Learning and teaching ethics in engineering: preparing engineering faculty to teach ethics

Abstract

Through assessment processes recently put into place, many engineering departments at Penn State identified a need to enhance the ethics components of their curricula. To support departments in their enhancement processes, the College of Engineering worked with the College of the Liberal Arts to create a faculty development program to prepare engineering faculty to teach ethics, entitled, "Learning and Teaching Ethics in Engineering." The program was designed to allow engineering faculty to gain some background in ethics and to develop ethics activities for their courses and methods for assessing them. This paper provides a description of the program, a summary of the learning objectives, instructional approaches, assessment methods developed by the participants, and a summary of the assessments of the effectiveness of the program.