2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering Education research has acknowledged the importance of preparing future engineers for complex and nuanced ethical decision-making rather than compliance-based ethical decision-making. Character education, grounded in virtue ethics, has been explored as a promising approach to this end, but research has demonstrated that engineering educators often lack the background or confidence to effectively incorporate character and ethics into their courses. Lack of student engagement and valuation of ethics education further enhances these challenges.

In order to provide insight into how to overcome these obstacles, this study reports on student attitudes toward their own character education experience in a four-year undergraduate engineering program that has intentionally woven character education into required engineering courses. The research team designed an exploratory, mixed-methods study to capture student insights about perceptions of character learning and growth across the curriculum. The survey asked students to identify course-level character strength gains and to offer context about which classroom activities or experiences led to that development. Thirteen character strengths were included in this survey: creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, service, empathy, courage, resilience, honesty, justice, purpose, teamwork, intellectual humility, practical wisdom. The following research questions guided our work:

1. Which character strengths / virtues did students perceive to have strengthened across the engineering curriculum and in specific engineering courses?
2. Which classroom experiences (i.e., activities, pedagogies, or practices) did students attribute to their perceived character growth?

Surveys from seven required engineering courses representing 161 student responses, were analyzed for emergent themes. Results reveal that students perceived the most growth in performance and intellectual virtues (using the Jubilee Virtue Framework) such as teamwork, resilience (performance virtues) and critical thinking, creativity, curiosity, and intellectual humility (intellectual virtues). Further, students attributed character development not only to courses with pre-planned character activities, but to courses where no formal character-based learning outcomes existed. These unanticipated contexts of character development reveal implicit connections and opportunities for engineering educators to support student character development. Performance virtues are most supported by participating in group work, challenging course material, and using mastery-based learning pedagogies. Intellectual virtue growth is most supported by open-ended problems and projects, peer and instructor feedback, and engaging lecturers. Moral virtue growth was due to wide-ranging experiences including self-directed learning opportunities, facing challenging communication scenarios, instructor role-modeling, and personal reflection. Civic virtue growth is linked to connecting course content to real-world applications and working indirectly or directly with a variety of stakeholders. Growth in practical wisdom, the integrated virtue, in addition to being indirectly supported by all other virtue growth, was directly connected to opportunities to be in a decision-making coupled with exposure to real-world applications and time for reflection.

This study is a preliminary indication that undergraduate engineering education may already have numerous opportunities for character education embedded in the curriculum. So, rather than designing separate lessons or modalities to incorporate character education, engineering educators may be able to have significant impact simply by making small pedagogical changes to their courses to facilitate connections between existing course content and character development.