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Are all engineering students capable of recognizing ethical and professional issues? An assessment approach to Engineering ethics

Abstract:

Engineering schools offer ethical training along with the transfer of technical knowledge and the development of other professional skills. The primary objective of this training is to prepare engineering graduates to face diverse ethical issues in the workplace. Thus, exhaustive information is needed to assess whether students are able to recognize potential conflicts that may arise during practice. Despite its importance, there are few studies about the assessment of this ability. This study presents a sequential mixed methodology to assess rigorously the ethics teaching and learning experience in a selective engineering school in Chile. First, we interviewed school authorities, faculty and undergraduate students about their perceptions of the school's approaches to teach ethics. Second, we designed a quantitative instrument to measure students' ability to recognize ethical and professional issues, to accept personal responsibility, to be aware of ethical codes, and to obtain learning benefits from different ethics training activities. Significant differences were found in individual ethical reasoning to identify issues by gender and socioeconomic status. Implications regarding improvement actions in the research site were discussed. Additionally, considerations for adopting the assessment approach by other institutions were also presented.