Teaching Engineering Students to Navigate the “Gray”: Robotics Course Focuses on Ethical Decision-Making

Professor Siobhan Oca teaches Duke engineering students that they will sometimes face moments when there’s not a clear way forward.

Through her Ethics in Robotics and Automation course at Duke, Oca dives into the ethical implications of engineering. She walks students through real-life examples, such as the Boeing 737 MAX crisis and hiring algorithm biases. Much like the engineers and executives of Boeing deciding whether or not to pull the planes after the two consecutive crashes, students are thrown into tricky situations where they must decide how to proceed.

Oca’s course asks students to rate themselves on virtues like trust and fairness, and consider how these virtues tie into the real-life decisions that engineers face. Engineering is not just about doing things perfectly, Oca says, but doing things responsibly —which means taking time to understand the ethical implications of their decision-making.

“Engineers want to work with facts and clear ideas. But the world is not binary. Teaching students to reason in the gray, together and across different backgrounds, may be the most technical thing we do.”

—Siobhan Oca

Oca’s work is part of the Character Forward, a partnership between Duke Engineering and The Purpose Project at Duke that seeks to incorporate ethics into the engineering curriculum. Funded by The Duke Endowment, The Purpose Project at Duke is a collaboration of the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke Divinity School, and the Office of the Provost.

Read the full article on the Pratt School of Engineering website.