2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper describes a classroom approach and activities that have been successful in increasing undergraduate student understanding and engagement with ethics in a first-year design course. Gamification, the incorporation of game-like elements into non-game contexts, has been shown to increase student motivation and engagement in learning activities (Buckley & Doyle, 2014)(Jose & Vinay, 2017)(Dicheva et al., 2015). By creating a fun and engaging learning environment, educators can more effectively convey complex concepts such as ethical reasoning and decision-making. The activities described here include group work and challenge-based learning where students create a code of ethics and analyze outlandish case studies from movies and tv shows. The goal of using this gamified approach was to create an immersive and interactive learning experience for students to become familiar with the major biomedical codes of ethics, foster critical thinking on ethical issues, and help students develop confidence in applying ethical principles in engineering design decisions. The effectiveness of the approach was observed by a significant increase in students’ independently motivated exploration ethical dilemmas in the second semester group design projects.