Using case studies in engineering ethics education: the case for immersive scenarios through stakeholder engagement and real life data

Abstract

Our contribution is part of a broader study conducted in cooperation with the national accreditation body Engineers Ireland that examined the conceptualisation and education of ethics in engineering programmes in Ireland. The paper is a qualitative examination of the use of case studies in engineering ethics education and includes 23 engineering programmes from 6 higher education institutions in Ireland. The qualitative study aims to determine (RQ1) how cases are selected, (RQ2) the goals envisioned for engineering ethics case instruction, (RQ3) the characteristics of the scenarios employed and (RQ4) the preferred application by instructors. A first finding notes the diverse set of goals and application of ethics case studies. The focus is more on decision-making in professional contexts and less on power relations, equity and the broader societal mission of engineering. The second finding highlights the discrepancy between how instructors employ cases and their preferred application. Engineering ethics cases typically include individualistic, hypothetical and historical scenarios. Nevertheless, instructors favour immersive cases set in real or realistic contexts of practice, containing factual or real-time data, which can provoke students to reflect on broader ethical issues. Considering this aspirational discrepancy, we conclude with recommendations that can guide the development of engineering ethics case instruction.

Engineering Students as Co-creators in an Ethics of Technology Course

“…To help fill the gap in empirical knowledge on the topic (Yadav & Barry, 2009;Martin et al, 2021), we feel we have added to the evidence supporting the effectiveness of case-based approaches in engineering-ethics instruction. The proposed approach to evaluating the effectiveness of case studies in ethics instruction merits further investigation in the field of engineering education.…”

“…There is a growing criticism of detached case studies (Martin et al, 2021). Due to the distant nature of engineering-ethics case instruction we struggle to sufficiently show the social dimension of engineering and the power relationships inherent to the profession (Bucciarelli, 2008;Lynch & Kline, 2000;Martin et al, 2019;Winner, 1986).…”

Influencing Student Academic Integrity Choices using Ethics Scenarios

“…Scenario-based learning techniques [9,10] have been used to engage students in aspects of professional development, promote student-focussed problem-solving and provide a means to enhance employability. In addition, in the guise of of dramatised case-studies, they have a long tradition of use to the teaching of ethics in Engineering [11,12,13] where they can provide a safe environment for speculative enquiry and decision-making. Scenario-based methods have also been used to try to uncover motivations for academic misconduct in a number of disciplines such as medicine [14,15], computing and information systems [16,17,18,19],…”

“…Making a statistical analysis on the rates of academic misconduct would be (next to) impossible, as the student cohorts are too small and variations over programmes and years are important [13]. Instead, we will evaluate how the students experienced the teaching and what changes, if any, that they would report it lead to in the perception of academic misconduct.…”

Fictional Film in Engineering Ethics Education: With Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises as Exemplar

“…Searching beyond Scopus rendered more papers, but all of them only mention the use of film in passing, e.g. to support a Science and Technology Studies inspired engineering ethics course (Riley, 2008), to highlight Kohlberg's stages of moral development (Dyrud, 2001), as a way to critically re-examine love and relationships (van Grunsven, 2021), as a part of case study methodology (Martin et al, 2021), and to promote a phenomenological perspective (Troesch, 2015). Film is also mentioned in several other papers but given that the papers do not concern teaching with film, it is not well explained how it is used in engineering ethics education (van Grunsven et al, 2021;Berry et al, 2013, Clancy 2021).…”