Ethics and the professional: a template for international benchmarking in engineering education

The globalisation of engineering education and the mobility of today's graduates have led to a need to correlate engineering qualifications in different educational systems. Some effective benchmarking is achieved at annual engineering educators' conferences, which provide invaluable for the sharing of pedagogic methodologies and ideas. This sharing may result in fine (or coarse) tuning of existing degree programmes and, where necessary, bring them in line with successful overseas programmes. However, in most situations, there are few opportunities to demonstrate the success of international benchmarking; this paper addresses this and provides an overview of a course on professional engineering ethics that is taught in three different countries, namely: New Zealand, Australia and Germany. The course has also been given exposure in China and has the potential to form the basis for a new programme there. The rationale for an ethics course in engineering is provided. Further, an outline of the way in which it is taught, including the use of a dedicated text, is discussed. Importantly (and unlike almost all other engineering courses), this course provides an opportunity for students to reach quite different, but nonetheless appropriate, conclusions about problem solving in engineering. Even more significant is the evaluation of outcomes, which, although potentially radically different, may not necessarily be incorrect.