Ethical issues awareness for engineers in practice

Abstract

As a discipline, engineering ethics is a relatively young one. Younger still is the question of how to teach engineering ethics. Like other applied disciplines, the challenge of engineering ethics is to offer content that is both useful to practitioners and genuinely substantive (i.e. moves beyond glossy generalizations about the importance of honesty, non-malfeasance, etc.). Additionally, engineering ethics education, it is hoped, will make students 1) less likely to engage in academic dishonesty 2) more likely to succeed on the ethics portion of the F.E. and 3) more aware of the obligations and issues they are likely to face in engineering practice. While each of these additional desiderata is important, the last is arguably the most important. It can also be the most pedagogically challenging. In this paper, we will explore the challenges posed by the third goal above in the context of an assignment used in both an engineering communications course and an engineering ethics course at a research institution. In this assignment, the Social Impact Analysis (SIA), students are asked to identify and research a current engineering design, product, or concept that is (or soon will be) impacting society. Prima facie, this assignment promises to help acquaint students with the complexity of deploying new technology in society (domestically or globally). The actual and potential impacts of these technologies raise a host of ethical issues that are students must be aware of and engage. However, as analyses and discussions become more nuanced (in light of complexity), they can also become more abstract and, therefore, less practically important to students. If not handled properly, an assignment like the SIA can be viewed as an exercise in intellectual curiosity and little more. Worse still, it may actually lead to exasperation with attempts to carefully explore ethical obligations in engineering. To be most effective, then, the SIA requires the right setup. We will explore several iterations of the SIA based on different contexts (e.g. use in an engineering writing/communications course, use in an engineering ethics course, and use as a stand-alone assignment). We will enumerate what we take to be reasonable goals for the SIA given these contexts. These goals will determine how the assignment is to be completed and evaluated. Finally, we will explore the use of the SIA in a K-12 setting. Despite the potential complexity the SIA can lead to, it may be most effective when used in K-12 STEM education. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.