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Reengineering ethics education for deeper student engagement through the creation of roleplaying and decision-making games [WIP Paper, Student Experiences]

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Engineering Ethics Division (ETHICS) Technical Session_Monday June 26, 3:15 - 4:45

Tagged Division

Engineering Ethics Division (ETHICS)

Page Count

28

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44066

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44066

Download Count

144

Paper Authors

biography

Megan Levis University of Notre Dame

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Megan Levis is an incoming assistant professor of the practice, with the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns and College of Engineering. She is completing her postdoctoral fellowship with Notre Dame's Technology Ethics Center and Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Dr. Levis has a Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Notre Dame. Her interest in technology ethics relates to questions concerning how biotechnology shapes cultural understanding of what it means to be human. She is also working on research questions relating to the ethics of engineered living systems at the intersection of neuroscience and computer science. She teaches tech ethics courses and in the first-year engineering program.

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Abstract

Engineering ethics is an area of increasing importance today, and this sentiment is shared by educators and budding engineers alike. However, engineering curricula do not often integrate ethics related to engineering specific topics. And even when these topics are incorporated, students are often left wanting to know how they would apply historical or philosophical knowledge of ethics in their future engineering industry lives that they are preparing for. We share our multi-year, multidisciplinary endeavours in understanding the problem area through qualitative interviews and surveys. We also describe our attempts to integrate engineering ethics in different courses for different audiences, in different capacities. Our goal of this work is to help students better engage with engineering ethics and feel a better sense of ownership and a clearer understanding of their future responsibilities towards ethics in daily decision making. We leverage discussion, teamwork, guided questions, role playing and decision making games to help students engage with seemingly esoteric topics. We help students build and employ their own frameworks, vocabulary and sense of rubric for tackling simple decisions, while also considering their potential ethical connotations and implications. Throughout this entire process, we were careful to employ student participation and feedback at all stages, allowing for a strongly student-driven approach. Students explored ethical education of engineers and developed digital learning tools, as those served as excellent opportunities for students to engage with this subject matter in with depth. We share our lessons and challenges in attempting to find adequate means to assess this work in meeting long-term and far-reaching educational goals.

Kumar, S., & Levis, M. (2023, June), Reengineering ethics education for deeper student engagement through the creation of roleplaying and decision-making games [WIP Paper, Student Experiences] Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44066

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