Using Problem-Based Learning to Increase the Ethical Reasoning Skills of Electrical and Computer Engineering Students

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This project aims to serve the national interest by increasing electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students’ ethical reasoning skills and perspectives about social responsibility in engineering. Concern for teaching ethics in engineering has existed for some time, with engineering professionals identifying the need to focus on public safety, health, and welfare as early as the 1940s. The need for students to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities and make informed judgements were recently included as a student outcome requirements for ABET accreditation. This project focuses on effective approaches for teaching ethical reasoning and social responsibility for first year students in ECE. This study will evaluate if the active learning approach called problem-based learning is more effective at teaching ethics in engineering education than a traditional lecture-based approach. Problem-based learning approaches help students determine their own learning needs and strategies to achieve that learning. This approach contrasts with traditional approaches that introduce problems only after students have first acquired the relevant content knowledge and skills, often through a lecture. Ethical engineering modules will be designed and deployed in a required first-year course that introduces ECE students to the discipline with a goal of centering ethics and social responsibility as core components of the discipline. These modules will be made available online for engineering educators who are interested in improving ethical reasoning and awareness in other engineering disciplines.The goal of this project is to transform undergraduate engineering education by centering ethics and social responsibility as core components of ECE. A first year introductory ECE course will be re-designed to emphasize ethics and social responsibility throughout the course. The project team will develop and implement learning modules that will be deployed using either a problem-based learning or lecture-based approach. The modules will be used to address the core research question: Is problem-based learning a more effective pedagogy than a traditional lecture based approach for teaching ethical reasoning in support of social responsibility to first year ECE students during their primary introduction to the discipline? The project team will address this question by collecting and analyzing samples of student coursework and performance on tests of ethical reasoning and social responsibility administered before and after the course. Two additional research questions will be addressed: (1) Are there differences in ethical reasoning and perspectives of social responsibility between first year engineering students in ECE and other engineering disciplines without this ethics focus? and (2) Are faculty scores in ethical reasoning and perspectives of social responsibility within an engineering discipline strongly associated with student scores from that same discipline? These two questions will be answered by collecting scores on tests of ethical reasoning and social responsibility from faculty and first year students across engineering disciplines. The results of this project and the ethics modules will be disseminated through an online repository that will include the modules, implementation plans, and results demonstrating the effectiveness of the modules. This project is supported by the NSF IUSE: EHR Program, 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.