Teaching ethics and sustainability to informatics engineering students: an almost 30 years’ experience

Abstract

A significant number of universities where engineering is taught, acknowledge the importance of the social and environmental impact of the scientific and technological practice, as well as the ethical problems it presents, and the need to provide their students with courses covering this as a subject. This paper presents 29 years of teaching courses with the subject of social, environmental, and ethical issues to students of Informatics Engineering. The table contents and its evolution over the years will be analyzed, plus the different teaching strategies applied, with emphasis on the collaborative learning methodologies to facilitate critical thinking and debate. During the experience, the course incorporated the subject of History of Informatics which proved to fit in the course. While the subject of Ethics and Sustainability is increasingly being regarded as an important matter to learn by future ICT engineers, the courses covering it remain as optional in the curriculums. This should change.