Asee peer logo

How Good is Our Undergraduate Engineering Ethics Training? A Comparative Analysis of Engineering Ethics Textbooks

Download Paper |

Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

Virtues in Engineering Ethics Education

Tagged Division

Engineering Ethics Division (ETHICS)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/47537

Request a correction

Paper Authors

author page

Chloe Adams Wake Forest University

biography

Olga Pierrakos Wake Forest University and National Science Foundation

visit author page

Dr. Olga Pierrakos is a rotating STEM Education Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation (a second stint). Olga is also the Founding Chair (2017-2022) and a Professor of Wake Forest Engineering. With a unique vision to Educate the Whole Engineer and a commitment to Human Flourishing, Olga led Wake Forest Engineering to be ranked as one of the top (14th) "Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs" by US News Report (2023). With this unique vision, Olga has also served as the principal investigator since 2019 on a multi-year Kern Family Foundation KEEN (Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network) award titled "Educating the Whole Engineer" to integrate important competencies such as virtues, character, entrepreneurial mindset, and leadership across the Wake Forest Engineering curriculum. She has led Wake Forest Engineering with a focus on inclusive innovation and excellence, curricular and pedagogical innovation, and creative partnerships across the humanities, social sciences, industry, entrepreneurs, etc. in order to rethink and reimagine engineering education. All this has led to Wake Forest Engineering achieving unprecedented student diversity (42% women, 25% racial and ethnic minorities) and faculty diversity (50% women, 25% racial and ethnic diversity). Olga is an engineering education researcher, biomedical and mechanical engineer, and national leader in transforming undergraduate engineering education. She has served as founding faculty of two brand new engineering programs (the first at James Madison University) and served on several national roles across ASEE, ABET, AAAS, NSF, KEEN, etc.

visit author page

author page

Lasya Agasthya

Download Paper |

Abstract

Engineers play a critical role in bettering humanity via technological and scientific innovations. This ethical responsibility to the practice of engineering is the reason that engineering ethics is required of all accredited engineering programs at all levels of education, and engineering ethics is required of all facets of professional licensure in engineering. Educators at all levels leverage textbooks to teach engineering ethics. In this paper, we conduct a systematic, comparative review of twenty-six of the most widely used engineering ethics textbooks. This comparative analysis has enabled us to identify over forty thematic topics that are collectively covered across these twenty engineering ethics textbooks. Twelve of these thematic topics are covered in at least half of the textbooks. Gaps do exist in the topics and approaches used in this comparative textbook analysis and these gaps offer us an opportunity to evolve the field of engineering ethics. Initial findings from the engineering ethics textbook comparative analysis uncovered several prominent topics that the majority of textbooks included: public welfare and wellbeing, whistleblowing, safety and risk, and professionalism. Additional topics that were prolific included ethics in design and technological development, conflict of interest, and environmental ethics. The analysis also revealed important topics that only a few of the textbooks included such as competence, moral theories, the involvement of religious values, intellectual property and legal liability, employer/employee and mentor/mentee relationships, and employee rights. Under half of the textbooks included sections on ethics in research and education/academia. The findings of this study can (1) provide engineering educators insights about the current list of thematic topics that fall under engineering ethics, (2) identify gaps in engineering ethics knowledge, and (3) offer a discussion of the opportunities to improve engineering ethics education. To the best of our knowledge, this systematic and comparative engineering ethics textbook review is the first of its kind.

Adams, C., & Pierrakos, O., & Agasthya, L. (2024, June), How Good is Our Undergraduate Engineering Ethics Training? A Comparative Analysis of Engineering Ethics Textbooks Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47537

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2024 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015