IMPLEMENTING AI ETHICS EDUCATION: ENGINEERING COMPETENCIES FOR SUSTAINABLE SOCIETAL IMPACT

The societal impact of engineering practices demands a profound sense of responsibility among engineers to tackle global challenges, yet necessary skills related to ethics, sustainability, and teamwork remain generally weak among engineering professionals. An interdisciplinary course can act as a springboard for integrating transferable skills and knowledge recommended by CDIO into engineering education. A master’s seminar at RWTH Aachen University is training engineering students on ethics, responsibility, and sustainability in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI), topics which are requisite for engineers to understand societal needs and their active role in society. Through active and integrated learning, this course provides students with a holistic view of technology embedded within the diverse societal contexts. While evaluating students’ anonymized reflection papers using Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA), we found that many students appreciated the unique seminar structure, and the seminar topics. We speculate that interest in the course and creative freedom, among other factors, may have fostered deeper engagement and plans for lifelong learning. Many students considered this course an “eye opener” since it introduces them to interdisciplinary and holistic thinking. This paper presents the course structure, methodology, and findings from a QCA of students’ reflections to approach the following research question: What competencies from CDIO Syllabus 3.0 can be acquired in an interdisciplinary course for engineers such as this seminar on AI ethics, and how? We also discuss planned improvements based on student feedback, which adds to the discourse on how to best implement an interdisciplinary course that accomplishes several CDIO Syllabus objectives and Standards.