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Are All Engineering Students Capable of Recognizing Ethical and Professional Issues? An Assessment Approach to Engineering Ethics

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Conference

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Columbus, Ohio

Publication Date

June 24, 2017

Start Date

June 24, 2017

End Date

June 28, 2017

Conference Session

Awareness, Expectations, and Recognition of Ethics

Tagged Division

Engineering Ethics

Page Count

19

DOI

10.18260/1-2--27610

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/27610

Download Count

740

Paper Authors

biography

Isabel Hilliger Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-5270-7655

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Isabel Hilliger is the Associate Director for Assessment and Evaluation in the School of Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She creates qualitative and quantitative instruments for measuring engineering student outcomes. She conducts research on engineering assessment and its effect on the continuous improvement process of practices in engineering education. Her primary research interest is evaluating policy efforts that acknowledge learner diversity, and understand their effects in students performance. Isabel received her professional degree in biological engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and her MA in policy, organizations and leadership studies at Stanford Graduate School of Education.

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Andrés Strello Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

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Andrés Strello is Licenciated in Sociology, currently Master in Sociology graduate student in the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

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Francisca Castro Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

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Francisca Castro is a master' student in the Institute of Sociology at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her research includes social inequalities and gender. She received her professional degree in Political Science and Sociology at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

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Mar Pérez-Sanagustín Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9854-9963

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Mar Pérez-Sanagustín is a researcher and Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Director of the Engineering Education Division at the same university. Her research interests are technology-enhanced learning, engineering education, MOOCs and b-learning.

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Abstract

Engineering schools offer ethical training along with the transfer of technical knowledge and the development of other professional skills. The primary objective of this training is to prepare engineering graduates to face diverse ethical issues in the workplace. Thus, exhaustive information is needed to assess whether students are able to recognize potential conflicts that may arise during practice. Despite its importance, there are few studies about the assessment of this ability. This study presents a sequential mixed methodology to assess rigorously the ethics teaching and learning experience in a selective engineering school in Chile. First, we interviewed school authorities, faculty and undergraduate students about their perceptions of the school’s approaches to teach ethics. Second, we designed a quantitative instrument to measure students’ ability to recognize ethical and professional issues, to accept personal responsibility, to be aware of ethical codes, and to obtain learning benefits from different ethics training activities. Significant differences were found in individual ethical reasoning to identify issues by gender and socioeconomic status. Implications regarding improvement actions in the research site were discussed. Additionally, considerations for adopting the assessment approach by other institutions were also presented.

Hilliger, I., & Strello, A., & Castro, F., & Pérez-Sanagustín, M. (2017, June), Are All Engineering Students Capable of Recognizing Ethical and Professional Issues? An Assessment Approach to Engineering Ethics Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27610

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