2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A Digital Nudge: Assessing the Impact of an Immutable Records Data Management Platform on Student Researcher Ethics (ER2: the Ethical and Responsible Research Program)

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session II

Title: A Digital Nudge: Assessing the Impact of an Immutable Records Data Management Platform on Student Researcher Ethics (ER2: the Ethical and Responsible Research Program)

Research ethics and the lack of it have become an important issue more than ever both in the academia and the education sector, especially due to the advent of generative artificial intelligence. Hence, there is a pressing need for effective academic research ethics education at universities, particularly at STEM departments, so that we can help younger generations nurture their ethical thinking and responsible behavior in relation to STEM fields. The current literature on academic research ethics education at universities broadly tends to apply one of the following approaches to inducing positive behavioral changes among students: speculative training, knowledge-focused training, and skill-focused training. Nevertheless, it does not sufficiently explore alternative approaches even though existing approaches appear to have both advantages and weaknesses. That is, the literature also argues that some faculty are reluctant to integrate research ethics into technical courses due to time constraints. Therefore, the most feasible option could be designing a highly effective program with relatively few additional resources, little coordination, and minimum training. Hence, it is relevant to explore alternative approaches to academic research ethics education at universities. Such alternative approaches may include a nudge-focused approach.

The nudge theory postulates that we can guide people’s decision making and behavior in a particular direction by shaping the decision environment a.k.a. the choice architecture. Using this theory, we attempted to achieve high replicability and cost effectiveness as well as theoretical and methodological relevance. Thus, the present study investigated if the introduction of an online, immutable records data management platform would induce positive changes among graduate-level engineering students in terms of ethical understanding, ethical behavior in a research lab setting, and the choice architecture in which they were engaged in scientific research (N = 16).

Methodologically, we first introduced an online data management platform to five participating labs, and then carried out surveys with Likert-scale questions in Qualtrics before and after the introduction of this platform. After having obtained answers from 16 students, we statistically investigated its impact on their ethical understanding and behavior in addition to the choice architecture, using Wilcoxon signed-rank test. To obtain a deeper contextual understanding of the results, we further analyzed qualitative data from the surveys by generating word clouds of their answers to open-ended questions with R packages.

The interim results indicated that professors of participating labs were statistically significantly more likely to encourage lab members to seek out education and training in ethical research best practices after the introduction of our data management platform (pre-test average: 3.42 out of 5.00, post-test average = 4.00 out of 5.00, p = .04). Additionally, participating students changed their behavior in terms of data recording, data storage, and data sharing after the introduction of our data management platform. However, it is still unknown if the introduction of our data management platform statistically significantly induced these positive changes among students.

Authors

Dr. Kazumi Homma The George Washington University [biography]

Dr. Kazumi Homma is a Research Scientist at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the George Washington University. In an NSF-funded project titled “A Digital Nudge: Assessing the Impact of an Immutable Records Data Management Platform on Student Researcher Ethics”(ER2:the Ethical and Responsible Research Program), Dr. Homma has been leading a systematic literature review and an impact evaluation with quantitative and qualitative data analysis.
Dr. Ekundayo Shittu The George Washington University [biography]

Ekundayo Shittu is a Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at George Washington University. Professor Shittu conducts basic and applied research that take a systems approach to address the different dimensions of decision making under multiple and sequential uncertainties. His focus is on the economics and management of energy technologies, the design and impacts of climate change response policies, sustainability efforts, corporate social responsibility, and patterns of consumer behavior in energy consumption in the emerging era of smart grid technologies. Currently, he is exploring enhancement mechanisms for improved student engagement in the STEM fields and developing strategies to increase the ethical consciousness of student STEM researchers, particularly in engineering education.
Ryan Watkins The George Washington University [biography]

Ryan Watkins is a Professor of Educational Technology Leadership, and Direct of Education for the GW Trustworthy AI initiative. He is also the faculty lead for the Human-Technology Collaboration PhD program. He is the author of 11 books and over 100 manuscripts on needs assessment, instructional design, and technology in education. You can learn more about his work at: www.RyanRWatkins.com
Dr. Payman Dehghanian The George Washington University [biography]

Dr. Payman Dehghanian received a B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran, in 2009, an M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, in 2011, and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA, in 2017. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA in 2018, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research interests include electrical power systems reliability and resilience assessment, data-informed decision-making for maintenance and asset management in electrical systems, and smart electricity grid applications. Dr. Dehghanian is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE-HKN Outstanding Young Professional Award, the 2021 Early Career Award from the Washington Academy of Sciences, and the 2022 George Washington University’s Early Career Researcher Award. In 2015 and 2016, Dr. Dehghanian was selected among the World’s Top 20 Young Scholars for Next Generation of Researchers in Electric Power Systems.
Dr. Chung Hyuk Park The George Washington University [biography]

Dr. Chung Hyuk Park is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at The George Washington University (GW). He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012 and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University in 2002 and 2000, respectively. Dr. Park directs the Assistive Robotics and Tele-Medicine (ART-Med) Lab in GW where he studies the collaborative innovation between human intelligence and robotic technology, integrating human-robot interaction, machine learning, computer vision, haptics, and telepresence robotics. The current and future research topics include: multi-modal human-robot interaction and assistive robotics, robotic learning and humanized intelligence, tele-medical robotics, and artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) for digital health. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award, GW TCO Technology Maturation Award, and GW SEAS Early Career Research Award.
Hiromi Sanders J.D., Ph.D. The George Washington University/University of Maryland, Baltimore [biography]

Hiromi Sanders, J.D., Ph.D., is responsible for matters related to research compliance and integrity and research security. Currently, she is the Research Security Manager at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). Dr. Sanders brings a unique perspective to this position, having served as both a researcher and an administrator. Prior to joining UMB, she served as the Director of Research Integrity and Compliance at the George Washington University and served as assistant director of the Office of Research Integrity at East Carolina University. Dr. Sanders earned a Bachelors of Science in Biology and a Ph.D. in Physiology from East Carolina University where she studied the aggregation of amyloid-beta peptide species. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, she received her J.D. from the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University.

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The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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