Education of Engineering Ethics for Freshmen and Sophomores in Engineering Design Courses

Technologies bring great benefits but sometimes cause detriment to the well-being of the public, society and the environment. Recently the impact of technologies has been expanding farther because of widespread economic activities and rapid progress of distribution and communication networks. Under such circumstances, engineers are required to employ their engineering knowledge as much as possible to improve the well-being of the public. Thus, engineering ethics has become a more critical component of Engineering Education at universities. As a part of the curriculum revision in 2004, Kanazawa Institute of Technology implemented the engineering ethics education in several engineering courses in order to achieve Ethics Across the Curriculum. In response to the engineering ethics education, the authors implemented engineering ethics into two Introductory Engineering Design Courses..Engineering Design I for freshmen and Engineering Design II for sophomore. Engineering Ethics of the Introductory Engineering Design Courses are composed of the following six elements: (1) A lecture on Engineering Ethics (2)Practice of judgment, decision-making and consideration during the engineering design process from the point of view of Engineering Ethics (3) Advice and guidance on Engineering Ethics given by an instructor during an office hour meeting (4) Presentation of the results of the above-mentioned activities at the final oral presentation (5) Specifying the learning objects of Engineering Ethics (6) Self-evaluation of achievements of the learning objects This paper describes the outline of the engineering ethics education in the introductory Engineering Design Courses and the learning outcomes of Engineering Ethics.