van der Burg Simone, van de Poel Ibo
University of Technology Eindhoven, Department of Technology Management, the Netherlands.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2005 Apr;11(2):277-97. doi: 10.1007/s11948-005-0046-8.
Courses on ethics and technology have become compulsory for many students at the three Dutch technical universities during the past few years. During this time, teachers have faced a number of didactic problems, which are partly due to a growing number of students. In order to deal with these challenges, teachers in ethics at the three technical universities in the Netherlands--in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente--have developed a web-based computer program called Agora (see www.ethicsandtechnology.com). This program enables students to exercise their ethical understanding and skills extensively. The program makes it possible for students to participate actively in moral reflection and reasoning, and to develop the moral competencies that are needed in their later professional practice. The developers of the program have tried to avoid two traps. Firstly, they rejected, from the outset, a cookbook style of dealing with ethical problems that applied ethics is often taken to be and, secondly, they wanted to design a flexible program that respects the student's as well as the teacher's creativity, and that tries to engage students in moral reflection. Agora meets these requirements. The program offers possibilities that extend beyond the requirements that are usually accepted for case-exercises in applied ethics, and that have been realised in several other computer models for teaching ethics. In this article, we describe the main considerations in the development of Agora and the features of the resulting program.
在过去几年里，伦理学与技术课程已成为荷兰三所理工大学许多学生的必修课。在此期间，教师们面临着一些教学问题，部分原因是学生人数不断增加。为应对这些挑战，荷兰代尔夫特、埃因霍温和特温特三所理工大学的伦理学教师开发了一个名为“ agora”的基于网络的计算机程序（见www.ethicsandtechnology.com）。该程序使学生能够广泛运用他们的伦理理解和技能。该程序让学生能够积极参与道德反思和推理，并培养他们在未来职业实践中所需的道德能力。该程序的开发者试图避免两个陷阱。首先，他们从一开始就摒弃了应用伦理学常常被认为的那种处理伦理问题的 cookbook 风格；其次，他们希望设计一个灵活的程序，既尊重学生的创造力，也尊重教师的创造力，并试图让学生参与道德反思。Agora 满足了这些要求。该程序提供的可能性超出了应用伦理学案例练习通常所接受的要求，并且已在其他几个伦理学教学计算机模型中得以实现。在本文中，我们描述了开发 Agora 的主要考虑因素以及最终程序的特点。
