2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 371: Research Initiation: Expanding the Boundaries of Ethical Reasoning and Professional Responsibility in Engineering Education Through Critical Narrative

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

This project's goal is to improve critical thinking in undergraduate engineering students through a new educational intervention aimed at enhancing ethics and professional responsibility. Developing an understanding of how engineering students perceive the broader impacts of their chosen profession, especially as articulated through the lens of ethics and professional responsibility, is an important first step in addressing professional formation. The current model of engineering education, focused primarily on technical proficiency, leaves little room for the structured and integrated exploration of these broader impacts. The intervention that was evaluated in this study involved student-group discussions that were centered around professionally produced narratives in an audio format. Students were required to listen to the narrative, respond to focus questions, engage with their peers' responses to the questions and then reflect on the experience. After completing this assignment for three narratives, students (N=45) participated in a separate discussion involving the ethical issues and broader impacts of engineering work that they encountered while working on their senior design projects. The same exercise was exercise was completed by a comparison group (N=49) that was not exposed to the intervention. Our results indicate that exposure to the critical narrative intervention did enhance students' abilities to identify ethical issues and broader impacts of engineering work (p<.05).

Authors

Dr. Jeff R. Brown Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach [biography]

Jeff Brown is a professor of civil engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL. His research interests include ethics and professional formation in engineering education, service learning, and structural health monitoring of reinforced concrete structures. Dr. Brown received his PhD in structural engineering from the University of Florida in 2005.
Taylor Joy Mitchell Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach [biography]

Taylor Joy Mitchell is an associate professor of composition and humanities at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL. Her research interests includes analysis of pivotal cultural figures, masculinity studies, and SoTL studies in humanities higher education courses. Dr. Mitchell received her PhD in 20th Century American Literature from the University of South Florida in 2011.
Chad Rohrbacher Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach
Dr. Leroy Long III http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-5962-7412 Sinclair Community College [biography]

Leroy Long III, PhD is a STEM educator, artist, author, speaker, and change leader. Dr. Long chairs the Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) Department at Sinclair Community College. He is a proud graduate of Dayton Public Schools. Dr. Long has a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Wright State University and Ohio State University. He also has a Ph.D. in STEM (Engineering) Education from Ohio State. Dr. Long has interned with Toyota and he owns a small education-based company. For more details see: leroylongiii.com

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