Engineering Ethics Education for a Capstone Design Project Course

Engineering disciplines shape society's social, economic, and cultural values.To guide against the potential negative consequences of technology on society, the need to incorporate ethical education in engineering and promote ethical responsibility for technology creations is of immense importance.The technology developed by engineers has found strong acceptance and integration in our daily lives.Consequently, technology-boosted economic development has changed the habits of individuals, both in terms of their relationship with themselves, their interrelationships, and the environment in which they live.Therefore, the integration of ethics in engineering education should be encouraged, as mandated by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).The paper presents our methods of teaching engineering ethics in the senior design project course at our institution.Our approach integrates ethical questions in specific engineering situations and allows students to learn using examples of reallife scenarios and case studies.The paper briefly describes our approach to incorporating ethical questions in capstone project design courses for electrical and computer engineering programs.It describes the teaching of Engineering Ethics to the senior undergraduate students through the capstone design project.Quizzes, exams, homework, and case studies assess the student's performance.We believe that the result fulfills our objective of bringing awareness to the students of engineering ethics.