Our Work

Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied (IDEA)

Description

The Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied (IDEA) CETL worked to equip students with the intellectual skills to identify, analyse and respond effectively to ethical issues as they arise in their discipline, and in their personal and professional lives.

Contact: Kathryn Dalby Centre Manager

Email: K.Dalby@leeds.ac.uk

Telephone: 0113 343 7794

Contact:Grace Robinson Project Officer

Email: g.c.robinson@leeds.ac.uk

Telephone: 0113 3437796

To this end, the CETL worked to embed ethics into 14 disciplines across the University of Leeds.

Building on the successful model of the Medical Ethics programme, the CETL worked to transform student experiences by taking a genuinely inter-disciplinary approach. In each discipline, this was facilitated by an innovative partnership of ethicists, subject practitioners and students, who together form an Ethics Theme Team. representatives of Subject Centres, professional bodies and relevant employers acted as virtual members of each team.

In collaboration with employer organisations and professional bodies, the Centre promoted the importance of ethical decision making as an important skill for graduates in the 21st Century. With Higher Education Academy Subject Centres, including BMAF and HLST, the CETL developed and shared excellence in the teaching and learning of Inter-Disciplinary Ethics and contributed to national and international debates on ethical issues and their pedagogical implications.

Projects:

In 2006 the IDEA CETL had established Ethics Theme Teams in Business, Biological Sciences, Engineering and Nanotechnology. All four teams developed inter-disciplinary ethics provision at level 1 and some at other levels too, which was implemented from September 2006. The CETL continued to develop and improve the ethics theme in the Medical Curriculum through the Medical Ethics Theme Team, where a key development was the introduction of an ethics session which involves pod-casting and blogging. The CETL established Ethics theme teams in Sport, Environment, Computing and Media, at the start of 06/07, with 5 new disciplines to follow over 2007/8, 2008/9 and 2009/10.

The CETL was engaged in researching the effectiveness of its learning and teaching practices, as part of which it developed a questionnaire that it administered to students before and after they experience inter-disciplinary ethics in their course.

IDEA also developed a searchable online database of Ethics Case Studies for use in the teaching inter-disciplinary ethics. You are able to search the database by discipline and keyword, and find case studies that have been developed and used in a range of professional and educational contexts. In partnership with the Engineering Subject Centre and Engineering CETL, the IDEA CETL developed new Engineering Ethics Case Studies that are available through the database.

With the Geography, Earth and Environment, and Philosophical and Religious Studies Subject Centre, the CETL ran a staff/student consultative event on the effective teaching of Environmental Ethics. The report arising from this was published on the website.

Update 24 Feb 2009 - Following a study day it was agreed that:

• The project would develop a guide for staff on teaching sports ethics including practical discipline-specific teaching materials for use with students
• The project would develop discipline-specific case studies, contributed by members according to their area of expertise.

A series of topics for case studies were put forward with the proposed publication date being June 2009.

What is being offered to the wider teaching/subject community:

A teaching package was developed on Ethical Thinking to help non-ethicists to integrate inter-disciplinary ethics into their courses. The teaching package is available online.

The IDEA website outlines plans in each discipline area and in time provided links to discipline-specific teaching materials, tutor and student notes and case studies.

Events:

The Future of Teaching Engineering Ethics
Thursday 7 September 2006 ~ University of Leeds

This interactive one-day event was organised in partnership with the Engineering Subject Centre.

Organisations / Institutions

University of Leeds

Related documents/URLs

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