Teaching Engineering Ethics: A Case Study Approach

美国的本科工程课程要求解决工程伦理问题。工程师和工程专业人士认识到，学生需要学习如何在做出道德决策时使用和评估可用的信息，以及如何测试和发展他们自己的职业道德观点。他们需要发展必要的思维过程，将信息与可接受的专业行为“规范”结合起来，做出符合道德的决定。然而，调查显示，几乎没有正式或系统的方法来制定和测试新的课程或教学方法。该项目将开发和测试带注释的案例研究，并附以印刷版和软件形式的评论和书目，供课堂使用。将作出特别努力，制定多阶段案例，对组织情况和对初步决定的可能结果进行思考的重要性，以便以后的决定也需要进行道德方面的思考。为WMU的工程学教员举办的讲习班将帮助他们开发有效的方法来满足工程与技术认证委员会的道德要求。项目成果将在全国范围内传播。这个项目以一种独特的方式解决了一个重要问题。研究团队和合作者是跨学科的，有很好的合作资格。在这项裁决的有效期之后，可能会继续作出进一步努力。该项目设计得很好；计划了适当的测试和传播。大学的支持是很好的。因此，建议赔偿124977美元。

Undergraduate engineering curricula in the U.S. require issues of engineering ethics to be addressed. Engineers and the engineering profession recognize that students need to learn how to use and assess available information in making ethical decisions, and how to test and develop their own perspectives on professional ethics. They need to develop the thought processes necessary to integrate information with acceptable professional "norms" of behavior, to make ethical decisions. Yet, surveys demonstrate little in the way of formal or systematic approaches to the development and testing of new curricula or teaching methods. This project will develop and test annotated case studies, with accompanying commentaries and bibliographies, in print and software form, for classroom use. Special effort will be made to develop multiphased cases, sensitive to organizational contexts and to the importance of thinking through the likely outcomes of initial decisions for later decisions that also call for ethical reflection. Workshops for engineering faculty at WMU will help them develop effective ways of meeting the ethics requirement of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. Project results will be available for national dissemination. This project addresses an important issue in a unique way. The research team and collaborators are interdisciplinary and well qualified to collaborate. Further effort is likely to continue beyond the duration of this award. The project is designed well; appropriate testing and dissemination are planned. University support is good. An award in the amount of $124,977 is therefore recommended.