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August 2021

SEFI Ethics Special Interest Group Newsletter

Coming up in this month’s newsletter

Dear reader,

Our August newsletter reports on the workshop dedicated to Value Sensitive Design and brings different perspectives and initiatives that explore the role of values in engineering design and how can they be foster in engineering education

Value Sensitive Design as a participative and nudging instrument in and for Engineering Ethics Education.

Gunter Bombaerts and Diana Martin

Value-sensitive design (VSD) and other methods of design for value are key in engineering and in engineering ethics education (EEE). They are extremely supportive to increase the ethical contribution of engineers in technological developments. Good insights into these methods therefore is of quintessence importance to EEE.

This SEFI ethics newsletter focuses on two dimensions. First, VSD can be introduced in the curriculum to prompt students to apply it. But as a broad and effective practical and analytical tool for value change, it can also be applied to EEE itself. Second, VSD can strongly support participative approaches as a descriptive ethics mapping the values of all involved stakeholders, including the more vulnerable ones. But VSD can also be used as a normative behavioural change ethics method in nudging people to certain values, attitudes and behaviours.

Value Sensitive Design in and for engineering ethics education

In his contribution Responsible Engineering, Design and Innovation, Rafael Calvo opens the newsletter with a plea that engineering curricula should not only look at “performance” and “systemic” challenges, but that “contextual” and “global” aspects should be addressed as well.

Dylan Cawthorne gives a concrete example of how drones and VSD take high flights together in EEE. The process he describes in The beginning of our value sensitive design journey indicates how VSD in EEE starts processes with students, teachers and university partners. But it also shows how including VSD in the teaching changes EEE itself.

This double dynamic also becomes clear in Steven Umbrello and Daisy Yoo’s Envision values, envision value sensitive design, and Elisabeth Nilsson and Anne-Marie Hansen’s contribution An open resource on teaching for values at design and engineering programs. Both contributions provide links to practical materials and illustrate the interaction between VSD “in” and “for” engineering ethics education.

Value Sensitive Design as participation and nudging methodology

But this newsletter goes further. VSD is often presented as a descriptive and neutral method to facilitate participative approaches. Nevertheless, VSD also is an instrument for change for the better. It can support normative behavioral change by nudging people towards certain values, attitudes and behaviours. Of course, how far is it acceptable? Nudging for sustainable behaviour, grabbing cell-phone users’ attention or voting for a president; where is the bright, the grey and the dark zone?

Taylor Stone’s Finding values in the dark is an example. Darkness might, for many people, be linked with uncertainty or danger. Making a plea for darkness is more than “follow what people think”, it is about convincing, it is about making a plea for your own convictions as a (design) engineer.

This requires courage and critical thinking. But also here, as critical thinking needs plurals, privileges, intentions and imperfections, it needs courage for EEE as well, as Katta Spiel explains in Critical Thinking at the Foundation for Engineering Ethics Education. Or, as Jennifer Amos and Gabriel Burke state in their contribution: “Let us not be afraid to ask bold and potentially transformative questions!”

This is the last ethics SEFI Newsletter of this academic year. If you read it before going on holiday, we hope it gives you a pause in your finalising-before-holidays work. If you read it after your holidays, we hope it adds to your re-energised feeling.

Alongside these contributions, you can find our usual input on upcoming events and recently published articles on Engineering Ethics Education.

We wish you a good read, and hope you will react to the opinions expressed or share with us how you teach ethics on Twitter by using #SEFIethics

Gunter Bombaerts and Diana Martin (TU Eindhoven, the Netherlands)

Invitation: SEFI SIG Ethics online seminar series

23 September 2021 - Engineering ethics education: insights from Spain and Portugal

Thursday, 23 September, 11-13 CET

Speakers: Alfredo Soeiro (Department of Civil Engineering, University of Porto), Luis Adriano Oliveira (Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Coimbra), Esther Gimenez-Carbo, (Universitat Politècnica de València), Rosa Colmenarejo Fernández, (Universidad Loyola Andalucía)

This interactive session will discuss two main topics: the situation of Engineering Education on Ethics in Portugal and Spain and the intersection between ethics and sustainability. The seminar invites reflection on how to integrate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in engineering education. After brief presentations by the speakers, there will be a debate where participants are invited to contribute and propose guidance on how to improve Ethics Engineering Education.

Water ethics and responsible engineering

Wednesday, 20 October, 3-5 PM CET / 9-11 AM EST

Speakers: Yanna Lambrinidou (environmental health & policy scholar activist; Virginia Tech, USA); Neelke Doorn (TU Delft, The Netherlands); other speakers tbc

Workshop: Participatory tech assessment in engineering education

Wednesday, 10 November, 2.30-4.30 PM CET / 8:30-10:30 AM EST

Speakers: David Tomblin and Nicole Mogul (University of Maryland)

If you wish to propose a theme for a future ethics seminar, or are interested in organizing such a seminar yourself, please contact Diana ([email protected]).

News and initiatives

Cork Amendment to the Barcelona Declaration: One outcome of the Engineering Education for Sustainable Development Conference hosted by University College Cork is an amendment to the 2004’s Barcelona Declaration. The Cork Amendment highlights the necessity for both engineering students and engineering practitioners to urgently respond to the diverse planetary risks through an understanding of six imperatives: values, context, uncertainty, change, limits and vision. It calls for actively engaging in rebuttal of counter-factual information, alternative realities and denial of existing global threats, developing an anticipatory future vision which embraces the need for restructuring of how humans live on the Earth, delivering radical change through the co-generation of solutions across disciplines and with diverse stakeholders, seeking resilient, flexible and adaptive engineered systems and essential critical infrastructure capable of operating within diverse uncertainties, operating within resource and technological limits whilst seeking innovations that go beyond “doing no harm,” challenging orthodoxy and honestly assess the risks and impacts that may be associated with some technological /scientific advances.

Launch of Open Educational Resource for Value Sensitive Design education: The OER will officially be launched at a webinar on August 26, 2021, 3.30-6 pm (CEST) where we will present and discuss a possible framework for how the topic of values in design and development programmes could be taught. For more information and registration link: https://vase.mau.se/final-event/ In case you are interested in joining a community of teachers interested in value sensitive design education, join the LinkedIn group “Teaching for values in design in higher education” The VASE project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.

Launch of a new engineering education journal: The South African Society of Engineering Education (SASEE) launched on 23rd of July their official research journal, the Southern Journal of Engineering Education (SJEE). The journal is ‘southern’ in that it values critical perspectives on the unique challenges facing engineering education in South Africa and the Global South. The SJEE is an open-access publication that promotes the development of high-quality scholarship through a supportive peer-review process. While the journal particularly values empirical investigations, other forms of research (such as papers exploring theoretical perspectives or methodological approaches, review papers, as well as practice-oriented articles) will be considered. Furthermore, while critical perspectives from the Global South are the main interest, papers that deal with wider international or intercultural dimensions, of interest to our readership, could also be appraised for publication. In this sense, the Global South should not be considered in solely geographical terms but as a counterpoint to dominant perspectives from the Global North. The editor in chief is Bruce Kloot, who will be joined in his editorial journey by Johnson Carroll, Brandon Collier-Reed, Maggie Chetty and Karin Wolff.

Spotlight on role-models: The philosopher-engineer Zachary Pirtle recounts his professional trajectory, as a leader in space exploration and policy at NASA passionate by ethics and philosophical reflection. Read the story of how Zachary took his engineering education beyond the technical into the philosophical here .

Call for SEFI editorials: Are you teaching or researching engineering ethics education in Spain or Portugal? If you want to contribute an editorial for the October SEFI newsletter presenting your teaching approach, research findings or commenting on the status of ethics in your country or institution, please write to Diana ([email protected]) or Gunter ([email protected]) with your proposal. Editorials are welcome by 25 September.

Open calls - Upcoming events

Webinar VASE project: Open educational resource for teaching for values in design
26 August (Online), 3.30-6 pm CET - Registration open

SEFI 2021 Annual Conference Blended Learning in Engineering Education: challenging, enlightening – and lasting?

13-16 September 2021, TU Berlin - Registration open

SEFI SiG Ethics seminar: Engineering ethics education: insights from Spain and Portugal

Thursday, 23 September, 11-13 CET – Registration open

SEFI SiG Ethics seminar: Water ethics and responsible engineering

Wednesday, 20 October, 3-5 PM CET / 9-11 AM EST – Registration open

SEFI SiG Ethics Workshop: Participatory tech assessment in engineering education

Wednesday, 10 November, 2.30-4.30 PM CET / 8:30-10:30 AM EST - Registration open

31st APPE Annual Conference

24-27 February 2022, Cincinnati, Ohio, the US - Call for abstracts (deadline 4 October)

Recent articles and publications

Recent publications and articles dedicated to engineering ethics education are now available at our website.

The Ethics SIG Newsletter is issued 10 times per year and aims to share information on latest engineering ethics research and practices. If you would like to join the mailing list please use the form on the SEFI Ethics SIG website.

If you have something you want to share in the newsletter (great ideas, upcoming workshops, nice experiences …), let us know: Diana ([email protected]) and Gunter ([email protected]) Or connect with us on Twitter using #SefiEthics to signal publications, initiatives or events for inclusion in the newsletter

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