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The purpose of this article is to summarize three Luhmannian critiques on morality, illustrate new roles for morality and add constructive interpretations.

Luhmann has recently been described as downright negative toward morality, resulting in a refusal to use ethics as a sociologist, thus leading to a limited use of his theory in moral issues. A constructive interpretation could support a more functional use of morality in social system theory.

First, Luhmann signals that morality can no longer fulfill its integrative function in society but also that society has recourse to moral sensitivity. Second, Luhmann describes how anxiety is crucial in modern morality and indicates which role risk and danger could play. The author builds further on this and proposes the concept of “social system attention” that can provide answers to individual and organizational anxiety. The author proposes that institutionalized socialization can support an integrative morality. Third, Luhmann states that ethics today is nothing more than a utopia but also that the interdiction of moral self-exemption is an essential element. The author adds that a relational ontology for social systems theory can avoid ethics as utopia.

This article is a programmatic plea to further elaborate morality from a system theory perspective in which meaning is relationally positioned.

This article could potentially provide a more functional application of morality in social systems, thus leading to improvements of attempts of ethical decision-making. The originality of the approach lies in the interpretation of basic assumptions of Luhmann social system theory that are not core to his theory.

The chapter presents the implementation of ethics education via challenge-based learning (CBL) in three European settings. At TU Eindhoven (the Netherlands), a mandatory first-year User, Society, and Enterprise course on the ethics and history of technology offers a CBL alternative on ethics and data analytics in collaboration with internal student and research teams. The University of Lübeck (Germany) initiated the project CREATE – Challenge-based Learning for Robotics Students by Engaging Start-Ups in Technology Ethics, which enables 60 students in Robotics and Autonomous Systems to integrate ethical and societal considerations into technological development processes, in cooperation with start-ups from a local accelerator. In Spain, CBI-Fusion Point brings together 40 students from business and law (ESADE), engineering and technology (Polytechnic University of Catalonia), and design (IED Barcelona Design University) for an innovation course focused on the application of CERN-developed technologies to real-world problems. The chapter documents the process of setting up three CBL courses that engage students with grand societal topics which require the integration of ethical concerns from the design stage of technological development. The authors also reflect on the challenges of teaching ethics via CBL and the lessons they learned by delivering experiential learning activities rooted in real-life challenges and contexts marked by high epistemic uncertainty. The contribution reflects the transition to remote teaching and presents strategies employed to enhance online communication and collaboration. The chapter thus provides guidance for instructors interested in teaching ethics via CBL and recommends further lines for action and research.

Challenge-based learning (CBL) is a trending educational concept in engineering education. The literature suggests that there is a growing variety in CBL implementations, stemming from the flexible and abstract definition of CBL that is shaped by teachers' perceptions. The chapter discusses how the CBL concept has been developed at Eindhoven University of Technology and describes the development and use of two educational resources aimed to facilitate conceptualization, design, and research of CBL for curriculum designers and teachers. The first resource is a set of CBL design principles for framing the variety of CBL and providing teachers with advice about how to develop CBL courses within an overall CBL curriculum. The second resource is a curriculum-mapping instrument called the CBL compass, which aims at mapping CBL initiatives and identifying gaps, overlaps, and misalignments in CBL implementation at a curriculum level. Both CBL design principles and the CBL compass have been developed by combining insights from theory and practical examples of CBL at TU/e into a higher order model of vision, teaching and learning, and support. We discuss the two educational instruments and showcase their application in the Eindhoven Engineering Education (E³) program, and we discuss preliminary findings and insights. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future practice and research.