Collaborative Research: Exploring the Variation in Understanding and Experiences with Ethical Engineering Research Among Faculty in Biomedical Engineering

工程学院为工程专业的学生准备道德研究行为和实践。因此，确定教师如何理解伦理工程研究是很重要的，因为这些看法会影响他们如何向学生教授伦理学。关注生物医学工程（BME）尤其重要，因为生物医学工程师在促进公众健康和福祉方面发挥着关键作用，并且必须面对与新兴技术相关的新伦理问题，例如基因工程、干细胞技术、快速检测COVID和疫苗开发。在这项工作中，我们试图调查BME教师如何理解伦理工程研究以及他们如何达成这些理解。利用这些发现，我们将能够设计更好的教育策略，使BME学生为伦理研究做好准备。我们将通过实践社区（CoP）与在线伦理中心（OEC）合作，与对BME伦理感兴趣的BME教师合作。该缔约方会议将提供对研究成果的看法，并将有助于将研究成果转化为可操作的教育实践，供缔约方会议参与者的具体机构和全国各地使用。通过OEC分享研究成果和这些教育实践将为生物医学工程界提供适当的教育工具，为生物医学工程伦理研究和实践做好准备，这反过来将帮助未来的工程师更好地促进社会的健康和福祉。教师在其研究小组和部门中充当文化的管家，并在确保这些背景下的道德研究行为和实践方面发挥重要作用。因此，确定教师如何体验和理解道德的变化可以为有效策略的发展提供信息，以在工程部门和研究小组中建立和维护道德文化。由于BME研究和开发产品对公众健康和福祉的重要作用，我们必须了解如何在这一特定学科中培养伦理工程研究人员。然而，培训BME教师和学生有效应对道德挑战的策略仍不清楚。为了获得关于培养生物工程伦理文化的有效方法的经验见解，我们认为有必要研究生物工程伦理研究中各个项目的教师经历、理解和实践伦理工程研究的具体挑战和变化。在这项工作中，我们将(1)使用现象学来识别美国BME教师体验伦理工程研究方式的变化，(2)使用关键事件技术来识别影响这些体验方式的关键因素，以及(3)使用设计启发式作为透镜来生成适合培养BME伦理工程研究文化的教育方法。在整个项目中，我们将聘请来自美国各地不同研究机构的BME教师和学生组成一个CoP，他们将反思研究结果；因此，CoP将有助于验证新发现，并确定可能在整个STEM社区传播的有效策略，以指导培养伦理研究文化的相关努力。该项目将产生新的知识，揭示BME院系对伦理和伦理研究文化的经验和理解的变化范围，以及形成这些理解的关键经验和文化因素。这一新知识将指导培养研究伦理文化的方法。最后，在CoP中整合这些新知识将确保研究有效地转化为实践，这将通过确保从这些项目毕业的生物医学工程师准备好有效地应对BME研究和实践中的关键伦理问题而造福社会。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。

Engineering faculty prepare engineering students for ethical research conduct and practice. Thus, it is important to identify how faculty understand ethical engineering research because these perceptions influence how they teach ethics to their students. It is especially important to focus on biomedical engineering (BME) because biomedical engineers play a critical role in promoting the health and well-being of the public and must confront novel ethical issues associated with emerging technologies, such as genetic engineering, stem cell technologies, rapid COVID detection, and vaccine development. In this work, we seek to investigate how BME faculty understand ethical engineering research and how they reached those understandings. Using these findings, we will then be able to design better educational strategies to prepare BME students for ethical research. We will collaborate with BME faculty interested in BME ethics through a Community of Practice (CoP) and in partnership with the Online Ethics Center (OEC). This CoP will provide perspective on the research findings and will help translate the research findings into actionable educational practices for use at CoP participants’ specific institutions and throughout the nation. Sharing the research findings and these educational practices through the OEC will provide the BME community with appropriate educational tools to prepare future biomedical engineers for ethical BME research and practice, which will in turn help future engineers better promote the health and well-being of society.Faculty act as stewards of culture in their research groups and departments and play a significant role in ensuring ethical research conduct and practice within these contexts. Thus, identifying the variation in how faculty experience and understand ethics can inform the development of valid strategies to establish and maintain ethical cultures in engineering departments and research groups. Due to the significant role of BME research and development products on the health and well-being of the public, it is imperative that we understand how to train ethical engineering researchers in this specific discipline. Yet, strategies for training BME faculty and students to effectively engage with ethical challenges remain unclear. To derive empirical insights on effective approaches to cultivating ethical cultures of BME research, we believe it is necessary to study the specific challenges and variations in ways BME faculty members across programs experience, understand, and practice ethical engineering research. In this work, we will (1) use phenomenography to identify the variation in ways BME faculty across the US experience ethical engineering research, (2) use critical incident technique to identify the critical factors that influence these ways of experiencing, and (3) use design heuristics as a lens to generate educational approaches appropriate for fostering cultures of ethical engineering research in BME. Throughout the project, we will engage a CoP of BME faculty and students from a diverse set of research institutions across the US who will reflect on findings; thus, the CoP will help validate emergent findings and identify effective strategies that may be diffused across this STEM community to guide related efforts at cultivating cultures of ethical research. This project will generate new knowledge that reveals the range of variation in experiences with and understandings of ethics and ethical research cultures among BME faculties as well as critical experiential and cultural factors that have shaped those understandings. This new knowledge will guide approaches to fostering ethical cultures of research. Finally, integrating this new knowledge within a CoP will ensure effective transfer of research into practice, which will benefit society by ensuring biomedical engineers graduating from these programs are prepared to respond effectively to the critical ethical issues of BME research and practice.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.