Skip to main content

Electronic System Design I

BACKGROUND

Course Listing: ELEC_ENG 326-0: Electronic System Design I – Ilya Vladimir Mikhelson

Course Description: This fast-paced ~50-person course teaches a student how to go from a project idea to a fully functional prototype implementation. This involves a printed circuit design using PCB CAD software, surface mount soldering, MCU programming, CAD design for 3D printing, and web design.

Module Topic: The Ethics of Embedded Systems

Module Authors: Ilya Vladimir Mikhelson, Avery Keare 

Module Implementation: Winter 2023

Module Overview: We took one 80-minute class session to discuss the ethics of embedded systems, centered on one real-world and one hypothetical case study. We chose these case studies based on their richness of ethical ramifications and their emphasis on community assumptions and impact. After critically examining the technology’s ethical implications, students reflected on their agency to align their actions with their values.

Module Goals: Encourage students to…

  • Critically examine the ethical implications of building and using embedded systems
  • Reflect on their personal values related to these systems and potential design choices
  • Build agency to align their actions with their values

IMPLEMENTATION

Students were assigned the following readings to complete before class:

During class, we followed this slide deck:

More specifically, class time was split into three components:

  • Instructors presented relevant context and questions to promote ethical critical thinking
  • Students broke out into groups of 2-3 to discuss the proposed questions
  • Students regrouped for a whole-class (~50 person) discussion to share thoughts from the breakouts and expand the discussion.

This three-piece format occurred three times throughout the class, corresponding to the field overview, the real-world case study, and the fictional case study.

After class, students asynchronously reflected on three questions:

  • How can individual workers impact the ethics of decisions in their company?
  • If you owned a company and cutting (non-dangerous) corners increased your profits significantly, would you do it?  Where do you draw your line?
  • Thinking ahead to your own future career, what is a potential ethical concern that you might encounter in your industry of choice?  What would you do to address it?

LESSONS LEARNED

What went well

  • Students were engaged in the classroom discussion. In particular, the break out discussions heightened participation and investment among students. Conversations were not surface level; many dove into complex connections between technology, power, and agency. Students actively learned from other students’ perspectives and assumptions.
  • Students reflected on their personal values. In many written reflections, students cited their own moral compass and specific personal priorities such as transparency and accountability.
  • Students critically examined their agency to advocate for ethical technologies. Students asserted the value of asking questions to higher-ups, coworkers, and news outlets as a form of resistance. They asserted the value of the collective: advocacy that includes diverse perspectives can maximize impact and protection. As hypothetical leaders of an initiative, they brainstormed practical ways to advocate for ethics, such as 1) proactively researching effects and alternatives of relevant technologies and 2) bringing long-lasting negative impacts of ethical wrongdoings (e.g. trust, safety, rights) to the forefront of the conversation.

Room for improvement

  • Ethical conversations and critical thinking should not be confined to one class session, but should be dispersed throughout the course. By incorporating ethics into more lectures and assignments, we would reinforce that ethics is not an addendum, but a foundational consideration. If the 80-minute ethics class discussion remains, it should be moved towards the beginning of the curriculum to give students necessary context going forward in the course.
  • We should develop materials with increased focus on the historical and political context+impact of technology. In many students’ reflections, they failed to recognize technology’s differential impact on sub-groups of direct, indirect, collective, and non- users. When we teach ethics without the historical context, technology’s impact and one’s agency become individualized and narrow-scoped. Historical and political context are necessary to understand technology’s relationship with systemic power, benefits, and harms.