2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Assessing the Effects of a Short-Term Global Engineering Ethics Course on the Development of Engineering Students' Moral Reasoning and Dispositions [Traditional paper – research/evidence-based, DEI/research methods]

Presented at Engineering Ethics Division (ETHICS) Technical Session_Tuesday June 27, 1:30 - 3:00

This paper describes a project to develop, deliver, and assess a short-term (one-week) course on global engineering ethics at Shandong University, Shandong, China in the summer of 2022. This project builds on previous work regarding the development and assessment of global engineering ethics, shortening the time required to deliver and assess a course. The goal was to explore whether a shorter version of the course resulted in gains similar to the longer version, and whether shorter versions of the assessment instruments could track these gains.

Ethics is increasingly recognized as central to engineering, although disagreement exists concerning how it should be carried out and assessed. These disagreements are compounded by the global nature of engineering, where technologies span multiple countries, and peoples from different cultures work together as never before. Separation in time and space between those developing technologies and those affected by these technologies can increase difficulties associated with identifying and mitigating the negative effects of technology on human life. Additionally, regulatory and cultural differences can lead to disagreement regarding how technologies should or should not be developed and used. For these reasons, efforts have been made to develop global engineering ethics education.

Over several years, members of the team have developed and delivered a semester-long, two-credit hour course in global engineering ethics, finding that participants scored significantly higher in measures of ethical reasoning post- than pre-course, and developed a greater concern with fairness and loyalty. Given the limited time and space in engineering curricula, and limited number of qualified faculty to teach global engineering ethics, this project sought to determine whether a course with reduced contents delivered over a shorter period of time would be similarly effective. Additionally, it sought to determine whether shorter versions of the instruments used to assess this education, the ESIT (Engineering and Science Issues Test) and MFQ (Moral Foundations Theory), would be as effective as their original, longer versions. This was motivated by the fact that, in ongoing research, the project team was having difficulty collecting adequate sample sizes, in part because it was taking so long to complete full versions of the ESIT and MFQ.

To do so, in July of 2022, Chinese students enrolled in “Global Engineering Ethics” completed shortened versions of the ESIT and MFQ on the first and last days of the course. Our presentation will describe the nature of the course, as well as pre- and post-course results on shortened versions of the ESIT and MFQ.

Authors

Dr. Rockwell Franklin Clancy III http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7797-7835 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Rockwell Clancy conducts research at the intersection of technology ethics, moral psychology, and Chinese philosophy. He explores how culture and education affect moral judgments, the causes of unethical behaviors, and what can be done to ensure more ethical behaviors regarding technology. Central to his work are insights from and methodologies associated with the psychological sciences and digital humanities. Rockwell is a Research Scientist in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. Before moving to Virginia, he was a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines, Lecturer in the Department of Values, Technology, and Innovation, at Delft University of Technology, Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute, and Research Fellow in the Institute of Social Cognition and Decision-making, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Rockwell holds a PhD from Purdue University, MA from Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, and BA from Fordham University.
Dr. Scott Streiner University of Pittsburgh [biography]

Scott Streiner is an Assistant Professor in the Industrial Engineering Department, teaches in the First-Year Engineering Program and works in the Engineering Education Research Center (EERC) in the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Scott has received funding through NSF to conduct research on the impact of game-based learning on the development of first-year students’ ethical reasoning, as well as research on the development of culturally responsive ethics education in global contexts. He is an active member of the Kern Engineering Entrepreneurship Network (KEEN), the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and serves on the First-Year Engineering Education (FYEE) Conference Steering Committee.
Dr. Qin Zhu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6673-1901 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Dr. Zhu is Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Science, Technology & Society and the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech. Dr. Zhu is also an Affiliate Researcher at the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Zhu is Editor for International Perspectives at the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, Associate Editor for Engineering Studies, and Executive Committee Member of the International Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum. Dr. Zhu's research interests include global and international engineering education, engineering ethics, engineering cultures, and ethics and policy of computing technologies and robotics.
Dr. Andrea Gammon http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4972-7254 Delft University of Technology [biography]

Andrea Gammon is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Technology at TU Delft.
Xianghong WU
Dr. Ryan Thorpe

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