Stephen Johnston

Practice-Focused Ethics in Australian Engineering Education.

The paper focuses on educational changes we see as necessary for future graduates to take up the emerging social and ethical challenges of their profession. This paper summarizes some Australian initiatives, presents some of our approaches to teaching ethics and suggests some ways to encourage both the study of ethics and actual ethical practice. The practice of engineering in Australia is guided by a Code of Ethics developed by the Institution of Engineers, Australia (IEAust). There is an expectation that Australian educators will guide students to develop the abilities to make ethical decisions and an appreciation of ethical conduct. The authors endorse the view that ethics issues should be included as an intrinsic part of engineering curricula. Wego further, and suggest that the social impact and the international and global nature of engineering practice call for an extension of traditional ethical frameworks to incorporate treatment of questions of social responsibility, including the issue of sustainability. We outline changes in engineering education in Australia over the past two decades, indicating some of the effects of these changes on the culture of engineering and the ways in which ethics issues are being conceptualized and taught. Experience at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) is our main focus because UTS is widely recognized as a leader in engineering education in Australia. Wedescribe the restructuring of our undergraduate programme so as to focus on engineering practice issues and discuss its implications for practice-focused ethics in engineering education.

Implementing a program in sustainability for engineers at University of Technology, Sydney: A story of intersecting agendas

Integrating sustainability into an undergraduate engineering program at the University of Technology, Sydney has been a challenging project. The authors of this paper have been participant observers of the integration process. In this paper, they have attempted an analysis of that process, focussing on the dynamics of the network of people and interests, which have shaped the process. Actor network theory was used to provide an analytical framework for the analysis. The interests and experiences of the authors in the process necessarily influence the analysis. All three authors have been active in positioning sustainability as a central theme for the critique and practice of engineering. Paul Bryce and Stephen Johnston have had long‐standing involvement in technology transfer projects in development. Both have published on engineering as a social activity, critiquing the undue emphasis in engineering education on engineering science, at the expense of attention to engineering practice. Their experience and scholarship have given credibility to their efforts in the faculty to press for a new paradigm of engineering practice. Keiko Yasukawa is an educational developer in the faculty who has been working with staff and students to help them reflect on their idea of what engineering is about in their teaching and learning. She has taken a leading role in shaping the new curriculum.

TREND-MORPH-PDS, A METHODOLOGY FOR INNOVATIVE (MECHANICAL) ENGINEERING DESIGN

The paper describes a design methodology, TRENDMORPH-PDS, an original contribution to design science. It is a relatively simple methodology that has grown from efforts to innovate mechanical machines with their strong dependence on solid (geometrical) reasoning. The approach focuses on combinatorial methods of invention/innovation/design emphasizing the manipulation of form (as distinct from the manipulation of function alone) that help the designer to generate a wide range of good design alternatives. The first premise of this approach is that the elements and functions of mature technologies such as mechanical machines are well documented and understood. Thus, innovations are more likely to involve new combinations of existing forms than the introduction of new machine elements. The second premise is that valuable information is available about most elements and the more popular subsystems and machines. That information has evolved, sometimes over time spans ranging to hundreds of years, but usually has not been systematically documented and categorised, thus leaving opportunities to investigate these areas and discover good design possibilities. Further, some valuable information is available only anecdotally or is tightly held by the managements of the companies that have manufactured the device(s) or own the intellectual rights. The TREND-MORPH-PDS methodology involves three phases:

Engineering as social and ethical practice: the role of new course accreditation requirements

This paper begins with a brief exploration of the rapid changes in the practice of engineering during the twentieth century, and particularly over its last few decades. Engineers now routinely work across national and cultural boundaries and in multi-disciplinary teams. While engineering practice draws on a range of technical knowledge and skills, it is also a social activity that continues to shape our modern world. Engineering practice underpins the increasingly global character of commerce and industry. Engineers need to understand and appreciate the nature and impact of their work in order to make an effective professional contribution to meeting the key challenge of the twenty-first century, global sustainability. The paper discusses accreditation requirements for engineering programs in the USA and Australia in the light of these changing expectations for the engineering profession. In particular it looks at the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the Computer Science Accreditation Board (CSAB) Engineering Criteria 2000 in the USA and compares them with the new course accreditation requirements that came out of a recent review of engineering education in Australia.

LIFE CYCLE PRODUCT DESIGN (AT "FACTOR 10" LEVEL): A CASE STUDY INVOLVING INNOVATIVE MECHANICAL DESIGN OF A REMOTE AREA GROUND WATER PUMPING SYSTEM

For humanity to be able to meet its needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own, we must create a sustainable and customised service economy. For all the people of the world to be able to share in this goal, including both marginal operators in economically developed countries and most farmers in currently less economically developed countries, we need to increase resource productivity by a factor of 10. This paper describes a conceptual design process in which the designer is looking to achieve this factor 10 improvement at a system design level. Order of magnitude upgrading, on the performance of existing products, calls for an innovative approach to the design process. We outline a methodology, “Trend-Morph-PDS”, and show in a case study how it has been applied to the development of a ground-water pumping system. This type of system is in demand in geographically remote areas, where low well yield rates are typical, and rather complicated wind or solar pumps are commonly used for these “low-yield-well pumps ”. The large number of products on the market demonstrates a wide and often conflicting range of trends in terms of design/development: long life/short life; high efficiency/low efficiency; problematic maintenance; absence of product range rationalisation. There is, however, a general trend towards replacement of mechanical with electrical-electronic systems. We argue that it would be possible to replace the currently dominant types of electrically driven submersible pump with a well designed mechanical system that has approximately twice the efficiency of its competitors and five times the design life. We recognise the commercial importance of the initial system cost, and we see no reason why our system should cost more than those of our existing competitors. Our case study indicates that factor 10 improvement in resource productivity is achievable in this application.Copyright