2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Building on robust literature at the intersection of engineering ethics, Science and Technology Studies (STS), history of science, and bioengineering pedagogy, this paper explores an interdisciplinary collaboration to embed ethics content within a sophomore bioengineering laboratory course (Johnson, et. al., 2022; Herkert, 2005; Kline 2001; Lynch and Kline, 2000; Mody, 2019; Miller, et. al., 2020, Bucholz, et. al., 2024, Neeley, et. al., 2019). The collaboration included a bioengineer, a historian of science with STS training, a bioengineering doctoral candidate, and a law LLM graduate student. The embedded ethics modules were part of a larger department-wide effort to include the ethical and societal contexts of engineering practice in the undergraduate bioengineering curriculum at a large private research university. The ethics modules were designed to be cumulative over the course of the four year program following an ethics roadmap. For each individual course, the development of the specific ethics content was driven by the technical material being covered. This paper will detail a module from a sophomore bioengineering laboratory course in which the ethics modules worked in parallel with technical assignments. The sample module asked the students to design and build elements of a smartwatch, a wearable device that is not classified as a medical device and therefore governed by different regulations. The corresponding ethics content followed specific learning objectives: students will recognize that technologies may be used in unanticipated ways and that engineers have a responsibility for understanding users, contexts of use, unintended consequences and potential errors; students will understand the importance of end-user considerations in making design decisions, standards, and guidelines; and students will be able to explain how the regulatory environment governing medical devices and materials shape engineering practice. The students read excerpts from Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch’s How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology, in which the editors note that they are, “interested in how users consume, modify, domesticate, design, reconfigure, and resist technologies” (Oudshoorn and Pinch, 2005). Students then reflected on everyday technologies they encounter that have been reconfigured by users in ways not intended by innovators. The paper will focus on the iterative approach to developing and embedding these modules within a core technical course, including reflections on interdisciplinary collaboration in curriculum design and on applying STS and history of science scholarship to illuminate ethical dimensions of bioengineering practice. The paper will contribute to broader discussions about contextualizing engineering practice in engineering education and how interdisciplinary teaching teams can prepare engineers for leadership in responsible innovation.

Work Cited

Johnson, Kathryn, et al. "The Development of Sociotechnical Thinking in Engineering Undergraduates." 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. 2022. https://peer.asee.org/42025.pdf

Herkert, Joseph R. "Ways of thinking about and teaching ethical problem solving: Microethics and macroethics in engineering." Science and Engineering Ethics 11 (2005): 373-385.

R. R. Kline, "Using history and sociology to teach engineering ethics," in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 13-20, Winter 2001, doi: 10.1109/44.974503.

Lynch, W. T., & Kline, R. (2000). Engineering Practice and Engineering Ethics. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 25(2), 195–225. https://doi.org/10.1177/016224390002500203

C. C. M. Mody, "History of Engineering (and Some of Its Uses)," Engineering Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 77-82, 2019.

Miller, S., & Higbee, S., & Wallace, J. M., & Schild, J. H., & Ji, J. Y. (2020, June), WIP: Embedded Ethical Inquiry and Reflection in a Biomedical Engineering Curriculum Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35536

Bucholz, E. K., & Kim, C., & Chan, J. R., & Ferney, C. (2024, June), The Snail Progression of Ethical Instruction: Nurturing Ethical Mindsets Across the Biomedical Engineering Curriculum Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--48138

Neeley, K. A., & Wylie, C. D., & Seabrook, B. (2019, June), In Search of Integration: Mapping Conceptual Efforts to Apply STS to Engineering Education Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32954

Oudshoorn, Nelly, and Trevor Pinch, editors. How Users Matter: The Co-construction of Users and Technologies. MIT Press, 2005.