Ethics: Why it is important and how we can teach it for engineering and construction students?

Abstract

Ethics is becoming a serious problem in both academic and professional environment. This problem is particularly true in engineering and construction where undergraduates are most likely to cheat in colleges. Most professional organizations are trying to address the issues by including strict professional guidelines. Recently the American Association of Engineering Society (AAES), an umbrella organization of eleven engineering organizations summarized their professional codes and giving more importance on ethics. That is one of the reasons ethics is becoming an essential part of professional education because it helps students deal with issues they will face in professional practice. The best way to teach ethics is by using cases-not just the negative cases that make the news, but the kinds of cases that an engineer or contractor is most likely to encounter in their professional career. Methods for analyzing the cases are readily available. But the question is always for us how we can teach ethics better? Ethics can be taught in a free-standing course, but there are strong arguments for introducing it in several technical courses across the curriculum. If the subject of professional ethics is how members of a profession should, or should not, affect others in the course of practicing their profession, and education should be part of professional education in engineering and construction, just as it is in law and medicine. This paper will discuss the introduction of ethics into undergraduate education in terms of three questions: Why we should teach ethics in engineering and construction education? How should it be taught? When it should be taught?. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.