Engineering students have identified ethics as central to engineering, but it often remains at the periphery of a curriculum that is focused on technical knowledge. Our research team is experimenting with a variety of pedagogical approaches to make ethics explicit and central in engineering, especially to advanced students who are in the process of defining their societal roles.
Course materials, such as the syllabus for the fall 2013 semester of Ethics, Engineering and Society (E125) at UC Berkeley can be found on Piazza.
The course explores new ways to make engineering ethics meaningful to students and centers on creating an engineering ethics ePortfolio, which includes six different assignments:
- Learning Proposal
- Critical Reflections
- Ethics in the News
- Interview
- Group assignment
- Summary Reflection
This class blog includes the following tools:
- Upcoming Events. Post to this page by selecting the “Events” category. List of upcoming lectures and events that may be of interest to the class.
- Class discussion. Post to this page by selecting the “Class Discussion” category. This page will store additional resources posted by students and instructors on the topic of each lecture. It will also store lecture notes, snapshots of the black-board, and the critical reflections that you choose to share with the class. This space gives the class a chance to continue the discussion that was started in class.
- Ethics in the News. Post to this page by selecting the “Ethics in the News” category. Use this for your ethics in the news assignment, as well as throughout the semester, to share and discuss with the class topics about which you think it’s important to open a conversation. As a peer reviewer, you will have to post a comment to the post that you were assigned to. I encourage everyone to contribute with comments to all of the posts.
- Ethics Resources. So far it includes a list of ethics journals, and some background on ethical theories. More will be added.
- ePortfolios (your edubogs). Some example eporfolios are given here. If you want to share your ePortfolio with the class, send the instructor a note with your blog link, and we’ll add it.
NOTE: If you don’t assign your post to one of the three categories mentioned above (Events, Class Discussion, or Ethics in the News), your post will not show up on the class website.
To view and post to your edublogs from iPhones and iPads, you can download the “WordPress” app, and add “a self-hosted blog.” It is particularly convenient for posting pictures.