Experiential Learning: Exploring Nuances When Making Ethical Decisions in a Capstone Design Course

Biomedical engineering capstone design courses provide a salient opportunity to discuss ethical considerations in engineering. As technology and society develop and change, new challenges constantly arise related to how society and technology inform each other. In this space, ethical training for engineering students is critically important for future practicing engineers who may face significant once-in-a-career ethical challenges as well as the smaller compounding daily decisions that impact biomedical research and device design. In this context, topics of social justice as well as bias and inclusion in data and design are particularly important for biomedical engineers to understand the given the human-centered approach to engineering practice. To engage biomedical engineering students in discussion and practice of these concepts, we present a capstone course module to teach traditional ethics studies while exposing students to cases of bias in design in modern technologies including AI, sensors, and devices. This curriculum engages students in discussion of these topics facilitated by biotechnology case studies. All together, we see the curriculum presented here as a response to the need for biomedical engineers to understand the human-centered data in ethical decision-making as well as to meet the desires of students to put engineering in the context of human-centered design and social justice.