Teaching Engineering Ethics and Laws in the Light of the Carolinian Vision

Abstract

In May 2003, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) through its World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology identified seven factors in the rising interest on ethics. The same document identified five partial aims of teaching ethics. Recommendations on what topics are to be covered and how assessment and evaluation are to be done were also mentioned in the document. It was with these insights that the revised course on ethics and laws for undergraduate fifth-year electronics engineering students was designed along outcomes-based teaching and learning approach. This paper presents the results of a course development on engineering ethics and laws by a non-expert/ethicist. Students professed the ethics they will adhere to in the practice of their profession and in their personal lives. They animated the content and intent of their personal and professional code of ethics and related principles and laws through course-specified assessment. Finally, they planned their way of life to achieve areté (excellence) in the light of Carolinian ideals of scientia, virtus, and devotio. The interventions used to assess whether the intended outcomes have been achieved are presented and described in detail. An evaluation questionnaire was distributed at the end of the semester to seek out the change in attitude toward a code of ethics and the interpretation of interventions as to the outcome being assessed. The collated result showed some unexpected items in the interpretation of the outcomes being assessed in a particular intervention and positive improvement of personal inclination to deliberate a decision on ethical issues in the light of Carolinian vision.