IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 60

thical training in the
classroom offers engineering students the
opportunity to assess
theoretical frameworks
and consider crucial diverse perspectives that they can apply in
the workplace. With practice, and
exposure to decision-making processes supported by ethical theory,
students can develop the agility
to consider dilemmas from multiple ethical perspectives in order
to make more astute decisions.
Ethical theory in engineering applications exists in a diverse multicultural environment. It is important to
design engineering ethics courses so
that they are culturally sensitive and
inclusive of the diverse students in the
classroom. This preliminary study
uses a short ethics course coupled
with a student assessment survey to
understand the diversity and perspectives operative in the engineering
classroom. The goal is to design a
student-centered engineering ethics
curriculum and, eventually, a globally acceptable online engineering
ethics course. Presented here are the
survey data collected as evidence for
substantiating diversity-warranted
user-centered pedagogy in the engineering ethics curricula along with a
framework for designing and implementing user-centered globally ethical curricula.

Engineering Ethics
In order to contribute to the field of
engineering and the larger global
society, students must be exposed
in their curricula to deliberation
supported by ethical theory. This
is the stipulation of the engineering
accreditation board, which states
that the integration of ethics in to the
curriculum is imperative and that
engineering programs "...must demonstrate that their graduates have
an understanding of professional
and ethical responsibility" [1]. Ethics curricula lay the foundation for
career-long consideration of ethical
professional responsibility within
an inherently international setting.
60

Exposure to ethical decision-making
systems assists the student in avoiding hazardous circumstances and
directs the student away from situations which might promote unintended harm. Brannigan [2] points
out that the ethical obligations of
engineers are unique in that "...ethical lapses by engineers can often
result in death or serious injury."
Although ethical knowledge does
not guarantee an ethical outcome, it
does contribute to the ability to consider personal and social equity as
well as essential professional responsibility in the global marketplace.
Teaching an engineering ethics
course poses particularly challenging problems. Although the field is
rife with well thought-out texts and
online resources and components,
Chung & Alfred [3] explain that
they "...may be limited in their ability to develop a student's ability to
effectively identify, analyze, and
respond in engineering ethics situations..." Texts that contain a cursory glance at ethics philosophy
followed by a collection of case
studies, which Kline [4] calls the
"...tyranny of disaster cases" risk
leaving the student without necessary ethical decision-making tools.
review of ten popular engineering ethics texts found that only two
of the texts contained a reference to
classical ethics theory and theorybased decision-making processes.
Only one text that addressed Confucian ethics mentioned the global
marketplace, two very important
aspects of teaching a globally
diverse engineering course.

Developing Curriculum
Although the fields of ethics and
engineering are separately well
established, the coupling of these
fields into one curriculum is
relatively new and in need of further
development as a valuable course of
action for cultivating ethical decision-making practices among engineering students. Current research
in engineering ethics disciplinespecific assessment is encouraging.

Borenstein et al. [5] discuss designers of the most recently implemented
Engineering and Science Issues Test
(ESIT) noting that further data collection will allow researchers to discover whether or not the new tests
are "...useful for measuring moral
reasoning in science and engineering" [5]. These new tests will allow
the instructor to measure curriculum
impact and outcomes. Instructors
of engineering ethics must build a
rational and rigorous basis for what
will be taught and assessed and
what outcomes they wish to achieve,
accounting for the inherent diversity of the engineering field and the
larger global environment. Instructors must assess the global environment of the classroom and account
for diversity in order to build a
viable and inclusive curricula.

Addressing Global Diversity
Engineering programs often serve
a globally diverse student population, representing an acutely heterogeneous assembly of cultures,
ethical perspectives, and value systems. According to Florida Institute
of Technology (FIT), in 2012, over
28 percent of the FIT student body
represented 97 countries outside the
united States. In 2011, Texas A&M
at Qatar (TAMu) served students
from over 30 countries. The particular culture of each student extends
well beyond national boundaries.
Within each culture exists a myriad
of sub-cultures and differentiated
and diversified moralities.
The technically-focused educational background of the engineering student contributes to this
diversity as well. Many engineering
students come from academic backgrounds which provide minimal
focus on traditional humanities
subjects such as intercultural awareness and ethics. This diversifies
the students even further, isolating
them from one another and thereby
embedding a local instead of global
perspective. Gorman et al. [6] blame
this negative side effect experienced
by graduate engineering students

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SuMMEr 2013

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