Talk (Engineering) Ethics to Me: Student Group Discussions about Ethical Scenarios

Richard Cimino; Jennifer Pascal; angad chadha; Katrin Girgis; Amal Khan; Michelle Ortiz

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: Engineering Ethics Division: Approaches to Ethics Education (Part 1)
Page Count: 15
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41740
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41740
Download Count: 303

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Paper Authors

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Richard Cimino New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Dr. Richard T. Cimino is a Senior Lecturer in the Otto H. York Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology. His research interests include the intersection of engineering ethics and process safety, and broadening inclusion in engineering, with a focus on the LGBTQ+ community.

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Jennifer Pascal University of Connecticut

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angad chadha New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Angad Chadha hold a degree Bachelors Of Science from NJIT in Chemical Engineering and has a peak knowledge of field related to process dynamics, manufacturing, R&D and many others. He gained a lot of experience working with teams at UPS as a Process Control Engineer. He also has been a part of two start up projects in which one of them MyTiffinExpress which is food delivering service of Indian food is still up and running and has covered the Tri-State area and the company is still growing.

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Katrin Girgis New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Amal Khan New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Amal Khan is a fourth year Chemical Engineering student at NJIT. Amal is interested in the renewable energy industry and would like to work within this field after graduating. Amal has previously interned for a cosmetic manufacturer. Her favorite sports team is the New Jersey Devils. Her hobbies include pottery, baking, and playing board games.

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Michelle Ortiz New Jersey Institute of Technology

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Abstract

The past twenty years have seen the blossoming of ethics education in undergraduate engineering programs, largely as a response to the large-scale and high-impact engineering disasters that have occurred since the turn of the century. The functional form of this education differs significantly among institutions, and in recent years active learning that demonstrates a strong impact on students’ retention and synthesis of new material have taken hold as the preferred educational methodology. Among active learning strategies, gamified or playful learning has grown in popularity, with substantial evidence indicating that games can increase student participation and social interaction with their classmates and with the subject matter.

A key goal of engineering ethics education is for students to learn how to identify, frame, and resolve ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas occur naturally in social situations, in which an individual must reconcile opposing priorities and viewpoints. Thus, it seems natural that as a part of their ethics education, students should discuss contextualized engineering ethical situations with their peers. How these discussions play out, and the manner in which students (particularly first-year engineering students) address and resolve ethical dilemmas in a group setting is the main topic of this research paper.

In this study, first-year engineering students from three universities across the northeastern USA participated in group discussions involving engineering ethical scenarios derived from the Engineering Ethics Reasoning Instrument (EERI) and Toxic Workplaces: A Cooperative Ethics Card Game (a game developed by the researchers). Questions were posed to the student groups, which center upon concepts such as integrity, conflicting obligations, and the contextual nature of ethical decision making. An a priori coding schema based on these concepts was applied to analyze the student responses, based upon earlier iterations of this procedure performed in previous years of the study.

The primary results from this research will aim to provide some insight about first-year engineering students' mindsets when identifying, framing, and resolving ethical dilemmas. This information can inform ethics education design and development strategies. Furthermore, the experimental procedure is also designed to provide a curated series of ethical engineering scenarios with accompanying discussion questions that could be adopted in any first-year classroom for instructional and evaluative purposes.

Citation
Format

Cimino, R., & Pascal, J., & chadha, A., & Girgis, K., & Khan, A., & Ortiz, M. (2022, August), Talk (Engineering) Ethics to Me: Student Group Discussions about Ethical Scenarios Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41740

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The past twenty years have seen the blossoming of ethics education in undergraduate engineering programs, largely as a response to the large-scale and high-impact engineering disasters that have occurred since the turn of the century.  The functional form of this education differs significantly among institutions, and in recent years active learning that demonstrates a strong impact on students’ retention and synthesis of new material have taken hold as the preferred educational methodology. Among active learning strategies, gamified or playful learning has grown in popularity, with substantial evidence indicating that games can increase student participation and social interaction with their classmates and with the subject matter.  

A key goal of engineering ethics education is for students to learn how to identify, frame, and resolve ethical dilemmas.  These dilemmas occur naturally in social situations, in which an individual must reconcile opposing priorities and viewpoints.  Thus, it seems natural that as a part of their ethics education, students should discuss contextualized engineering ethical situations with their peers.  How these discussions play out, and the manner in which students (particularly first-year engineering students) address and resolve ethical dilemmas in a group setting is the main topic of this research paper.

In this study, first-year engineering students from three universities across the northeastern USA participated in group discussions involving engineering ethical scenarios derived from the Engineering Ethics Reasoning Instrument (EERI) and Toxic Workplaces: A Cooperative Ethics Card Game (a game developed by the researchers). Questions were posed to the student groups, which center upon concepts such as integrity, conflicting obligations, and the contextual nature of ethical decision making. An a priori coding schema based on these concepts was applied to analyze the student responses, based upon earlier iterations of this procedure performed in previous years of the study.  

The primary results from this research will aim to provide some insight about first-year engineering students' mindsets when identifying, framing, and resolving ethical dilemmas. This information can inform ethics education design and development strategies. Furthermore, the experimental procedure is also designed to provide a curated series of ethical engineering scenarios with accompanying discussion questions that could be adopted in any first-year classroom for instructional and evaluative purposes.

AU  - Richard Cimino
AU  - Jennifer Pascal
AU  - angad chadha
AU  - Katrin Girgis
AU  - Amal Khan
AU  - Michelle Ortiz
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Talk (Engineering) Ethics to Me: Student Group Discussions about Ethical Scenarios
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41740
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41740
ER  -