The 17 CDIO International Conference

Working Group: Engineering Ethics Education

The purpose of this information is to make it conceivable for possible working group members to figure out if they will be a good candidate for a working group.

Name: TRANSLATING CDIO STANDARDS TO DIDACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS IN ENGINEERING ETHICS EDUCATION

Problem

Engineering ethics has become a fundamental part of engineering education frameworks across the globe. However the subject is often taught with a broad brush with ill-defined learning outcomes. Normative Ethics pervades every aspect of engineering from DFMEA and cost/benefit/risk analysis to professional responsibility in social environments to ethical and inclusive design. With ethics acknowledged as important, didactics are still underdeveloped. There is a great need to develop didactics. First step is to know where the main challenges are.

Question

The teaching of ethics through case studies and similar exercises do not necessarily reflect how someone would behave when faced with an ethical decision. What are the main didactical challenges? Using the Outcomes Based Education approach; what are suitable learning outcomes (LOs) in engineering ethics? How can we assess? Are there validated teaching tools to deliver these?

Leaders

Gunter Bombaerts
Eindhoven University of Technology
G.Bombaerts@tue.nl

Sarah Junaid
Aston University
s.junaid@aston.ac.uk

Things to be done before the physical conference:

The three objectives of the working group are outlined below with the subsequent action list for each objective to be completed before the Working Group meets on Monday 8th June 2020.

1. Identify relevant CDIO standards in teaching engineering and design ethics and their implementation in teaching engineering and design ethics through the CDIO Framework at own institution.

Action list:

i. Working group leads will make a few examples for other possible participants.
ii. Highlight relevant propositions of the CDIO standards relating to engineering and design ethics
iii. Identify actual practice in comparison to curriculum planning and documentation
iv. Prepare a short 10 minute summary of i-iii in a SWOT analysis of ethics education in your university/course based on the CDIO standards to present at the meeting

2. Evaluate the implementation of relevant CDIO standards in teaching engineering ethics, using the institutions of the working group participants as case studies and identify any challenges and patterns that may need to be addressed. This will be carried out at the meeting.

Action list:

i. A critique of alignments and differences in mapping the CDIO standards to institutional practices.

3. Outcomes and benchmarking: finalize a summary from the discussion and establish a team for authorship and paper publication of the findings

Action list:

i. Identify a set of arguments agreed as the summary of the working group meeting. Agree on action plan and delegation of tasks for publication team.

An agenda and any supporting material for reading ahead of the meeting will be sent.

What is expected to be the output of the online conference meeting?

The direct output will be a working group report with a list of practical recommendations and good practices to realize CDIO standards for Ethics Teaching. The further expected output will be a peer-reviewed paper on mapping relevant propositions from the CDIO standards to current teaching practices at institutional level.

How will the finalization of the state of the art paper be organized?

Roles and action points will be agreed at the conclusion of the meeting. This will include:
- Working Group Report: The working title is “challenges in mapping relevant CDIO standards in teaching engineering and design ethics to current teaching practices at institutional level and steps forward”. This will be a report compiling the meeting discussions, decisions and collation of data presented at the meeting

Roles will include writing, editing and reviewing the working group paper.

Other relevant information:

We would like to also highly encourage ethicists and those with similar backgrounds with experience in teaching ethics (whether in engineering or other disciplines) and people from all continents to also apply.
Timezones: the working group leaders will arrange a suitable time based on the time zones of the participants. The final times will be agreed with the CDIO2021 conference organisers.

Application

Application for joining the working group on Updating CDIO Syllabus 3.0 is done by filling out the application form and emailing it to the working group leaders.