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U495D·SUNDAY WORKSHOP: Gamifying Engineering Education - A Playful Approach to Ethics Instruction and Assessment
Workshop Sponsored Workshops
Sun. June 23, 2024 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
D135, Oregon Convention Center
Session Description

Free ticketed event
Ethics education has been recognized as increasingly important to engineering over the past two decades, although disagreement exists concerning how ethics can and should be taught in the classroom. With the support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, a collaboration of investigators from the University of Connecticut, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburgh, and Rowan University are conducting a mixed-methods project investigating how game-based or playful learning with strongly situated components can influence first-year engineering students’ ethical knowledge, awareness, and decision-making.

The popularity and prevalence of game-based or “playful” learning strategies has grown significantly over the past two decades, finding applications in a diverse range of educational contexts. Playful learning offers unique affordances for the practical assessment of ethics-learning outcomes. Current ethical assessments often place undue emphasis on the categorization of knowledge and skills, while not sufficiently addressing the process through which students navigate and act on ethical dilemmas. This, we posit, is an area that needs redefining, given that ethical decision-making is rarely a linear process with single objective “right” answers and often involves iterative reasoning and interactive engagement with the problem. As such, we have developed a suite of ethics-driven classroom games that have been implemented and evaluated across three universities, engaging over 400 first-year engineering students over the past 3 years.

Our work is based on the logic that game-based learning can provide a means to engage students actively in interrogating the complexities of ethical decision-making in specific engineering scenarios. Gameplay can align with engineering course learning objectives as well as enhance student knowledge, behaviors, and dispositions as students reflect on their own decision-making and that of their peers. This workshop will provide an overview of three games that we designed as part of an NSF-funded project investigating the impacts of game play on ethical reasoning and decision making, highlighting the concepts that guided our approach to innovative engineering ethics instruction. Each game targets specific ethics-learning outcomes such as: Identifying the complexities of ethical dilemmas, evaluating responses to ethical situations in context, and promoting ethical discussions among peers on potentially controversial situations from real-life engineering disasters.

In this workshop, we will provide an overview of all three games, how they can be implemented in both remote and in-person classroom settings, and how to gain access to the materials (and instructional guides). We will also share research findings from the last four years on the benefits of a playful learning approach to ethics instruction and the frameworks that guided the game design. More details about the NSF grant, the research team, and the games can be found at https://www.engineering.pitt.edu/engineering-ethics/.

Speakers
  1. Dr. Scott Streiner
    University of Pittsburgh

    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). He received his BS and PhD degrees in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and his MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from North Carolina State University. Prior to joining the department, Scott served as an Assistant Professor in the Experiential Engineering Education Department at Rowan University where he taught first- and second-year engineering students. He teaches undergraduate courses in probability and statistics, supply chain analysis, and is responsible for the Industrial Engineering Senior Design Capstone Course (IE1090). He also teaches a graduate course in probability and statistics. Finally, he teaches introduction to engineering analysis (ENGR11) and introduction to engineering computing (ENGR12). He is an active member of the Kern Engineering Entrepreneurship Network (KEEN), the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and serves on the First-Year Engineering Education (FYEE) Conference Steering Committee.

  2. Dr. Daniel D. Burkey
    University of Connecticut

    Daniel Burkey is the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs and Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Connecticut.

  3. Dr. Kevin D. Dahm
    Rowan University

    Kevin Dahm is Professor and Undergraduate Program Chair for Chemical Engineering at Rowan University. He earned his BS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (92) and his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (98). He has published two books, "Fundamentals of Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics" with Donald Visco, and "Interpreting Diffuse Reflectance and Transmittance" with his father Donald Dahm

  4. Dr. Richard Tyler Cimino
    New Jersey Institute of Technology

    Dr. Richard T. Cimino is a Senior Lecturer in the Otto H. York Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology. His research interests include the intersection of engineering ethics and process safety, and broadening inclusion in engineering, with a focus on the LGBTQ+ community.

  5. Tori Wagner
    University of Connecticut

    Tori Wagner is a doctoral student at the University of Connecticut studying Learning Sciences. She has a background in secondary science education, playful learning, and digital game design.