Engineering ethics courses have become integrated into capstone courses as a means of professionalization (Simonson 2005), preparing students for the ‘real life’ engineering experiences including working collaboratively with others, communicating effectively and thinking as part of a team in social processes (Jonassen et al. 2009; Dym et al. 2005; Devon 1999).
Much of this is predicated on the assumption that whilst engineering students will go on to become professional engineers, they do not yet have professional and personal experience in that area, and Vesilind (1996) describes how ‘students cannot identify with problems facing the practicing engineer since they have never been in that role’.
Some scholars go even further to argue that as engineering ethics is a professional subject, it is impossible to learn outside of either professional school or practice (Colby and Sullivan 2008).
This is however, a limited view of what an engineering faculty provides for instruction in both ethics and engineering, particularly given that these are both applied subjects which are learnt through ongoing practice.
As Feisel and Rosa (2005) describe, engineering students go to labs to learn something that practicing engineers are already assumed to know and to learn through doing via simulation exercises.
Similarly, classroom-based ethics instruction provides a group environment which familiarizes students with standards of conduct and ethical judgment which, as Davis (2006) notes, will improve with use:.