Work in Progress: Systems Thinking as a Foundation for Sustainability Awareness and Ethical Use of Technologies

This work in progress paper reports the preliminary steps towards the definition of a course that aims to empower systems thinking skills in engineering students and to stimulate interest and awareness in issues related to sustainability and ethics. A key aspect of Systems Thinking is to examine any problem to be solved from a wide perspective, considering all elements and conditions that can influence or that can be influenced by the possible solution, over time. In the case of engineering problems, this calls for the consideration of non-technical aspects, too. A Systems Thinking approach should therefore stimulate future engineers to take care of the potential environmental impact of the systems and devices they design. Similarly, they should make their design choices thinking about the wellness of people: not just the end-users of the products, but all the individuals implied in the whole supply and production chains. Furthermore, the general social impact of the developed technologies should be a point of attention as well. These considerations motivate the idea to propose a course that promotes, with a synergic approach, Systems Thinking, Sustainability and Ethics. This paper reports a preliminary step toward the whole course, i.e. a 6-hour teaching unit proposed in the context of guidance activities of the University of Padova. Although the limited duration did not allow to effectively develop any skill, it was a chance to introduce some students to the basic concepts and to share with them the possible connection between Systems Thinking and the sustainability and ethics issues. As discussed in the paper, the feedback from these students was really encouraging. The implementation of a whole course and the assessment of the achieved learning outcomes fall in the future developments of this work in progress contribution.