers follow idealistic pragmatism. This ideological difference makes teaching ethics to engineering students a difficult task and thus undermines the effectiveness of the ethics course. The major objective of this chapter therefore is to examine the extent to which the “gap” can be merged and make the students more ethically responsible. It also helps to achieve more job satisfaction for teachers. Finally, the chapter discusses some suggestions to make engineering students more ethically sensible.


Author(s):  
Terry E. Shoup ◽  
Thomas Shanks

Abstract This paper describes a new computer application known as the Ethics Toolkit that is useful in enabling engineering students to learn about ethical problem solving. The application runs in a Windows environment and implements five different approaches to ethical problem solving found in the literature. Although the application does not provide absolute answers to ethical problems, it does facilitate the automation, organization and prioritization of solution possibilities.


Author(s):  
Reena Cheruvalath

Most engineering colleges in India have integrated ethics courses into their curriculum for the reason that students may develop an ethical ability to engage in sound decision making. However, there are differences noticed in defining the concept of “ethics” by the engineering students and the teachers who teach them ethics. Often, it is observed that students' positions with regard to ethics courses are egoistic pragmatism while the teachers follow idealistic pragmatism. This ideological difference makes teaching ethics to engineering students a difficult task and thus undermines the effectiveness of the ethics course. The major objective of this chapter therefore is to examine the extent to which the “gap” can be merged and make the students more ethically responsible. It also helps to achieve more job satisfaction for teachers. Finally, the chapter discusses some suggestions to make engineering students more ethically sensible.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 5499
Author(s):  
Maria Jose Casañ ◽  
Marc Alier ◽  
Ariadna Llorens

A significant number of universities where engineering is taught, acknowledge the importance of the social and environmental impact of the scientific and technological practice, as well as the ethical problems it presents, and the need to provide their students with courses covering this as a subject. This paper presents 29 years of teaching courses with the subject of social, environmental, and ethical issues to students of Informatics Engineering. The table contents and its evolution over the years will be analyzed, plus the different teaching strategies applied, with emphasis on the collaborative learning methodologies to facilitate critical thinking and debate. During the experience, the course incorporated the subject of History of Informatics which proved to fit in the course. While the subject of Ethics and Sustainability is increasingly being regarded as an important matter to learn by future ICT engineers, the courses covering it remain as optional in the curriculums. This should change.


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