Go to http://www.onlineethics.com/index.html for more detail
Welcome to the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science. Our mission is to provide engineers, scientists, and science and engineering students with resources for understanding and addressing ethically significant problems that arise in their work, and to serve those who are promoting learning and advancing the understanding of responsible research and practice in science and engineering.
We occasionally sponsor conferences located in physical space, such as the International Conference on Ethics in Engineering and Computer Science in 1999. In other respects, the Online Ethics Center exists only in "cyberspace" and provides materials exclusively by posting them on these pages.
Using Materials from the Online Ethics Center
What would you like to see?Listing of main sections of the Online Ethics Center (OEC)
A general guide to the materials and structure of the Online Ethics Center (OEC)
A brief guide in response to an ABET Readiness Committee for handbook to help prepare the engineering faculty to address ethical issues in their teaching
A Plan for Undergraduate Education in Practical Ethics with sample assignments for engineering students from the OEC
Course-tested online assignments from Science and Engineering Ethics
- Ethics Help-Line:
The Help-Line provides advice for engineers, scientists, and trainees encountering ethical problems in their work and to assist scientists and engineers in maintaining high ethical standards and in acting wisely when confronted with multiple and potentially conflicting responsibilities, even where this may lead to conflicts with organizational superiors. We do not conduct investigations.- Research Ethics:
Materials original to the Online Ethics Center including Learning Research Ethics As a Community a modular sequence of materials on the responsible conduct of research for faculty, student and staff learning. The method is exerpted from "Beyond Adversarial Ethics: Web Resources for Solving Problems About Research Conduct", by Caroline Whitbeck. Includes a discussion of the background, main method and variations on this method, as well as sample scenarios and questions.- Cases:
Engineering ethics cases, including discussion cases based on those from the NSPE Board of Ethical Review- Moral Leaders:
Detailed hypermedia cases in which engineers or scientists showed exemplary behavior in fulfilling their professional responsibilities or in acting for the public good- Problems:
Scenarios submitted by visitors to the Center or explored in student investigative projects (problems situations followed by interviews with knowledgeable people on how best to address those problems)- Corporate Settings:
Materials about ethical issues for engineers and scientists in various corporate settings including views of ethically concerned high-tech companies on problems that arise in the workplace- Codes of Ethics:
A sampling of guidelines and codes of ethics from scientific and engineering professional societies from several countries- Diversity:
Studies on gender or ethnicity, statistics on women and minorities, mentoring of new faculty, women in the national academy of engineering, and points to other resources on women and minorities including actual cases- Essays:
Essays on science and engineering ethics.- Education:
Learning resources in engineering ethics, computer ethics and research ethics