Using the web to integrate ethics in the engineering curriculum

With a crowded engineering curriculum, it's difficult to justify three credit hours for a new course in the comprehensive instruction in applied ethics. Partial coverage of ethics in undergraduate engineering seminars, or the "Introduction to Engineering" course also has obvious drawbacks. In contrast, a modular integration Of ethics throughout the engineering curriculum, although it demands coordinated coverage and relevant links to many diverse computational courses, seems like a logical alternative. This paper discusses a web-based module created to introduce the ethical perspective of Nietzschean perfectionism to engineering undergraduates in a junior-level, Civil Engineering course in Structural Analysis. I will also discuss the usability testing of this module, and plans for additional ethics modules to be integrated into other engineering courses at Boise State University.