Enhancing Ethical Awareness Within Undergraduate Multidisciplinary Teams By Preparing Codes Of Ethics
- Conference
- Location
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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Publication Date
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June 22, 2008
- Start Date
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June 22, 2008
- End Date
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June 25, 2008
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Educational Research and Methods
- Page Count
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22
- Page Numbers
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13.544.1 - 13.544.22
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--4442
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/4442
- Download Count
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459
Paper Authors
Margaret Huyck Illinois Institute of Technology
Margaret Hellie Huyck, Ph.D., is Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, within the Institute of Psychology. Her graduate work at the University of Chicago focused on life span human development and the sociology of education. Her academic specialities are adult development and program evaluation. She has major responsibility for the evaluation of the IPRO Program at IIT.
daniel ferguson Illinois Institute of Technology
Daniel M. Ferguson, MBA, MSIE, is a Senior Lecturer in the IIT Stuart School of Business, and Associate Director for Research and Operations of the Interprofessional (IPRO) program. He was brought in specifically to focus on IPRO courses, and has led over 50 IPRO project teams in the past four years. He has an undergraduate degree in liberal arts and mechnical engineering, and graduate degrees in Business and Industrial Engineering. For over 20 years he led consulting businesses specializing in financial and information process design and improvement, professional training/education for industry, market research and professional publications. He has been instrumental in implementing many of the assessment processes and interventions now used by the IPRO program. He also supervises the student employees providing operational and systems support for the IPRO program.
Elizabeth Howard Illinois Institute of Technology
Elizabeth Howard is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in the Industrial/Organizational Psychology program at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. She is working with the IPRO program as a research associate.
June Ferrill Rice University
June Ferrill, Ph.D., teaches business ethcs, ethical-decsion-making for engineers, entrepreneurial communications and managerial communications at Rice University.She served as Communications Consultant at McKinsey & Company; and was a training development specialist for KBR's Engineering Division. She has a Ph.D. in the Join Ph.D. Program in English and Education at the University of Michigan.
Lisa Getzler-Linn Lehigh University
Lisa Getzler-Linn, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of the Integrated Product Development Program at Lehigh University. She oversees the IPD Capstone Projects and continues to institute new processes to encourage IPD student development of the higher order competencies required by industry. Her diverse background includes undergraduate studies in Theater Arts and Business, practical experience as a successful entrepreneur and graduate work in Organizational Psychology.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
The Intervention for Developing Ethical Awareness To promote an understanding of ethics, a core text was required, The Seven Layers of Integrity, by George Jones and June Ferrill.18 The authors propose that ethical dilemmas can be analyzed from the perspectives of 1) legal requirements, 2) contracts and agreements, 3) professional codes of ethics, 4) industry standards, 5) community standards, 6) personal relationships, and 7) moral and spiritual values. In this context, any ethical challenge must be evaluated from all seven perspectives, to assess ways in which the proposed (or actual) practices may violate ethical principles at one or more of the levels. It is understood (and included in the teaching) that a particular practice may be considered acceptable or ethical at one level but not at other levels; the very difficult challenge is to debate how to proceed when a practice is considered ethical at one or more levels but not at others. These analyses provide the most challenging situations.
The IIT IPRO Ethics Intervention Students were asked to read the core text. One of the book’s authors (June Ferrill) led a four-hour workshop on ethics and creating a code of ethics at IIT (during the pilot summer session, in the fall semester, and in the spring semester) and led a four- hour workshop on ethics and creating a code of ethics; this workshop was videotaped and made available on line at IIT and the other universities. Evaluations of the initial sessions at IIT suggested that they were valuable, but would be more valuable if the examples were drawn from problems more similar to those in which the students are involved; this modification was made for the spring semester. Students were required to complete a Knowledge Test covering the concepts in the required text and the workshop. All IPRO teams were required to prepare a Code of Ethics for their project – directed at the industry in which they were working, not their own team interactions. Instructions were distributed and posted on-line. Each team was asked to provide a major canon or Overarching Standard – “a standard you would want to always be applicable.” (Examples were provided from the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) and the American Medical Association (AMA). After developing the over-arching standard, they were to write a principle related to each of the seven layers. Each canon should describe the standards of conduct to which the individual or professional working in the problem context shall be held. The canon includes examples of how ethical behavior would be measured. Each canon must be supported by examples of pressures which describe in what ways a person may be tempted or pressured to act against the standards of behavior described in the canon, and risks, the unethical behavior that might result from the pressure.. Faculty leaders were required to sign off on the code of ethics to ensure that the submitted code of ethics is suited to the problem context of the IPRO problem assignment. These codes were evaluated using a rubric developed by IPRO research staff in consultation with Dr. Ferrill. Each of the required components were rated as 0 (nothing written or does not make sense), 1 (too general, missing information) or 2 (makes sense, sufficient information provided, possible measure identified). A total of 16 points was possible. Teams received feedback on their Codes prior to the end of the semester. IIT students were also informed that questions about their Code of Ethics – how it was developed, how it had shaped their project work – would be part of the final judging at the end of the semester. This provided an additional opportunity to understand the code by explaining it to professionals who had not been involved in creating the Code.
Huyck, M., & ferguson, D., & Howard, E., & Ferrill, J., & Getzler-Linn, L. (2008, June), Enhancing Ethical Awareness Within Undergraduate Multidisciplinary Teams By Preparing Codes Of Ethics Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--4442
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