The Online Ethics Center for Engineering & Science - Department of ...

Undergraduate Education in Practical Ethics●●●not cause unnecessary harm (e.g., destroy a person's reputation)Recognize explanations other than the one that appears most likelyFashion responses that will be robust in the sense that they will bewise, even if the situation turns out to be other than the one thatseemed most plausibleRecognize when the moral territory is unfamiliar and locate goodadvice about how to proceed and the likely effects of doing soFor more detailed information on active learning methods that teacha full range of skills for moral problem solving, see "Moral Agents andMoral Problems ". (That this essay was selected for reprinting by theNational Student Pugwash, shows student enthusiasm for these methods.)Active learning materials are featured in the Online Ethics Center( OEC). Active learning methods were featured in pedagogicalpresentations in the March 1999 International Conference on Ethics inEngineering and Computer Science held at Case. The conference papersdescribing these methods are available in the OEC.Other valuable methods are already used in those disciplines in thehumanities and social science that regularly include ethics in their subjectmatter. Ethics has sometimes been well incorporated into capstonecourses in engineering design. The present proposal is not meant todisplace either such existing disciplinary courses that treat ethics indepth, or ethics education that already incorporated into engineeringcourses.A. Freshman Orientation:As of Fall 2000 the first day of Freshman Orientation at Case featuredskits depicting predicaments of college life with President Auston inattendance. These challenge students to think through their actions in arange of situations, from responding to a student who has passed out afterdrinking, to deciding what kinds of help they may use in doing theirassignments. The conversation about the moral responsibilities in anacademic community and academic honesty as a value central to thepractices of acquiring, augmenting, and transmitting knowledge beganhere, as it should, at the beginning of orientation. The uniformity of theexpectation on students and faculty alike to fully acknowledging allsources and aids used in one's work began at this point.B. 100-Level Courses, Especially First-SemesterFreshman ClassesOrientation to the university as a center of learning and research, andintroduction to the practices that define a research university and thecentrality of academic integrity to those practices should continue in 100-level courses. In these courses, upper-class students as well as first-yearstudents are introduced to disciplines. They need to learn not only themethods of creation and discovery used in those disciplines, but also thestandards for evaluating and crediting contributions made in the givenhttp://onlineethics.org/edu/cwethed.html (2 of 8)10/25/2005 9:06:13 AM