2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper explores the role of three pedagogical interventions in engineering students’ learning about ethical and professional conduct, with a particular focus on affective engagement. Many transformative efforts involving equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization are centered on ethics as a justifying principle, which further stresses the need to cultivate an ethical orientation in engineering practice, beyond specific knowledge. A new course on professionalism and ethics was introduced as a platform to explore scalable pedagogical approaches to enhance engagement and achieve affective learning outcomes in engineering ethics. The learning activities were designed to stimulate critical thinking about social aspects of engineering and to reframe the traditionally technical obligations of the engineer within sociopolitical and equity-oriented structures.

Through a qualitative analysis of student experiences, assignments, and reflections as part of the course, this paper evaluates the impact of three pedagogical methods on student engagement with ethical questions surrounding their decision-making as both individuals and as future engineers. The three methods being studied are Virtue Points, a tool that encourages self-reflection by contrasting personal and professional virtues, an adapted ‘Spectrum Game’ based on concepts presented by Jubilee Media, and a modified Pisces Game used to explore Tragedy of the Commons. Early findings show positive engagement with both the Pisces Game and Spectrum Game, with many students describing these two as particularly impactful and enjoyable. Virtue Points yielded results that surprised many students, and there are indications that the redesign of the scoring system for the game may promote better understanding of how it can support self-reflection on virtues.