Tool-Based Ethics Education for Engineers: wonderberries and wisdom tiles

The Dutch research project “Wijs met techniek” (Tech-Wise) explores ethics education from a tool-based, practical perspective. Especially if and how practical tools for ethical deliberation on the impact of technology can be helpful in ethics education for engineering students. The approach is first intended as a variation on theories in ethics and technology. Secondly, the approach uses a focus on the impact of technology as a way toward ethical deliberation. Both characteristics are intended to better appeal to engineering students.
In the project we cover three levels of higher education; a University, a University
of Applied Sciences and a School for Vocational training. Together we are developing and testing a suite of activating working methods that can be tailored to various engineering programs. A first result of this is the simple workshop format “ethics for engineers”, consisting of five steps with four effective ingredients. In this paper we present the general format of this workshop and dive in particular into a specific instance of the workshop called “Wonderberries”.
The experiences from the workshop show that with a carefully chosen combination of engaging orientation, a specific ‘technology’ and a concrete design exercise the ethical questions and subsequent deliberation and reflection can be very rich.