ENGR 2392 (Formerly 4392) Engineering Ethics and Its Impact on Society

May 10, 2013

ENGR 2392 (formerly 4392) Engineering Ethics and Its Impact on Society Instructors: William M. Marcy, PhD, PE Richard Burgess, MA

ENGR 2392 (formerly 4392) is offered both face-to-face blended and completely on-line. In the last two years we moved the course from being supported by the College of Engineering course ware to the University Blackboard Learning Environment. By so doing we were able to obtain a much more comprehensive view of student performance on assessments as well as questions designed to assess student learning as it relates to learning outcomes. These assessments included written essay questions which are hand graded to assess critical thinking, writing and communication skills.

It was clear from the assessments that students were not integrating the theory portions of the course with the ethical practice of engineering. We made a major change in the course to include a formal research paper involving the deployment of a new technology with ethical implications for society as a whole. A grading rubric was published. Students were then required to write a short proposal that met the requirements of the grading rubric. After approval by the instructors, students wrote a formal 2000 word research paper which comprised 15% of the course grade. Eighty percent of the students met or exceeded the minimum requirements for the assignment. Twenty percent of the students satisfied all of the requirements. Twenty percent of the students failed to meet the minimum requirements. Nevertheless, we feel this change had a positive outcome regarding critical thinking, writing and communication.

Another issue related to integrating theory with practice regards the structure of the way subject matter is introduced to the students. The subject matter for this course is not easily presented in a linear manner. Much of the material is best learned when two or more topics are presented concurrently. An example is presenting ethical theory while concurrently reading articles related to current ethical challenges. This manner of presentation is quite different from that used in most engineering courses in which basic concepts are presented and mastered before taking on more complex topics.

To address the issue of course structure we engaged a professional instructional designer (Anita Chavez) of the Teaching, Learning and Professional Development Center to help us completely restructure the course through the Blackboard Learning Environment. This work was accomplished during the fall semester 2012 and was rolled out during the spring semester 2013. We introduced both question and answer forums as well as graded group discussions. We learned a lot this spring about the logistics of managing 150 plus students in six or more discussion groups. As a result we have simplified the format for discussion groups and reduced the number of discussions groups, but not the number of topics addressed. These changes are being implemented for the summer semester 2013 and fall semester 2013. We do not currently have a TA to help out with the course and, thus, made participation in the discussion forums optional. With additional support, the forums can be a required, more robust part of the course. The new structure, implementing concurrent presentation of the subject matter, improved student understanding as evidenced by better performance on essay questions and the Social Impact Analysis paper. This remains a work in progress, but seems to be working.

Using the new concurrent course structure we experimented with flipping the face-to-face class. Students were tasked with studying a subject matter topic such as “The Practice of Engineering in an International Environment” through on line lectures captured on video as well as using the ethics videos from the National Institute of Engineering Ethics. The face-to-face class meeting was devoted to student discussion of the issues raised for this topic. This resulted in a much more engaged class discussion than we observed in the graded discussion groups or previous class discussions. While this doesn’t work with completely on-line delivery, we will continue to use it in the face-to-face blended sections.

We moved “Engineering Ethics and it impact on Society” from a senior level course down to a sophomore level course. Our thinking was that students needed a firm grounding in engineering ethics before they take their upper division engineering courses, especially the capstone course. It will be several years before the current class of students is engaged in the capstone course. To assess the impact on this change our intent is to sample student capstone project presentations to assess the degree to which engineering ethics has been incorporated into capstone projects.

In summary, during the last two years “Engineering Ethics and Its Impact on Society” has been completely reinvented. While the assessment of the impacts of these changes is ongoing , they appear to be having a positive impact on learning outcomes, especially critical thinking, writing and communication.