EMBEDDING SUSTAINABILITY AND ETHICAL COMPETENCES INTO ENGINEERING EDUCATION FOLLOWING CDIO

Integrating sustainable development and ethics into engineering education is essential for every higher education institution. The CDIO syllabus contains both principles, and CDIO 3.0's optional standards promote the integration of CDIO principles into the curriculum of educational institutions. In this context, <Institution> conducted research to determine the level of familiarity engineering students have with ethics and sustainability and to gather their suggestions on how to incorporate these principles into the curriculum. An anonymous web survey was administered to students in three different engineering fields, including ICT (N = 58), Land Surveying (N = 12), and Civil Engineering (N = 32). The survey evaluated their understanding of sustainability and ethics and sought their opinions on how these topics were addressed in their coursework. The content analysis also revealed the perspectives of the students, which suggested practical examples, learning tasks, and the occurrence of themes cross-cuttingly, e.g., in learning projects. The results reflect the thoughts and ideas of stakeholders and give suggestions for practical implementation to incorporate themes into learning. The inclusion of these themes in the practical implementation of the study courses contributes to the integration of ethics and sustainable development into the curricula following the CDIO 3.0 principle and improves the quality of the curricula for its part. The results of a study investigating engineering students' knowledge of sustainability and ethics, as well as their suggestions for incorporating these themes into the curriculum, can be of benefit to the CDIO community. The study found that students generally understand the principles of these themes, but also suggested practical examples and cross-cutting themes for more effective integration into the curriculum. The findings can inform the development of new teaching methods and learning materials, as well as improvements to current CDIO standards, to better integrate sustainability and ethics into engineering education. Ultimately, this can lead to a more relevant and engaging learning experience for students, promoting their commitment to becoming socially responsible engineers.