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- Ethics across the curriculum
- Ethics across the curriculum
- Eac toolkit instructor module:
Below are four different sets of skills objectives:
- Four levels of development spelled out by David R. Haws for Engineering Ethics
- Skill objectives used at UPRM in various EAC efforts
- The Hastings Center List
- A list presented by Huff and Frey (referenced below) that combines recent research in moral psychology with skills useful for students learning the practice and profession of computing that includes computer science, computer engineering, and software engineering
Four development levels from haws
- Haws provides a development scale that measures different degrees and kinds of moral reasoning and moral autonomy. Success is measured in terms of accomplishing principle-based moral reasoning where principles are internalized and seen as the manifestation of a morally autonomous will
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Instilling moral principles as dogma: (A “minimalist approach that would leave our students with formulated dogma-—principles of right and wrong such as the National Society for Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics for Engineers-—but without any insight into the genesis of these principles” (204))
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Manipulating Moral Principles with Heuristics: (“systematic procedures like problem-solving heuristics that focus on the piece-wise solution of simplified ethical dilemmas” (208) Example: Vivian Weil’s iterative (non-linear) design model which can be found in Davis, Ethics and the University.
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Inducing Moral Principles through Case Studies: (“ A macro-ethics approach—helping students to inductively construct a posteriori principles from case studies—goes beyond the simple statement or manipulation of principles, but falls short of linking personal moral principles to the larger, social context.” (204))
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Understanding Moral Values through Meta-analysis: (“students will need to not only encounter important ethical theories but will need to experience the minds where those theories evolved. This can only be accomplished…with a critical reflection on primary source readings.” (209))
Uprm ethical empowerment skills list
- UPRM Objectives are described in the context of faculty development workshops in the Science and Engineering Ethics article by Cruz and Frey referenced below:
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Ethical Awareness is promoted by discussing cases and scenarios in which are embedded basic moral concepts (duty, right, good) and intermediate moral concepts (conflict of interest, privacy, confidentiality). By showing students how these concepts are present in everyday professional and occupation experience, ethical awareness dramatizes the importance of ethics in everyday experience and emphasizes the need to understand these ethical considerations as thoroughly as possible.”
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Ethical Evaluation : “ the ability to assess a product or process in terms of different ethical approaches such as utilitarianism, rights theory, deontology, and virtue ethics.” This skill can be demonstrated by ranking solution alternatives to decision points provided in cases and scenarios in terms of ethics tests that partially encapsulate ethical theory. Tests such as reversibility, harm, and publicity are useful in this context because they (partially) embody the ethical approaches of deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics, respectively. (See Davis -
Ethics and the university
for more about the ethics tests and for more ethics tests.)
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Ethical Integration : “the ability to integrate—not just apply—ethical considerations into an activity (such as a decision, product or process) so that ethics plays an essential, constitutive role in the final results.” It can also be described as the skill of systematically designing solutions that integrate moral value that can be manifested when students use a decision-making heuristics such as the Software Development Cycle or the Seven-Step Decision-Making Framework to resolve problems raised in ethics cases or scenarios.
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Ethical Problem Definition : the ability to (a) uncover potential ethical and social problems latent in a socio-technical system and (b) develop effective counter-measures to prevent these latent problems from materializing or to minimize their harmful or negative impact. Ethical Problem Definition makes use of socio-technical system analysis to uncover latent ethical problems and formulate effective counter/preventive measures.
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Value Realization : “the ability to recognize and exploit opportunities for using skills and talents to promote community welfare, enhance safety and health, improve the quality of the environment, and (in general) enhance wellbeing. It involves employing technical knowledge, experience, and expertise toward the end of realizing moral values.
Source:
OpenStax, Ethics across the curriculum modules for eac toolkit workshops. OpenStax CNX. May 07, 2007 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10414/1.2
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