Examining the Long-Term Impact of an Undergraduate Ethics in Physics Course

需要更多地关注本科阶段的道德教育，特别是生物科学和工程领域以外的道德教育。这个项目将研究一个专门的本科课程在物理学伦理学的影响，这已经提供了20年，为300多名学生。研究小组将调查参加过这门课程的前学生的总人数。这提供了一个独特的机会，研究科学道德课程对这些人随后的职业生涯的长期影响。由于科学伦理教育的一个基本目标是改善科学研究的方式，该项目将提供有关伦理教育方法的长期影响的重要信息：一门专门的本科课程，直接迎合学生的学科兴趣。反过来，这些信息有可能指导未来的科学课程，从而使本科科学教学与发展更有效和道德的科学，技术，工程和数学劳动力的目标更加兼容。该项目将评估相对欠研究的领域，本科伦理教育，使用前本科生的数据库，从一个伦理学物理课程。该项目解决的主要问题是，在科学和研究伦理学的独立课程是否有一个长期的影响，个人如何检测，方法，并解决其专业领域的道德问题。研究小组将收集在20年内完成课程的前学生的数据。 该小组将评估课程材料如何影响他们职业生涯中的道德决策。具体而言，该项目力求解决以下问题：（1）正式道德操守培训的学员在课程结束两年后是否仍能保留所学到的知识？(2)毕业生能在多长时间内保留和应用正规道德培训的知识？(3)校友如何在专业环境中利用和应用本科道德课程中获得的知识？该小组将调查约300名前学生的人口的课程，并联系一个子集的受访者进行后续采访，以帮助上下文和解释调查数据，并获得更细致入微的了解课程的长期影响。调查问题旨在确定与课程相关的专业行为的具体影响，访谈数据将提供对调查答复中不明显的细微差别的洞察。该项目由数学和物理科学理事会资助，由社会、行为和经济科学理事会的ER2项目管理。该奖项反映了NSF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。

More attention is needed on ethics education at the undergraduate level, especially outside the biosciences and engineering fields. This project will examine the impact of a dedicated undergraduate course on ethics in physics, which has offered for twenty years and served over three hundred students. The research team will survey the combined population of former students who attended this course. This provides a unique opportunity to study the long-term impact of a scientific ethics course on the subsequent professional lives of these individuals. As a fundamental goal of science ethics education is to improve the way scientific research is carried out, this project will provide essential information regarding the long-term impact of one approach to ethics education: a dedicated, undergraduate course that caters directly to the disciplinary interests of the students. This information, in turn, has the potential to guide future science curricula, thereby making undergraduate science instruction more compatible with the goal of developing a more effective and ethical science, technology, engineering, and mathematics workforce. The project will assess the relatively understudied area of undergraduate ethics education, using a database of former undergraduate students from an ethics in physics course. The project addresses the main question of whether a stand-alone course in scientific and research ethics has a long-term impact on how individuals detect, approach, and resolve ethical issues in their professional spheres. The research team will collect data from former students who completed the course within a twenty year period. The team will assess how the course material has influenced ethical decision making in their careers. Specifically, the project seeks to address the following: (1) Do alumni retain knowledge from formal ethics training beyond two years after the course? (2) How long do alumni retain and apply knowledge from formal ethics training? (3) In what ways do alumni utilize and apply knowledge gained in an undergraduate ethics course in a professional setting? The team will survey the population of approximately three hundred former students of the course and contact a subset of the respondents for follow-up interviews to help contextualize and interpret the survey data and to gain a more nuanced understanding of the long-term effects of the course. Survey questions will aim to identify specific influences on professional behavior that are connected to the course, and interview data will provide insight into nuances not readily apparent through the survey responses. This project is funded by the Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and managed by the ER2 Program of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.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.