2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As primary drivers of technological research and innovation in the US, universities play a pivotal role in fostering dialogues and decisions surrounding responsible innovation and its ethical impact. However, the disciplines that most often deal with the design and development of technologies, such as engineering, frequently exist in strong departmental silos apart from the disciplines that focus on ethics / ethics of emerging technologies, such as philosophy of technology and science and technology studies (STS). Additionally, engineering and the humanities do not generally engage in interdisciplinary projects, integrated courses, or co-created programs – signaling to students across the board that ethics and engineering can (and perhaps even should) be separated. However, much cross-disciplinary evidence generated in the last ten years seems to support that interweaving engineering education with the humanities can provide numerous benefits: improve technology designs, increase engineering program diversity, draw awareness to social impacts of technologies; cultivate creative problem solving and innovation, enhance contextualizing and awareness; strengthen communication and collaboration capabilities, and foster cultural and societal awareness and empathy.

Unfortunately, few engineering courses teach ethical obligations beyond the scope of legal and professional obligations, taking the ‘rules and codes’ approach to engineering ethics education. This approach centers engineering ethics on one’s professional obligations to employers, clients, and society as defined in established professional codes associated with the various engineering disciplines. Further, a trend has been observed among engineering ethics education which assumes that simply providing information on what is (or is not) ethical will lead to ethical actions. In juxtaposition, approaches from philosophy of technology present the ethics of technological design and innovation as situated within the larger ‘moral landscape’ – presenting numerous perspectives for assessing emerging technologies from power and control to the good life beyond legal and institutional requirements (such as those outlined by the IRB and ABET). Thus, the rules and codes approach falls short of the full education engineers require to make ethical decisions in their workplace.

This paper will provide another possible avenue for interweaving ethics into Engineering Education: play. By leaning into the theoretical concept, the queer art of failure, students can be taught how failing to account for various ethical dimensions of engineering can have serious social and technological consequences. Further, it teaches engineers how to cope with failure, learn strategies for improvement, and cultivate moral empathy for others. In play, game over does not necessarily mean that the player has lost. In certain popular video games, such as Hades and Dark Souls, the player gains ground each time that they fail. Eventually, the player learns how to overcome any obstacle in the proper way once they have understood what does not work. Failure is the only path to success in these games: the player would not learn, progress, or ‘win’ without failure. Thus, our reimagined approach to engineering education in this case will position engineers in an immersive ethical environment to cultivate a deeply-rooted understanding of how failure looks across a variety of moral landscapes and how to navigate failing effectively.