Boulder in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE). She has served as the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Education in the CEAE Department, as well as the ABET assessment coordinator. Professor Bielefeldt was also the faculty director of the Sustainable By Design Residential Academic Program, a livinglearning community where interdisciplinary students learn about and practice sustainability. Bielefeldt is also a licensed P.E. Professor Bielefeldt's research interests in engineering education include servicelearning, sustainable engineering, social responsibility, ethics, and diversity.
There is a need for engineering education to prepare students to address macroethical issues. Macroethics refers to the broader ethical obligations of the profession such as those embodied by social responsibility and sustainability. The extent to which students graduate with an understanding of macroethical issues is unclear and in need of organization. The goal of this new research project is to evaluate the various ways in which macroethics is taught in engineering, examining variations in pedagogy and topics, as well as examining differences between disciplines and institution types. This paper describes the first phase of the research, to develop surveys that will reveal a national picture of engineering macroethics instruction. Survey development began based on a review of the literature. One survey was targeted to deans and department chairs, aimed at identifying the names of faculty at their institutions who are involved in ethics instruction. A second survey was aimed at faculty who teach macroethical topics in courses for engineering students. A third survey was aimed at faculty who mentor cocurricular activities where students may learn about or engage with macroethical issues. Pilot versions of the three surveys were distributed to selected faculty at three institutions: a large public research-intensive university, a private research-intensive university, and a Christianaffiliated, private Baccalaureate university. Approximately 30 responses indicated a breadth of courses where faculty infused a wide variety of macroethical topics. It also revealed the challenges associated with encouraging faculty to respond to surveys. A handful of faculty participated in follow-up interviews, giving feedback to help improve the surveys. The surveys were revised, with national dissemination in spring 2016.
Project-based service learning (PBSL) has become an emergent opportunity for engineering education. In this paper both curricular and co-curricular/extracurricular community service activities related to engineering will be described. In this field there are a number of national programs, for example EPICS, Engineers Without Borders and Engineers for a Sustainable World, as well as university-specific opportunities. Student interest and involvement in these programs has been explosive. Yet, partly due to the grassroots development of many of these programs and to their rapid rise, there are scant findings on the impacts of these programs on engineering education. Preliminary findings suggest that students participating in PBSL early in college are retained in engineering at higher levels, women participate in voluntary PBSL opportunities at higher levels than their representation in engineering overall, PBSL fulfills a variety of ABET learning outcomes, and PBSL enhances student preparation to practice engineering design. The community impacts of these projects are outside the scope of this paper. However, the impacts of PBSL on community partners are of equal importance to the educational outcomes and should be evaluated. This paper provides a broad review of existing PBSL programs, assessment methods used, and the impacts on students. A summit was held in early 2009 to summarize and leverage the collective expertise of the participants to identify desired outcome metrics, quality assessment methods, and key next steps needed in understanding the impacts of PBSL on engineering education. Those involved in PBSL seek guidance on how to better understand how these programs are affecting their students and institutions, and how to design the best experiences possible. The engineering professional community is interested in evidence indicating that graduates of these PBSL programs are achieving modern knowledge and skills. It may be that PBSL offers substantial promise for building the technological workforce needed by the nation.
The meaningful inclusion of ethics in engineering education often seems to be a challenge in programs which are already packed full of technical content. Most often the ways in which ethics are included into engineering education relates to microethical issues such as ethical codes or personal professional conduct in the office. Macroethical topics, such as the profession's ethical obligations around climate change or sustainability, are less common and the ways in which macroethics are included in engineering courses has not been well studied. Two surveys were developed to explore the ways in which faculty teach students about macroethical issues; one focused on curricular settings and the other on co-curricular settings. Participants were asked to describe general topics that they covered in their respective settings and then to describe in detail the ways in which they include the societal impacts of engineering in a single course or cocurricular activity including specific topics, educational approaches and assessment tools. At the end of the survey, participants were asked in a free-response question to share their thoughts about the education of engineering students regarding broader impacts and ethical issues. This paper focuses on faculty response to this question. There were 406 responses to the open-ended question. These responses were coded using emergent, thematic coding. Inter-rater reliability was established for frequently-identified themes. The analysis of these themes highlighted four main themes: current practices, topics, challenges, and goals/opportunities. In talking about current practices, some faculty focused on engineering service opportunities or experiential learning as effective approaches. Examples of topics that were discussed include justice and community development contexts. Examples of challenges that were discussed include faculty having a limited knowledge or training about how to teach ethics or that ethics education is currently taught in ways that are too black and white and more nuanced topics should be included. Some goals or opportunities that faculty talked about indicate that students should receive a broader exposure to the societal impacts of engineering and that students should learn how to identify and negotiate work related ethical dilemmas. Some differences were found in the frequency that challenges and goals/opportunity-related themes were used between gender, tenured/tenure-track (T/TT) vs. non-T/TT, and institution types. The paper provides an interesting view of faculty perspectives on teaching ethical issues.
Boulder in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) and Director for the Engineering Plus program. She has served as the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Education in the CEAE Department, as well as the ABET assessment coordinator. Professor Bielefeldt was also the faculty director of the Sustainable By Design Residential Academic Program, a living-learning community where students learned about and practice sustainability. Bielefeldt is also a licensed P.E. Professor Bielefeldt's research interests in engineering education include service-learning, sustainable engineering, social responsibility, ethics, and diversity.
This paper summarizes the results of a national study that asked engineering and computing faculty to report the types of courses where they incorporated ethics and/or societal impact topics. An online survey was conducted in spring 2016, with 1216 responses from individuals who taught ethical and/or societal related topics in one or more courses. Among those who reported teaching ethics/societal impact issues in a course, 410 (34%) indicated that these topics were included in a first-year introductory course and/or first year design-focused course. Among 814 individuals who did not teach these topics in first year courses, 43% (n=350) believed that these topics were incorporated into first year courses in their program (35% into first year introductory course, 15% into first year design course). Among individuals who incorporated ethical/societal impact issues into first year courses, the most common topics were: professional practice issues, societal impacts of technology, engineering codes of ethics, safety, engineering decisions under uncertainty, ethical failures/disasters, and sustainability. The teaching and assessment methods used in first-year courses were described for 143 introductory courses and 56 design courses. The most common methods used to teach students about ethics/societal issues in these courses were: case studies, in class discussions, lectures, and examples of professional scenarios. Design courses also commonly included design and project based learning as methods to teach ethics. Common assessment methods for ethics/societal impacts learning were: individual reflective essays, test/quiz questions, individual homework, and group written assignments. Ten percent of the introductory courses and 9% of the first-year design courses did not assess ethics/societal impact learning outcomes. Reported satisfaction with the ability to assess ethics and societal impact learning outcomes averaged 4.5 (just over neutral to somewhat satisfied), and correlated with the number of assessment methods used. Five interviews were conducted with first year course instructors, and provided additional details. The results provide good examples of incorporating ethics and societal impact issues into courses for first year engineering students.
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