Creating Ethical Awareness in Electrical and Computer Engineering Students: A Learning Module on Ethics

Abstract

The complex interaction between engineering, technology, social needs and values challenges engineering education programs to prepare new professionals to respond to real engineering problems with more than technical skills. The goal of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez is to develop a full-scale program of Ethics Across the Engineering Curriculum. As a first step we have developed an Ethics Module for ECE students. Ethics workshops were given to students of Pattern Recognition and Power Engineering. Instruments were developed to assess student learning and perception about the ethical and social implications in engineering. At the end of each workshop, participants completed the assessment instrument. The assessment instruments were used to evaluate the impact of the Ethics Module in two aspects: the learning process of the students and their perception, and the impact on their ethical conduct