Ethics of Engineering
in an MET Capstone Course
Craig Johnson
Central Washington University
Abstract:
An important outcome of ABET concerns the teaching and assessment of ‘ethics’ in an engineering context. It is stated as follows: 3 “these student outcomes must include, but are not limited to, the following learned capabilities:” A. h. “an understanding of and a commitment to address professional and ethical responsibilities, “. The research question is then, how do we teach and assess ethics in our mechanical engineering technology program?
The author had an opportunity to attend an ‘Educators’ Workshop’ with the Marines in 2010, and purposefully investigated their ethics education pedagogy. They used multiple venues to teach ethics, such as scenario-based decisions (unarmed combat and candidate discussions) and leadership scenario tests (leadership reaction course under ‘stress and observation’). They only present surveys and commentary to ABET for their accreditation purposes.
At Central Washington University (CWU), we chose to employ some of this pedagogy in our senior capstone course. The focus of this presentation is to review the lessons from the Marines, and the efficacy of this pedagogy as implemented at CWU.
Introduction:
The 20 year-old Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) program at Central Washington University (CWU) is ABET1 accredited. Our challenge focused on developing pedagogy to teach and assess ethics. There is little practical pedagogy on teaching engineering ethics. Recent articles in the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) show the limited approaches we use to define and measure ‘ethics’.
Pedagogically, there appear to be a number of ‘games’ and alternative venues to teaching ethics, like the ‘Ethics Bowl’ at the University of Puerto Rico by Frey2. This approach was not considered due to time constraints.
Many references to engineering ethics refer to the topic, but not assessment. In a presentation by De Rego3 (FIE, 2005), he outlined supplemental materials for computer science capstone courses oriented at developing ‘awareness of ethics’, but not assessment.
Research on assessment primarily uses surveys. For example Finelli4 uses a survey (‘SEED’ ) tool. The instrument is both complex and logistically demanding to administer. Jonassen and Cho5 focus on ‘argumentation’ as pedagogy to address ‘ethics arguments’. Their paper has a good reference for the development of ethical discussions, but there is little practical information on how to assess ethics. Harding6 researched undergraduate ethical behavior, but did not focus on active teaching and assessment of ethics. At CWU, we decided to include some of these ‘ethical discussions’ into our capstone course.
We decided to concentrate on our capstone course, in some regard because of its more flexible schedule. Our capstone course is a year-long class in which the student demonstrates their ability to manage an engineering project that includes: a suitable problem, design, manufacture and evaluation. In this regard, we chose to focus on deliverables that are typical, and that offer an opportunity to discuss an ethical issue.
To gain a better sense of how to develop and implement out ethics pedagogy, the author was able to ask and experience some aspects of how the Marine Corps addresses ethics. The following statement from the Marine Corps specifically addresses their stance on ethics: “The Marine Corps has dedicated itself for more than 200 years to the core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment.”
The Marine Corps:
The Marine Corps uses ‘enlisted’ personnel to select ‘officer’ candidates. This is an indication of how the Marines use logistics to influence ethical behavior. The enlisted personnel know that in just a year or two, their officer candidate could be their commanding officer. Recruiting takes place on university campuses, like CWU.
Once a ‘candidate’ is selected and accepted, he attends ‘Officer Candidate School’ (OCS). Candidates are housed in barracks at Quantico. They attend classes and are challenged mentally and physically. Two interesting education venues were the scenario discussions, and the ‘Leadership Reaction Course’.
After being inducted, a candidate becomes a Marine and attends The Basic School (TBS). During this time, the Marine learns unarmed combat and combat strategy and tactics (both of educational interest with regard to ethics).
The Marines offer education through a number of schools. One, the Junior Officer College, is accredited through ABET. Thus the author was able to pose questions of specific nature to the commanding officers.
The Marine Corps Educators’ Workshop:
The author was approached to participate in the ‘Educators’ Workshop’ (EW). This is a week-long experience primarily at Quantico (south of the D.C. area). One article describing this experience is on the marines website: (http://www.mcrc.marines.mil/News/NewsArticleDisplay/tabid/5320/Article/66672/educators-attend-marine-corps-101.aspx ).
The logistics allowed (and promoted) interaction between attendees and all marine personnel. This was critical in the author’s ability to gain information related to ethics.
Methods:
One of the first pedagogy components was to promote grammar in speech and writing with regard to project communication. It was observed that the Candidates responded to their educator during scenario-based interactions with: “Sir, this candidate would…”. The avoidance of any personal pronoun was strict and apparent. The commanding officer of the OCS later explained that this grammar helped the candidates ‘consider others in their decisions’. In a parallel venue, it has been observed that engineering projects often include these same personal pronouns (e.g. “I”). The MET faculty members have encouraged students to avoid the use of pronouns altogether, and structure sentences using project-centric grammar. For example, instead of “I designed this part…”, we encourage “This part was designed to…” The intention is to include teammates and focus ‘ownership’ on the team. Also, any proposal or project report is directed at the project, not the individual(s) involved.
Another aspect of our capstone course is that every student creates a schedule, with tasks and hours (predicted vs. actual). When discussing the ‘detail’ needed for each task, a variety of ethical dilemma were posited. For example, the student was asked if there task information could be handed over to another engineer or technician: could that person do the task in the allotted time? Another question was posed with regard to billing. For example, would the student be comfortable charging for the time (making up a bill for financial gain) related to the task. A typical example regards ‘research’ done to support a project. If a student asks about including ‘research’ into an engineering proposal (e.g. hours on a task), then we would respond by asking if the research task was part of the project in an engineering sense. A customer may ‘buy’ a research task for a new process, but will not typically pay for an engineer to learn how to use a new machine. Putting the task in a discussion of contractual obligations is a way to promote ethics.
Assessment was constrained to use existing ‘deliverables’ in the course. Specifically, the use of surveys as an assessment tool was avoided for multiple reasons. First, another assessment instrument requires more time spent off-topic (e.g. a parasitic action). Second, although many researchers rely on targeted surveys, the author limited the scope of effort for this research to promote efficiency. The author may focus future effort on ethics outcomes and how existing surveys (e.g. exit, alumni) surveys could be modified to provide feedback on ethics outcomes. For more information on the use of surveys, a section of Catalano’s publication7 in Science and Engineering Ethics is suggested as a place to start.
Results and Discussion:
A ‘Socratic’ type pedagogy was introduced into the capstone class. Both examples of ‘ethics-based’ discussions were facilitated. The efficacy of using this pedagogy can be indicated in two ways. First, participation of students in these discussions is over %50. And all the students produced documentation reflecting these ethics discussions. Three delivered drafts of engineering project proposals offer opportunities to observe student work regarding both grammar and schedules.
Regarding grammar and its use during one capstone course of 24 students, the first draft of their ‘pre-proposals’ (middle of first quarter) displayed %100 use of personal pronouns. By the second draft (end of first quarter) %50 of the students complied with our grammatical advice. By the final proposal (middle of second quarter) %100 of the students complied with grammatical advice regarding pronouns, but other grammatical issues were still being addressed. This evolution of awareness and regard for grammatical issues was overwhelmingly positive.
Trends regarding the effect of ethics activities on ‘tasks and scheduling’, were less obvious. There were only two documents displaying schedule and task information. The first document (the second draft proposal) set a baseline for each project, but there was no way to address how reasonable the time estimation was for each task. By the final proposal draft, %50 of the students regularly included a ‘miscellaneous’ category (address many questionable or undetermined actions). This observation supported a positive response to discussions on the ethics of contractual negotiations. However, the proposals were so varied, that a simple metric was not identified and correlated to ‘ethics’.
In the future, specific curriculum outcomes and metrics (in addition to the examples) will be tied to specific subject matter and classroom activities (and metrics) in support of accreditation efforts.
Conclusion:
Observations of education pedagogy related to ethics, made during a Marine Corps Educator’s Workshop, was applied to an MET Capstone Course.
Two activities were identified to teach ethics using a Socratic method. Multiple documents were evaluated, using metrics, to reflect the application of ethics by students. Results indicate that these ethics activities are effective in changing student behavior as documented in engineering project proposals.
Acknowledgements:
The author would like to thank the Marine Corps for inviting and supporting his participation in the Educators’ Workshop.
References:
1. Accrediation Board of Engineering and Techonology, www.abet.org , Critierion 3. 2013.
2. De Rego, F.R., “Teaching Ethics and the Social Impact of Engineering within a Capstone Course”, FIE 35th Annual Conference, 2005.
3. Frey, et. al., University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, (on-line video), 2004.
4. Finelli, et. al, “An Assessment of Engineering Students’ Ethical Development”, JEE, Vol.101, No.3, July 2012,
5. Jonassen and Cho, “Fostering Argumentation While Solving Engineering Ethics Problems”, JEE, Vol.100, No.4, October 2011,
6. Harding, et. al, “The Ethical Behavior of Engineering Undergraduates”, JEE, Vol.101, No.2, April 2012,
7. Catalano, “Science and Engineering Ethics”, April V10, P409, 2004.