Learning Engineering Ethics Through High-Impact Collaborative and Competitive Scenarios

本项目旨在通过提高工科大学生的伦理知识和在决策中运用伦理的能力，为国家利益服务。跨学科，工程解决方案往往对社会产生重大而持久的影响。因此，工程师在他们的职业生涯中经常面临社会和道德困境。该项目旨在提高未来工程师在决策时考虑社会影响和道德问题的能力。具体而言，该项目旨在：1)了解工程一年级学生如何通过工程背景下的道德困境进行推理；2)确定互动协作和竞争场景是否对工程伦理教学有效；3)确定这些新方法是否比传统的道德指导方法更有效。鉴于工程技术决策的重大社会影响，该项目旨在了解并积极影响工程专业学生如何发展这些关键技能，作为他们专业发展的一部分。该项目将使用“定义问题测试2”和“工程伦理推理工具”来定量评估康涅狄格大学、罗文大学和匹兹堡大学工程专业第一年学生的道德推理能力。此外，学生道德推理的定性评估将通过大声思考协议完成，然后对结果进行编码。三种不同的协作开发的道德教育互动场景将在第一年的课堂上使用，以确定这些干预措施对学生道德推理的影响。这些结果将与使用分裂队列模型的传统教学技术的结果进行比较。作为该项目的一部分，项目团队将使用先前开发的工具来评估学生的道德推理，并开发和测试几个交互式场景，以在工程环境中教授道德推理。本项目由美国国家科学基金会改善本科STEM教育计划：教育与人力资源项目支持，该项目支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving college engineering students' knowledge about ethics and their ability to use ethics in decision making. Across disciplines, engineering solutions often have major, long-lasting impacts on society. As a result, engineers are frequently confronted with social and ethical dilemmas in their professional lives. The project aims improve the ability of future engineers to consider social impacts and ethical issues in making decisions. Specifically the project aims to: 1) understand how first year engineering students reason through ethical dilemmas in an engineering context; 2) determine if interactive collaborative and competitive scenarios are effective for teaching engineering ethics; and 3) determine if these new approaches are more effective than traditional methods of ethics instruction. Given the significant societal impacts of engineering technical decisions, this project aims to understand and positively influence how engineering students develop these crucial skills as part of their professional development. The project will use both the Defining Issues Test 2 and the Engineering Ethical Reasoning Instrument to quantitatively assess students’ ethical reasoning in the first year of engineering programs at the University of Connecticut, Rowan University, and the University of Pittsburgh. Additionally, qualitative assessments of student ethical reasoning will be accomplished through think-aloud protocols followed by coding of the results. Three different collaboratively developed interactive scenarios for ethics education will be used in first year classes to determine the impact of these interventions on students’ ethical reasoning. These results will be compared to outcomes from traditional instructional techniques using a split cohort model. As part of this project, the project team will use previously developed instruments to assess students’ ethical reasoning and develop and test several interactive scenarios for teaching ethical reasoning in an engineering context. This project is supported by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.