The Need to Include Societal and Ethical Responsibilities

Engineering employers and academic accreditation agencies are now insisting that societal and ethical issues be included in the standard engineering curriculum. We have developed and tested short (3 class-hour) modules on three of these issues – engineering ethics, an awareness of the societal impact of engineering, and knowledge of contemporary issues. These modules have been designed for simple integration into standard technical courses, effectively introducing key concepts and promoting student awareness, showing directly how the issues relate to the practice of engineering, and minimally impacting the existing curricula. This paper provides details of each of the modules – objectives, outlines for each class, in-class exercises, assignments, assessment guidelines, and techniques for bridging the material into specific engineering disciplines. We have tested each of the modules on a group of students, and the data from our tests show that students who complete the modules increase their awareness of ethical, societal, and contemporary issues and significantly increase their self-confidence with respect to these issues, feeling more capable of addressing them in their professional practice