Abstract
At Shantou University (STU) in 2008, a stand-alone engineering ethics course was first included within a Conceive–Design–Implement–Operate (CDIO) curriculum to address the scarcity of engineering ethics education in China. The philosophy of the course design is to help students to develop an in-depth understanding of social sustainability and to fulfill the obligations of engineers in the twenty-first century within the context of CDIO engineering practices. To guarantee the necessary cooperation of the relevant parties, we have taken advantage of the top-down support from the STU administration. Three themes corresponding to contemporary issues in China were chosen as the course content: engineers’ social obligations, intellectual property and engineering safety criteria. Some popular pedagogies are used for ethics instruction such as case studies and group discussions through role-playing. To impart the diverse expertise of the practical professional practice, team teaching is adopted by interdisciplinary instructors with strong qualifications and industrial backgrounds. Although the assessment of the effectiveness of the course in enhancing students’ sense of ethics is limited to assignment reports and class discussions, our endeavor is seen as positive and will continue to sustain the CDIO reform initiatives of STU.
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Notes
For every CDIO project team, a teacher/faculty member is assigned responsibility for the guidance of their engineering practices, which is mostly conducted in extra-curricular periods. In general, every teacher has to guide three or four teams because of limited staffing. As expected, the teacher helps students to identify both ethical and technical issues to give students the opportunity to practice ethical decision-making. To some extent, this approach can be regarded as pervasive ethics education.
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Acknowledgments
Partial financial support was provided by a grant from the Finance Bureau of GD Province for Teaching Reform, “Setting Up a Teaching Team for CDIO Engineering Education Reform of the Mechatronic Discipline.” The authors are very thankful for the helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers and journal editors. Throughout the organization of the course, the STU executive president, Prof. Gu, provided important and valuable suggestions that the authors incorporated into the manuscript, and ensured that significant support was received from the STU administration, which the authors would like to acknowledge gratefully. Finally, the authors are also very grateful for the immense help from the additional editors and colleagues, Prof. Chengjin Zhang, Prof. Dongxiao Qin and Prof. Yongping Zhong.
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Fan, Y., Zhang, X. & Xie, X. Design and Development of a Course in Professionalism and Ethics for CDIO Curriculum in China. Sci Eng Ethics 21, 1381–1389 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9592-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9592-2