2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Different countries, colleges and universities, and even majors provide students with different kinds of engineering ethics courses. Practical course evaluation is conducive to presenting students' learning effects and subsequent course improvement. In the existing research and practice, the evaluation of engineering ethics education focusing on students' learning output has produced many positive results. On this basis, from the perspective of the sustainable development of the curriculum and benefiting more students, this study proposes that it is necessary to understand the evaluation of engineering ethics education from a broader meaning -- not only to evaluate the course of engineering ethics itself but also to evaluate the learning effect of students. By referring to the concepts, tools, and methods of engineering ethics curriculum evaluation, this study attempts to develop a comprehensive questionnaire survey.

The design of this comprehensive questionnaire is based on the goals of engineering ethics education. The topic presents logical progression according to each goal and content composition of engineering ethics education, from understanding to knowledge mastery to knowledge application. The questionnaire not only includes the evaluation of students' learning achievements but also covers the assessment of the implementation of the whole curriculum and curriculum elements, which reflects the characteristics of the whole curriculum and comprehensiveness. The reliability and validity of the comprehensive questionnaire are improved by referring to the engineering ethics course evaluation questionnaire in existing studies, soliciting experts' opinions many times, conducting multi-type pre-test, in-depth discussion feedback, and scoring twice.

The comprehensive questionnaire consists of three parts. The first part is about evaluating the course and students' learning experience, which includes not only the cognition and evaluation of the overall situation of the course but also students' recognition of the course and engineering ethics, self-evaluation, and feeling of course learning. This section is based on nearly 20 multiple-choice questions. The second part of the questionnaire mainly evaluates students' mastery of engineering ethics curriculum knowledge, ethical codes, and principles. Four multiple-choice questions (more than one answer) are selected by referring to the existing questionnaires, exam questions, and essential knowledge points in classic textbooks and taking into account the questionnaire's representativeness, difficulty, and length. The topic involves four aspects: engineers' aim (related to ethical principles, norms, obligation, utilitarianism, etc.), engineering ethics responsibility, the basic principles of dealing with the ethical problems of engineering, and the ethical rules of professional engineering associations. The third part contains two cases and four questions related to the cases. This paper selects two classic cases to design four essay questions from role conflict, identifying ethical dilemmas and contradictions, balancing interests, analyzing possible consequences from multiple perspectives, and proposing solutions to ethical dilemmas. In addition, detailed and quantifiable scoring criteria have been designed for the questionnaire.

The completed comprehensive questionnaire developed was used in an engineering university to test 511 students taking five different forms of engineering ethics courses. The effects and differences of various engineering ethics courses are obtained through the analysis of the questionnaire results. The application of the questionnaire survey has explained the effect of questionnaire design to a large extent but also reflected some limitations. Finally, combined with the questionnaire survey and interviews, the paper also suggests the possibility of further improvement of the comprehensive questionnaire.