Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science

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This project continues to maintain and develop the Online Ethics Center for Engineering & Science (hereafter "the Center") and to expand its use and usefulness. In the forty months of its existence the Center has grown rapidly into a substantial (over 1,600 pages), and well-organized site. Use of the site has increased exponentially. Between December 1997 and December 1998 the number of pages accessed each day has grown from a little over 1,500 to over 7,500, or nearly a quarter of a million pages per month. The objectives for the renewal period include some that continue or expand existing areas of accomplishment, such as: operational changes to improve response and reliability of the site; updates of the bibliography, the indexes, and the keywords, and further linking of the glossary to new and existing pages, and the addition of other hypermedia enhancements; ongoing response to user requests, comments, and evaluations; new cases, essays and commentaries, including those on environmental issues for engineers and a greatly expanded collection of research ethics cases; new instructional resources, including resources for teachers in middle schools and high schools. They also include new types of contributions: the conduct of Web conferences to the site; and the expansion of the Center's capability to provide support for larger infrastructure in the area of science and engineering ethics, through 1) prototype collaborations that divide the tasks of creating and maintaining new web resources among researchers at institutions other than Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), and 2) the provision of a full mirror of the site on a commercial Internet provider to ensure uninterrupted access to the site at all times. A diverse student team under the direction of the present PI, with the advice of a distinguished advisory board, carries on the work of the Center. An evaluation component, that includes questionnaires, interviews, and assessments of the material on the pages, will be undertaken in the renewal period.