Ethics%20Across%20the%20Curriculum - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

About This Presentation
Title:

Ethics%20Across%20the%20Curriculum

Description:

However, these inkjet cartridges are made in your hometown. ... 4. Advocate designing a recyclable cartridge that could be manufactured in the hometown plant. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:66
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 68
Provided by: willia182
Learn more at: http://www.uprm.edu
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Ethics%20Across%20the%20Curriculum


1
Ethics Across the Curriculum
  • Dr José A. Cruz
  • Dr. William J. Frey
  • Dr. Halley D. Sanchez

2
Introduction
  • Team Introductions
  • El Centro Para La Etica En Las Profesiones
    (Center for Ethics in the Professions)
  • Series of EAC Workshops
  • 4 ABET workshops for UPRM College of Engineering
  • 1 EAC workshop for UPR Deans of Academic Affairs
  • Series of Dissemination Workshops (APPE and ASEE)
  • Paper on Workshop in ASEE 2002 Proceedings

3
Our goals for today
  • Present ABET 2000 ethics requirements
  • Advocate EAC as an effective and efficient
    response to these requirements
  • Model two successful ethics integration modules
  • Develop short scenarios to include in templates
    of these modules for engineering
  • Identify pilot ethics integration projects for
    mainstream engineering courses
  • Set forth tools for documenting and assessing
    pilot projects

4
ABET Ethics Criteria
  • ABET, Criterion 3, f and h
  • f an understanding of professional and ethical
    responsibility
  • h the broad education necessary to understand
    the impact of engineering solutions in a global
    and societal context

5
ABET Ethics Criteria
  • Criterion 4
  • Mandates a major design experience
  • based on the knowledge and skills acquired in
    earlier course work and incorporating engineering
    standards and realistic constraints that include
    most of the following considerations economic
    environmental sustainability manufacturability
    ethical health and safety social and political

6
Three things to remember
  • Bean-counting is not enough
  • ABET requires outcomes-based assessment
  • Program identifies desired outcomes
  • Implements a process of documentation and
    assessment to show success in achieving these
    outcomes
  • ABET requires the implementation, documentation
    and assessment of a program that allows for
    continuous improvement.

7
Ethics Across the Curriculum
  • Holistic
  • Interdisciplinary
  • Misconceptions

8
What is EAC?
  • Ethics Across the Curriculum
  • One of the leading trends in ethics pedagogy
    today is to have an ethical component or module
    incorporated into the actual professional or
    occupational course to supplement the
    freestanding ethics course.

9
EAC is holistic
  • EAC requires establishing an overall plan that
    coordinates a series of activities
  • Freestanding Course (Required or Elective)
  • Ethics Integration Projects for mainstream
    engineering courses
  • Special Activities

10
Freestanding Course
  • Course in engineering ethics taught by an
    ethicist, engineer, or both
  • Repository of Research, Knowledge, and Innovation
  • Effective means for faculty to keep up to date in
    the field of engineering ethics.
  • Viable option for engineering students who want
    to study ethical issues in more depth
  • But it need not be required for all students
  • Remaining students can be reached through special
    ethics integration activities or projects

11
Ethics Integration Activities
  • Todays Two Examples
  • Introductory Ethics Module for Introduction to
    Computers (Dr. Cruzs exercise)
  • Introduces students to ethical issues in
    computing
  • Introduces students to ethics cases and basic
    ethical frameworks
  • Gray Matters (Module that Frey uses in Mechanical
    Engineering Capstone Design Class)
  • Promotes integration of ethical issues into a
    rational decision-making process

12
Special Activities
  • These activities occur outside the the main
    curriculum
  • Examples
  • Special Presentations (Three UPRM engineering
    professorsindustrial, mechanical, civilpresent
    on super-aqueduct accident in Puerto Rico)
  • Student Activities (UPRM students revise CIAPR
    code of ethics for Co-Op students)
  • Competitions (APPEs Ethics Bowl)

13
Coordination is Important
  • These activities must be recognized, documented,
    and coordinated
  • to provide interventions for all engineering
    students
  • to form a multi level sequence in which later
    interventions build on earlier ones
  • to target core curriculum classes
  • to realize a coherent set of targeted outcomes
  • to allow for assessment and documentation
  • to be synthesized into a plan that allows for
    continuous improvement

14
EAC is Interdisciplinary
  • EAC recognizes that ethical problems in
    engineering practice must be approached from an
    interdisciplinary standpoint
  • Ethical issues in the design of coolants
  • Cases that integrate ethical, technical and
    mathematical components
  • Extended interdisciplinary study of Challenger
    Case
  • Engineering Ethics (like Medical Ethics) has
    entered a stage where problems and solutions are
    interdisciplinary

15
Misconceptions about EAC
  • EAC is not realized by forcing engineering
    professors to teach ethics in their classes
    against their will
  • EAC does not mandate that teachers devote
    substantial parts of their classes to teaching
    ethics at the expense of engineering content.
  • You do not have to stop teaching engineering to
    teach ethics (Satisficing ethical and
    engineering content not trading one off against
    the other)
  • While EAC requires sensitivity to ethical issues
    arising in engineering, it does not require
    expertise in meta-ethics, public policy, law, or
    religion.

16
The Basis
  • In response to these misconceptions
  • You know more about ethics than you think you
    know
  • You know enough to have a significant impact on
    your students moral development
  • You know enough to comply with ABET
  • You have enough time to carry out an effective
    ethics integration project

17
Moral Minimum
  • Harm, Reversibility, Publicity, and Feasibility
    Satisficing Constraints

18
Roughly Hewn Tools
  • Definition of Ethics the systematic and critical
    study of social practices
  • Example Engineering ethics is the systematical
    and critical study of the social practice of
    engineering.
  • Systematic employs principles and logical
    argument in assessing the norms of a practice.
  • Critical Systematic examination may show that
    practical norms fail to meet ethical criteria.

19
The Moral Minimum
  • Question What is the minimum basis from which we
    can start the process of ethical reflection in
    engineering?
  • Agreement on three broad-based principles
  • Harm Engineers ought to avoid causing harm.
    They also ought to prevent harm when it is in
    their power to do so
  • Reversibility We ought to impose on others only
    what we would have them impose on us.
  • Publicity We ought to act only on the basis of
    that with which we are willing to be publicly
    associated.

20
Other Versions (Moral Minimum)
  • Werhane Avoid negatives such as injustice,
    dishonesty, needlessly harming others, etc.
  • Rawls Those principles that rationally
    self-interested individuals would agree to under
    a veil of ignorance.
  • Pinkus, Shuman, Hummon, Wolfe competence,
    responsibility, and Ciceros Creed II (Safety)

21
Three Principles, Three Tests
  • ReversibilityWould I think this a good choice if
    I were among those affected by it?
  • Harm Does this action do less harm than any
    available alternatives?
  • Publicity Would I want this action published in
    the newspaper?

22
Reversibility Steps
  • 1. Determine who is going to be affected by your
    action.
  • 2. Determine how they will be affected.
  • 3. Reverse roles put yourself in their place.
  • 4. Answer this question if you were in their
    place, would you still find the action acceptable?

23
Harm Test Steps
  • 1. Identify those who will be affected by your
    action.
  • 2. Identify the impact your action will have on
    these people.
  • 3. Determine whether this impact is harmful.
    (Does it violate any rights? Does it produce
    physical or mental suffering? Does it impose
    financial or non-financial costs? Does it
    deprive others of important or essential goods?
  • 4. Repeat these steps for each of the best
    available alternatives and compare them in terms
    of the net harm they produce.
  • Conclude by answering this question which
    alternative produces the least net harm?

24
Publicity Test Steps
  • 1. Consider, first, that the action you are about
    to perform provides a window through which others
    can see who you really are.
  • 2. Then take the perspective of those others who
    are about to judge your character through your
    action.
  • 3. Ask the following question Would others view
    you as a good person for what you are about to do?

25
Feasibility Test Considerations
  • Time is there a deadline within which your
    solution has to be enacted? Is this deadline
    negotiable?
  • Financial Are their cost constraints on your
    solution? Are these negotiable?
  • Legal Does your proposed alternative violate any
    laws, statutes, or regulations?
  • Personal Do the personalities of the people
    involved impose any constraints on your solution?
  • Social, Cultural, or Political How would your
    solution be viewed through the social, cultural,
    and political milieu in which it is being enacted?

26
Partial Encapsulation
  • Each of these tests provides us with an initial
    access to one or more major ethical approaches
  • Harm harm minimization is an essential component
    of utilitarian theory
  • Reversibility is an essential component of
    respect for others, a component shared by
    deontology and rights theory
  • Publicity reveals aspects of virtue theory if we
    assume that the actions with which we are
    publicly associated provide others with windows
    through which they can view and evaluate our
    characters.

27
Gray Matters
  • An Ethics Integration Module

28
Instructions for Gray Matters
  • 1. Read the scenario and solutions.
  • 2. Examine each alternative in terms of harm,
    reversibility, publicity, and feasibility.
  • 3. Which of the solutions satisfices the
    constraints raised by these tests?
  • 4. If you can design a better solution than the
    ones proffered, then do so.
  • 5. Justify your best available alternative in
    terms of the 4 tests and the idea of satisficing.
  • 6. Think about the questions and problems that
    arise as you work with the ethics tests framework.

29
Pacemaker Case
  • A pacemaker manufacturing company (PACE Inc.)
    located in a small town in Puerto Rico provides
    jobs to about 80 of the towns workforce.
    Profit margins are thin in this competitive field
    which includes larger U.S. companies. You are on
    an RD team for PACE that has studied two options
    for the circuitry BULK CMOS and SOI. The team
    favors BULK CMOS because the manufacturing
    process is simpler and cheaper. But the chips
    will be larger and consume more energy this
    means more surgery for the patients to replace
    the batteries. Overall, the use of BULK CMOS
    would reduce patient life expectancy by 15.
    Given this knowledge, what should you do?

30
Alternatives
  • 1. Go along with the team and advocate the
    simpler and cheaper process.
  • 2. Oppose the team and advocate the more complex,
    more expensive, but safer process. Try to
    persuade the team members to opt for safety.
  • 3. Oppose the team. Force agreement by
    threatening to blow the whistle.
  • 4. Resign from PACE, Inc.
  • 5. Design your own solution.

31
Inkjet Case
  • You are a UPRM engineering graduate from a small
    town in Puerto Rico and have started working in
    your first job as a member of a research and
    development team charged with designing a new
    generation of printers for a market leader in
    this area. The company you work for wants to
    maintain its leadership in this area. It also
    wants to respond to the emerging environmental
    problem caused by the disposal of the inkjet
    cartridges used in its current model. However,
    these inkjet cartridges are made in your
    hometown. If the new generation of printers does
    not use disposable cartridges, then this plant
    will close, putting friends and family out of
    work. Your company is a leader in empowering its
    employees. But what should you do with this
    newly found power?

32
Inkjet Solutions
  • 1. Resign from the RD team because you have a
    conflict of interest.
  • 2. Use your position on the team to argue that
    the company does not need to develop a new
    generation of printers. In this way guarantee
    that your friends and family will keep their
    jobs.
  • 3. Sit back and see what the senior members of
    the team want. Then enthusiastically embrace
    this.
  • 4. Advocate designing a recyclable cartridge that
    could be manufactured in the hometown plant.
  • 5. Design your own solution.

33
Designing Integration Exercises
  • Teaching and Writing Cases

34
Teaching and Writing Cases
  • Case Discussion helps students learn ethics.
  • Discuss Real World cases that portray everyday
    situations rather than focus exclusively on big
    news/bad news cases.
  • Students will modify their moral views in
    response to arguments by teachers and peers.
  • Closure in the sense of reaching the definitive
    right answer is not necessary
  • Exposure to different arguments and practice
    using decision making and ethical frameworks is
    important.

35
Teaching and Writing Cases
  • There are two perspectives from which to discuss
    real world cases
  • Evaluator or Judge Perspective Taking a
    standpoint outside the case, students pin moral
    labels on the participants and their actions.
  • Participant Perspective The student takes up the
    role of one of the participants and plays out the
    situation by making a decision.

36
Participant Perspective
  • The student is encouraged to make a decision from
    the point of view of one of the participants.
  • The case is interrupted at the moment of decision
  • The decision is made under various constraints
    (time/money) and in the face of uncertainty about
    consequences.

37
Teaching and Writing Cases
  • An Example Aquaculture Case from NSF SBR-9810253
  • Original version A local aquaculture facility
    near Ponce was closed by the EPA for violating
    standards they were shooting birds who ate the
    lobster fingerlings and dumping dirty water into
    the local river.
  • Question Was the EPA just or unjust in closing
    the facility?

38
Teaching and Writing Cases
  • The students rewrote this case
  • The EPA has informed an aquaculture facility that
    they are in violation of environmental
    regulations (shooting endangered birds and
    improper disposal of waste water). This facility
    has two months to submit a compliance report. To
    write this report, they have hired a group of
    engineers as consultants. You are one of the
    consultants. Your job is to write a report that
    describes several possible compliance responses.
    Include information on how to implement these
    responses and their costs.

39
Teaching and Writing Cases
  • What is different about the students version?
  • It places the analyzer in the participatory point
    of view, rather than that of the evaluator.
  • It elicits a decision that integrates technical
    and ethical components it is interdisciplinary
  • Engineering skill and knowledge is required to
    formulate the ethical/environmental problem.
  • It elicits a proactive rather than a reactive,
    judgmental response.

40
Writing Cases for Gray Matters
  • Write the case from participant point of view.
  • You are a technical consultant hired by a local
    aquaculture firm.
  • Localize the circumstances. (The students put
    the case in Ponce, Puerto Rico with its laws,
    culture, and tradition.)
  • Keep the story line simple.
  • Interrupt the narrative at a point of decision.

41
Adapting to Gray Matters
  • Build solutions around four generic options
  • (1) give in,
  • (2) negotiate,
  • (3) oppose,
  • (4) resign.

42
Adapting to Gray Matters
  • Add an opportunity for students to develop their
    own solution
  • Solutions can be combined or synthesized.
  • Students can form a plan of action that goes from
    one solution to another. The successors serve as
    backup plans in case the first fails.
  • Reinforce the idea that real world cases are not
    necessarily dilemmas, that is, situations that
    offer only limited and forced options to the
    participant.

43
Issues for Scenarios
  • CIAPR Code of ethics
  • Public health, safety, and welfare
  • Avoiding Conflicts of Interest
  • Maintaining Confidences
  • Faithful Agency
  • Collegiality
  • Uphold honor, integrity and reputation of the
    profession
  • Promote professional autonomy

44
Issues in Computer Ethics
  • From Impact CS
  • www.seas.gwu.edu/impactcs/paper3/pg6.html
  • Quality of life
  • Use of Power
  • Risk Reliability
  • Property Rights
  • Privacy
  • Honesty Deception

45
Is There Enough Time?
  • Integration projects that are also time savers

46
Time Savers
  • Look for cases where it is necessary to solve
    engineering and mathematical problems to
    formulate the ethical problems.
  • Mayaguez Land Fill Case
  • Participants must determine the capacity of land
    fill liner to conduct electricity
  • Participants must also reflect on local weather
    conditions
  • These factors make possible recognizing the
    concern about the liner starting fires due to
    conducting electricity from lightening.

47
Time Savers
  • The biggest objection to EAC integration projects
    is the lack of time
  • How can I teach ethics when I dont have time to
    teach the required engineering skills?
  • Assumption One has to stop teaching engineering
    in order to teach ethics

48
Time Savers Benefits
  • Time saver cases have two benefits
  • Ethical problems provide real world situations in
    which students can apply engineering concepts
  • They show how ethical and engineering issues are
    integrated because one must solve engineering and
    mathematical problems in order to formulate
    ethical problems

49
An EAC Plan
  • Promoting Ethical Empowerment in a Five Year
    Program

50
Example of EAC Plan
  • Based on exercises we presented earlier
  • Introductory Ethics Integration Exercise
  • Gray Matters
  • Based on frameworks presented above
  • Ethics Tests, RDP, Codes of Ethics
  • Multi-Level, Sequential Program
  • Five Ethical Empowerment Skills

51
EAC Outcomes
  • Ethical Empowerment which includes
  • Ethical awareness
  • Ethical evaluation
  • Ethical integration
  • Prevention
  • Value Realization skills

52
First Intervention Awareness
  • Ethical Awareness The ability to perceive
    ethical issues embedded in complex, concrete
    situations.
  • Framework
  • Codes of Ethics and Issues Lists
  • Exercise
  • Introductory Ethics Integration demonstrated by
    Dr. Cruz (Pre-test)
  • Discuss short scenarios that show ethical issues
    in everyday engineering practice
  • Target
  • 1st year, introductory, required course

53
Second Intervention Evaluation
  • Ethical Evaluation The ability to assess an
    action, product, or process in terms of different
    ethical approaches such as utilitarianism, rights
    theory, deontology, and virtue ethics
  • Framework
  • Ethics Tests Harm, Reversibility, Publicity
  • Exercise
  • Modified Introductory Exercise
  • Target
  • Required course at 2nd year level

54
Third Intervention Integration
  • Ethical Integration The ability to integrate
    ethical considerations into an activity so that
    these play an essential, constitutive role in the
    final product
  • Framework
  • Ethics tests plus feasibility test
  • Rational Decision Procedure
  • Practice satisficing conflicting constraints
  • Exercise
  • Gray Matters analyzed in terms of 7-step
    procedure
  • Target
  • 3rd year required course

55
Fourth Intervention Prevention
  • Preventive Skills The ability to uncover ethical
    surprises and design preventive measures to stop
    them from becoming full-blown dilemmas.
  • Framework
  • Empirical Tools Designing questions for
    interviews
  • Ethical Tools Issues List plus ethics tests
  • Exercise
  • Social Impact Analysis (see computingcases.org)
  • Target
  • 4th year students do SIS on 5th year student
    designs.

56
Fourth Intervention Value Realization Skills
  • Value Realization Skills The ability to
    recognize and exploit opportunities for using
    ones skills and talents to maintain and promote
    ethical values.
  • Framework
  • Previously mentioned frameworks
  • Exercise
  • Major design experience evaluated according to
    considerations mentioned in Criterion 4
  • Target
  • 5th year capstone course in design

57
Will this waste time?
  • Five hours out of a five year program?
  • By carefully designing the intervention exercises
    and cases, these ethics activities could also be
    used to present and apply engineering and
    mathematical concepts.
  • These exercises also spill over into other ABET
    criteria working in teams, communicating skills,
    global issues, integrating ethics into a major
    design experience, etc.

58
Two Concluding Questions
  • How do we assess our workshop?
  • Will it work at other universities?

59
Workshop Assessment
  • Formal Evaluation Form
  • Informal Debriefings carried out by the workshop
    team (did we achieve the goals mentioned at the
    beginning)
  • Results Exercises Modeled, Cases Generated,
    Exercises Recognized, and Pilot Projects

60
Cases Generated
  • Over thirty real world cases
  • Displayed on our web page
  • www.uprm.edu/ethics
  • Further case criteria
  • Discipline covered by case
  • Synthesis between technical and ethical content
  • Number of uses

61
Exercises Developed
  • For each workshop, we have filled two exercise
    templates (Introductory Exercise and Gray Matters
  • For ideas on generating other kinds of exercises,
    see
  • Impact CS
  • www.computingcases.org

62
Exercises Discovered
  • During our workshops, participants have informed
    us of projects they have already implemented into
    their classes
  • Having been recognized, these efforts can now be
    documented and assessed for ABET

63
Integration Project (Recognized)
  • Course INEL/ICOM (Dr. Luis Jimenez)
  • Exercise Title Etica e Ingenieria Modulo de
    Ethca para cursos de INEL/ICOM
  • Objectives ethical awareness, evaluation, and
    integration (ABET 3f, 3h, and 4)
  • Outcomes learn about utilitarianism, deontology,
    virtue, codes, global and environmental impacts
    of engineering
  • Assessment students develop virtue and duty
    lists for professors and students

64
Pilot Projects
  • Course INEL 4151 4152 (Electromagnetic Group)
  • Required Course
  • Exercise Title Health/Safety Case (Mayaguez Land
    Fill)
  • Objectives Ethical Evaluation
  • Outcomes Students will evaluate a scenario using
    ethics tests of harm, reversibility, and
    publicity after solving numerical problems.
  • Mode of Assessment test questions and class
    discussion

65
Implicit Criteria
  • Workshop assessed in terms of the product it
    generates (cases and exercises)
  • Workshop assessed in terms of what is implemented
    (syllabi, classes, commitments)
  • Workshop assessed in terms future possibilities
    opened (proposal to generate an ethics toolkit to
    facilitate the generation and implementation of
    ethics integration activities)

66
Last Question
  • Will this work at my institution?
  • We are more alike than you think
  • Treating engineering faculty with respect (we
    have learned as much from them as they have from
    us)
  • Develop positive responses to comfort issues
    (include interactive activities) and time
    problems (develop sample exercises from syllabi
    and by rewriting textbook exercises)
  • ABET visits are also a motive

67
Last Task
  • Please fill out the evaluation forms.
  • Thank you for your participation
  • We can be contacted through our web page
  • www.uprm.edu/ethics
  • w_frey_at_rumac.uprm.edu
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com