Conducting online course dialogue on the ethics of weapons design

ABET Engineering Criteria (EC) 2000 specify that engineering colleges and universities must ensure that all students understand their professional and ethical responsibilities upon graduation. While there are many ways that engineering educators and institutions can address this requirement, recently a one credit online engineering class was developed for the Virginia Tech Engineering Education department and piloted in 2001 and 2002. There were many lessons learned both in the development of the ethics and weapons lecture as well as the in the delivery of a course through a Web-based medium. Web-based course delivery technology, while making great improvements over the past few years, can add a layer of complexity for both students and instructors. Specific to the actual ethics and weapons development lecture, because of historical events and a changing global climate, a lecture on engineers and design of weapons need to include a discussion of ethical implications of terrorism as they relate to just war criteria and changes in technology. Lastly, a difficult but important area for future exploration would be the determination of how these engineering ethics modules come into conflict with other values implicitly or explicitly taught in other engineering courses.