Conference Session

Engineering Ethics Division Technical Session 1

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Madeline Polmear, University of Colorado, Boulder; Angela R. Bielefeldt, University of Colorado, Boulder; Daniel Knight, University of Colorado, Boulder; Chris Swan, Tufts University; Nathan E. Canney, CYS Structural Engineers Inc.

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Ethics

between engineering and human kind as a soft skill because to me that’s the most technical skill, to be able to know what’s right to do when.Another interviewee echoed a similar sentiment with “people talking about the professionalskills, the hard skills and soft skills… we call them professional skills… I think in reality,those skills are much harder to learn.” Both of these educators found that calling ethical andsocietal skills “soft” is a disservice to their complexity since these skills can be the mostchallenging to teach and learn. Another interviewee expressed that even calling these skillsprofessional does not do them justice since they are inextricably part of the engineering. People used to call them soft skills… then people started

Conference Session

Engineering Ethics Division Technical Session 3

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jonathan Beever, University of Central Florida

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Ethics

of interdisciplinary work that crosses thosetraditional boundaries of hard and soft skills, evidencing just such a constructive view of therelationship between philosophers and engineers. An important variant on a view like this is theclaim that engineers can and must learn to be philosophers, rather than rely on philosophers.Such a view was proposed by philosopher Carl Mitcham in 1998, when he argued that while“philosophy has not paid sufficient attention to engineering, engineers should not use this as anexcuse to ignore philosophy” [26], and “[p]hilosophy is of critical and increasing significance toengineering” [27]. What is importance is not that philosophers can contribute to engineering, butthat “ [e]ngineers are… the unacknowledged

Conference Session

Engineering Ethics Division Technical Session 2

Collection

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Brendon Lumgair P.Eng., University of Calgary

Tagged Divisions

Engineering Ethics

assess in a mass-production fashion (Hugo, Brennan, 2016). What about teachingnon-technical engineering courses online to hundreds or thousands of students?Of the 11 ABET student outcomes and the 12 Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board’s(CEAB) graduate attributes, about half are “technical / hard skills” and half are “professional /soft skills” (ABET, 2018 & CEAB, 2017). The student outcomes for professional skills arequalitative in nature. Therefore, they require qualitative assessment because of the wide range ofpossible solutions inside the gray zone (Shuman, 2005). How can hundreds of students achievethese outcomes in an online course without sacrificing the quality of teaching and learning andrigour of assessment?In Spring &