On August 1, 2012, the state of Wisconsin instituted new continuing education requirements for professional engineers seeking re-licensure, and those requirements include two hours of engineering ethics education. The Department of Engineering Professional Development at the University of Wisconsin began developing ethics seminars and webinars to provide these credits to engineers in the state of Wisconsin. This paper explores several observations from talking with over 1000 practicing engineers in the past year. These include (1) that engineers typically do not use available professional codes of ethics when addressing ethical dilemmas; unsurprisingly, many instead employ what could be called common-sense ethics; (2) that organizational politics sometimes constrain discussion of case studies during these sessions; (3) that engineers in private and public sectors often carry differing views of the ethics of gift-giving; and (4) that experienced engineers, in particular, employ what could be called "gut-check" ethics that rely on intuition to determine right from wrong. We address the challenges these observations present and note opportunities for further analysis through study of the psychology of influence, motivated blindness, and cognitive biases. Regardless of the challenges we note here, it is clear that engineers place a high value on the opportunity to discuss case studies in ethics with other professional engineers, and when properly done, licensure training in ethics can provide a unique mentoring opportunity for the profession. Our existing PE seminar is a work in progress, and we hope this paper will initiate fruitful conversations about future directions as we develop an advanced seminar.

Madison. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin, and has been teaching courses in engineering communication for fifteen years. She has done consulting work in professional engineering writing for private firms (such as HNTB, Inc. and Affiliated Engineers, Inc.) and has taught technical communication as part of the UW-Madison College of Engineering study abroad program in both Toulouse, France, and Hangzhou, China. For the past several years her program has been collaborating with colleagues throughout the College of Engineering to design online modules to improve engineering writing across the curriculum. Christina Matta, Technical Communication Program, UW-Madison Dr. Christina Matta teaches in the Technical Communication Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches introductory and upper-level technical writing classes along with courses in technical presentations and preparing grant proposals. She holds a Ph.D. in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked with the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching for six years before joining the Technical Communication Program.

No abstract

No abstract

This paper discusses the development and assessment of a reading and discussion course entitled "Social and Ethical Impacts of Technology." Taught in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Engineering Professional Development by members of the department's technical communication faculty, the course combined assigned readings, an in-class and an online discussion, and an end-of-semester writing assignment to help students achieve the following learning outcomes:• Outcome 1: Articulate connections among engineering, ethics, community, history, social change, and politics by actively listening and participating in a small discussion setting • Outcome 2: Recognize and work with the role of uncertainty in engineering and its relationship to social and ethical dimensions • Outcome 3: Analyze and assess the social and ethical impact of technology on society by critically thinking about the readings and discussion topics • Outcome 4: Communicate effectively by writing and speaking • Outcome 5: Identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems related to professional and ethical responsibilities, including interdisciplinary approaches to said problems Our three-pronged assessment scheme measured success of the learning outcomes through (1) interviews with a student focus group and with individual instructors; (2) written student surveys, including a short mid-semester evaluation and Elaine Seymour's Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) protocol at the end of the semester; and (3) review of the online discussion forum transcripts and the final research projects. Results suggest that students satisfactorily achieved Outcomes 1-3 but that adjustments should be made to the course to help students better succeed with Outcomes 4-5. The authors discuss future plans for the course as well as exportable lessons for those interested in trying to find a place for similar courses at their own institutions. Throughout the paper, the authors also argue that flexible, interdisciplinary, student-centered discussion courses like this one have the potential to teach some of the ABET professional skills in way that students and faculty alike will find refreshing, exciting, and effective.