THE ETHICS BOWL IN ENGINEERING ETHICS AT

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1 THE ETHICS BOWL IN ENGINEERING ETHICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO-MAYAGÜEZ 1 José A. Cruz, William J. Frey, and Halley D. Sanchez University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez INTRODUCTION The Ethics Bowl has proven to be an effective way to recast our students thinking about ethics at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). That such opinions can use recasting is evidenced by the results of a student survey described in the University of Puerto Rico publication Dialogo (Marrero 2002) concerning whether ethics should be made into a required course. According to the students, ethics should not be required because 1) it s too late to teach ethics by the time students reach college, 2) the preferred method of instruction in ethics classes is indoctrination which violates student autonomy, and 3) since ethical relativism is the case, ethics instruction results in those with power (teachers) imposing their views on those without power (students). The Ethics Bowl responds directly to this skepticism. Participating engineering students have discovered that they can learn about ethics by vigorously debating decision-making situations that arise in day to day practice. They have realized that ethics could be taught without indoctrination because the Ethics Bowl creates a self-teaching ethical community in which class instructors, faculty judges, and students all collaborate in advancing toward moral insight. Finally, because debating ethical issues uncovers shared principles and highlights the distinction between good and bad argumentation, our students have learned to see beyond ethical relativism. In short, the Ethics Bowl offers a clear alternative to widespread student skepticism concerning ethics. The best sign of success is that Ethics Bowl veterans have turned into ethics mentors. In the course of this paper, we will present an example of how students who participated in the Ethics Bowl helped their peers learn ethics. The general nature and structure of an Ethics Bowl competition, such as those held annually by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, has been admirably described by its originator, Robert F. 15

2 16 Teaching Ethics, Spring 2004 Ladenson, in an article in this journal, The Educational Significance of the Ethics Bowl. (Ladenson 2001) Anne Marie Borrego provides an update in Ethics Bowls Exercise Students Moral Muscles published in the Chronicle of Higher Education (March 5, 2004). In addition, several websites are available for those desiring more information. 2 In general, however, the Ethics Bowl is conceived of as an extracurricular activity related to but not incorporated in the actual classroom. In this paper we provide information on how the Ethics Bowl competition can be used as a teaching tool in the classroom, as an integral part of teaching fundamental ethical material. Specifically we report on a two year experiment on integrating the competition into Engineering Ethics classes at UPRM. 3 To fit the competition into the classroom, we have made some changes: 1. Ours is, as far as we know, the first bilingual Ethics Bowl, with the cases in English and the debate almost exclusively in Spanish. This conforms to the linguistic reality of our students and helps situate the Ethics Bowl in the context of Puerto Rico. 2. The competitions have been held during regular class periods. The first year competitions took place in fifty-minute class periods (the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule at UPRM) which seriously limited the interaction between the two teams. Student feedback led us to change the class to a Tuesday-Thursday schedule to allow 80 minutes for the debates. This facilitated interaction between the debating student teams, between students and the faculty judges, and even allowed students not participating in the debate to carry out a shadow scoring and to ask the debating teams questions. 3. The most important change we have made is to focus the cases and the debate on ethical issues that arise in engineering practice in Puerto Rico. In this way, the Ethics Bowl has been changed into a vehicle for teaching ethics in the classroom. The assigned cases cover issues like safety, conflict of interest, and confidentiality. To further contextualize the activity, we have added cases that explore issues in Puerto Rico. Examples include 1) an electrical engineer who considers signing off on blueprints prepared by his cousin, a draftsman; 2) a Japanese engineer who refuses to work with a Puerto Rican woman engineer on a cooperative venture; and 3) a case involving the environmental and economic impact of redesigning the inkjet cartridges manufactured by a local company. This fall

3 Cruz, Frey, and Sanchez: The Ethics Bowl in Engineering Ethics 17 we are using two cases developed in an engineering ethics workshop held in the Dominican Republic. Case selection is critical because the students teach themselves engineering ethics by preparing a wide spectrum of cases for the competition. We select cases that 1) represent engineering practice in Puerto Rico, 2) cover issues traditionally raised in engineering ethics classes like safety, conflict of interest, confidentiality, public health, faithful agency, collegiality, and professionalism, and 3) are short enough to give students time to prepare several for the competition, but rich enough to raise realworld engineering ethical issues. The following table shows the cases we selected for spring These are classified in Table 1 below according to issue and source: 4 Special effort has been made to select cases to help students prepare for the ethics component of the Fundamentals in Engineering exam which allows graduates to work as engineers in training. We have also used issue identification activities to identify the ethical situations our students are most likely to encounter when they graduate. Most of these cases come from two UPRM ethics initiatives: a National Science Foundation grant that generated 50 cases in business, science, and engineering, and an ABET ethics workshops series that generated an additional 40 cases in engineering ethics. These initiatives have provided the foundation for the Ethics Bowl by providing the issues and cases around which it has been structured. They have also facilitated the Ethics Bowl by creating a community of concerned, committed, and empowered engineering faculty to serve as judges and advisors for the competition. The high quality of the faculty judges who have participated is crucial to the success of our Ethics Bowl experiment. The Ethics Across the Curriculum (EAC) activities we have held over the years have helped to build and sustain this community. 4. We have introduced new ways to follow up and learn from the competition: Each group prepares an extended written analysis of the case debated in the Ethics Bowl, taking it through a seven-step decision-making framework (Figure 1). Each group prepares a self-evaluation on the competition that identifies their goals, the obstacles they encountered, and their achievements, thus providing an assessment of the team work component.

4 18 Teaching Ethics, Spring 2004 Students individually fill out different evaluation forms to assess the competition, and thus participate in its renovation. (We provide examples of these forms in the appendix.) Table 1 Topic/ Issue UPRM Ethics Cases NSPE BER Cases Confidentiality Conflict of Interest Environmental Concerns Product Liability Safety and Health Women in Engineering Engineers as Expert Witnesses Public Criticism by an Engineer Questionable Practices in Engineering in PR Signing off on documents prepared by others Performing within area of competence Expert Witness Case Inkjet Cartridge Case Inkjet Cartridge Case Pacemaker Case Pacemaker Case Japanese Engineer Case Expert Witness Case Japanese Engineer Case Pacemaker Case Inserting Change Orders Case Expert Witness Case Peer Review/Confidentiality Agreements 96-8 Participation in Protest Action as Part of a Political Campaign 84-6 Objectivity of Engineer Retained as Expert 85-4 Public Welfare Hazardous Waste 92-6 Signing of Drawings by Engineer in Industry 88-5 Public Welfare Hazardous Waste 92-6 Objectivity of Engineer Retained as Expert, 85-4 Participation in Protest Action as Part of a Political Campaign 84-6 Blueprints Case Use of CADD System 90-6 Certification of Work Performed by Technician 91-8 Blueprints Case Use of CADD System 90-6 Certification of Work Performed by Tech. 91-8

5 Cruz, Frey, and Sanchez: The Ethics Bowl in Engineering Ethics 19 Figure 1 Seven-Step Decision-Making Framework 1. Identify the ethically relevant facts 2. Identify the stakeholders and their stakes 3. Identify the problem(s) in this case 4. Brainstorm several solutions to this problem 5. Evaluate and rank these solutions using three ethics tests (reversibility, harm/beneficence, and publicity) and a feasibility test 6. Make a decision and develop a Plan B 7. Implement your decision Source: based on Davis (1999), pp For students to benefit fully from the in-class competition, they need considerable preparation. The Ethics Bowl has become the capstone experience of our Engineering Ethics courses which can be divided into three phases: a pre-ethics Bowl phase where students go through preparatory activities, the competition itself which consists of six debates held in two rounds (one for the UPRM decision making cases, the other for the NSPE BER cases), and a post-ethics Bowl debriefing period. To prepare for the competition, we take the students through a series of activities. Four bear special mentioning: 1. Engineering Ethics Pre-Test. The goal of this activity is to promote ethical awareness and to introduce the three ethics tests designed to help students integrate ethical considerations into the deliberative process (Figure 2). Without prior preparation students discuss short scenarios in engineering and answer two questions: (1) Is this a common or realistic scenario? (2) Does it raise an ethical issue? After the initial discussion the three tests are presented and the scenarios are revisited. We have reported in detail on this activity elsewhere (Cruz and Frey 2003). 2. Gray Matters in Engineering. Working with the Lockheed Martin game 5 as a model, we have developed an activity where engineering students practice integrating ethical considerations into decisionmaking. They work with scenarios that are interrupted at the decision point. Several different alternatives follow each scenario. Students choose the best and the worst of these (or design one of their

6 20 Teaching Ethics, Spring 2004 own), and then use the three ethics tests introduced in the Pre-test to justify their choices. This activity is also described in more detail in (Cruz and Frey 2003). Figure 2 The Three Ethics Tests As a part of the Pre-test activity, we introduce participants to three ethics tests: Reversibility: Would I think this a good choice if I were among those affected by it? Publicity: Would I mind if this choice is published in the newspaper? Harm: Does this action cause harm? Does it do less harm than the alternatives? These three tests partially encapsulate three important ethical theories: The reversibility test partially encapsulates deontology in that it employs the notion of respect that is important for establishing duties and rights. The publicity test, when focused on publicly associating the agent with the action in question, embodies parts of virtue ethics. The harm test partially encapsulates utilitarianism by prompting a quick inventory of the likely consequences and sorting them into harms and benefits. Source: based on Davis (1999), pp Group Position Papers on Ethics Bowl Cases. Students write out short summaries of the fifteen cases that comprise the competition case pool. For the UPRM decision-making cases, they reach a group consensus on how to resolve the case along with an ethical and feasibility justification of the decision. For the NSPE BER cases, they develop arguments in favor of and against the BER decision. They are required to go beyond the code-based arguments and bring in the ethics tests mentioned above. 4. Practice Ethics Bowl Match. Before the formal competition, we usually hold a practice Ethics Bowl match to help the students envision the rules and procedures. Student representatives from each of the class groups form temporary teams for the practice match. We frequently interrupt the competition to underscore logistical or procedural points just-in-time. Usually we don t score the preliminary

7 Cruz, Frey, and Sanchez: The Ethics Bowl in Engineering Ethics 21 competition but mention the aspects of the debate that would be factors in scoring. We ask the students not participating in the debate to ask questions and comment on the process. One semester the practice match was not held because of unusual time constraints. The Ethics Bowl competition that semester was not as good as in previous semesters. We attribute this largely to the absence of the practice match. In the past it has provided students with a concrete idea of the competition around which to focus their preparatory activities. Without it, the students were not able to prepare as effectively. We cannot over emphasize how important it is to prepare students for the competition. An interesting, unplanned experience shows this clearly. A group of students taking a bioethics course desired to have an Ethics Bowl competition and proceeded to carry it out without the preparatory activities discussed above. Although at UPRM, if we may judge by entrance scores, biology and engineering students have roughly the same basic skills and proficiencies, the debate was not nearly as organized and insightful as the typical Ethics Bowl debates that take place in engineering ethics classes. Our conclusion is that the competition requires skills that are picked up through the activities we use to prepare students for the debate and through their own group-based planning. Integrating ethical considerations into the Ethics Bowl competition requires practiced communication and critical thinking skills. We also believe it requires carefully honed skills in moral imagination. All of these are emphasized in our Engineering Ethics course. ETHICS BOWL SURPRISES Integrating the Ethics Bowl into Engineering Ethics classes has produced several, unexpected benefits. We call these Ethics Bowl Surprises. In the first round of a competition held one semester, a team fared poorly because they failed to integrate ethical considerations into their presentations and arguments. Each team member had demonstrated the ability to integrate ethical considerations into decision-making in the context of an essay exam. However, when confronted with the challenges of a public debate, including the counter-arguments presented by the opposing team and difficult questions from the judges, they reverted to clichés and ethical relativism. They had difficulties reaching consensus as a group on how to respond to these challenges during the competition.

8 22 Teaching Ethics, Spring 2004 In fact, in the deliberation time allowed between debate responses, they bifurcated into two, contrasting sub-groups. Since they argued much as they would have before the course, we dubbed this default ethics. In the second debate, the same students showed a dramatic improvement. Not only did they effectively integrate ethical considerations into their arguments, but they made better arguments and worked more effectively as a team. We believe that their participation in the first Ethics Bowl competition contributed to this improvement by providing them with detailed feedback on what they had learned (and what they had not learned). In the first debate the opposing team and the judges had exposed the weak points in their presentation. After the match, the students talked further with the judges and the other team to get more feedback. Putting all of this together, they were able to convert their passive knowledge of ethical considerations into an active knowledge that they demonstrated in the second competition. Other students have confirmed this by commenting that the challenge of defending their arguments against other teams and judges has forced them to come up with better and more profound insights. The Ethics Bowl presented another surprise benefit when one of the authors of this paper recently gave an ethics seminar for a senior mechanical engineering design class. The lecturer divided the class into groups of four and five. He then assigned each group a decision-making scenario. Following the scenario were several alternatives that purported to solve the problem raised in the scenario. The students were asked to identify the best and worst of these alternatives, and to justify their choices in terms of three ethics tests (reversibility, harm/beneficence, and publicity). In short, the students were asked to carry out a simplified version of the Gray Matters activity described above. Interspersed throughout the mechanical engineering class were five Ethics Bowl veterans, i.e., students who had taken Engineering Ethics in the past and had participated in the Ethics Bowl. What happened was as amazing as it was unplanned. Each Ethics Bowl veteran spontaneously took a leadership role in his or her group. These groups then went well beyond the original task. Some devised elaborate ways of identifying and resolving conflicts between the different ethics tests. Others prepared tables to compare and evaluate the different solution alternatives. One group debated whether it was worse, from the standpoint of the publicity test, to capitulate to wrongdoing or withdraw from it. In other words, the Ethics Bowl veterans took on the role of ethics mentor to their classmates. This mentoring, in turn, proved most effective in conveying to the ethics rookies (those

9 Cruz, Frey, and Sanchez: The Ethics Bowl in Engineering Ethics 23 students who had not taken ethics) the essentials of ethical decision-making. In over ten years of giving this seminar to mechanical engineering students, the lecturer can testify that this was the most successful seminar. Its success can be directly attributed to the active role played by Ethics Bowl veterans who became ethics mentors to their classmates. The preliminary conclusions we have drawn from these anecdotes need to be supplemented with more study and assessment. But they hold forth the possibility that the Ethics Bowl can accomplish impressive results when carefully integrated into the practical and professional ethics class. BENEFITS FOR STUDENTS The Ethics Bowl, with the modifications we have initiated at UPRM, can bring about substantial and measurable improvements in engineering students through the following: 1. by providing engineering students with the opportunity to practice decision-making in real world situations and to get immediate and helpful feedback on these efforts. 2. by providing opportunities for students to exercise and develop the different skills associated with moral imagination. 3. by giving students an opportunity to learn and practice integrating ethical theory into decision-making contexts. Moreover the Ethics Bowl promises to improve other areas that are important to engineering education (as is evidenced in criteria 3a-k in Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology EC 2000): 1. The Ethics Bowl helps students to develop better communication skills. Students formulate arguments under pressure, give improvised presentations, answer questions on the spot, and learn to express ideas clearly to an interdisciplinary audience. 2. Because students prepare and compete in teams, the Ethics Bowl provides an opportunity to learn to function effectively in interdisciplinary work teams. Students practice taking responsibility as well as resolving disagreements through effective group communication practices. They develop a practical understanding of justice by working in groups, learning how to distribute work loads equitably, shar-

10 24 Teaching Ethics, Spring 2004 ing credit for group successes, and collectively accepting responsibility for group failures. 3. Students develop a critical understanding of how to use engineering codes of ethics by studying NSPE BER cases, discussions, and decisions. FACULTY BENEFITS The Ethics Bowl also plays a role in faculty development. Faculty members participate as judges on interdisciplinary teams. This promotes interaction and exchange between faculty from different disciplines. Judges also judge, that is, evaluate and score the students in terms of certain criteria. Listening to the Ethics Bowl debates, understanding the students arguments, and applying the scoring criteria give faculty experience and insight into criteria-based grading. This is significant, because in our workshops with engineering faculty, one of the biggest obstacles they raise to introducing ethics into their classes is their uncomfortableness with what they see as the subjectivity of ethics. How can they grade student responses to ethics cases? Isn t it just a matter of their opinion vs. those of their students? The Ethics Bowl overcomes this problem by allowing engineering faculty to practice and appreciate criteria-based evaluation. The competition also keeps past participants of the various EAC workshops active in engineering ethics education. They have an opportunity to update their ethics skills and knowledge. It builds their confidence in discussing ethical issues. They integrate current ethical and professional issues. The Ethics Bowl reinforces faculty commitment because they see in action the cases that they or their colleagues have authored. Faculty members enjoy and are impressed by the quality of the debates carried out by their students. ETHICS BOWL CHALLENGES The assessment data we report in the Appendix shows that students have found the Ethics Bowl to be a positive, learning experience. But in looking at this data and incorporating the informal responses our students have contributed, we have identified several challenges. The following four should be considered by those thinking of incorporating this competition into their classes.

11 Cruz, Frey, and Sanchez: The Ethics Bowl in Engineering Ethics 25 First, the Ethics Bowl takes considerable class time to carry out. The competition requires three weeks or six classes on the Tuesday/Thursday schedule at UPRM where classes last 90 minutes. This gives the instructor less time to cover material using more traditional methods such as lecturing. We feel that this tradeoff is more than justified. Students compensate for the lost time by teaching the material to themselves as they prepare for the competition in small groups. The key here is careful case selection. Cases should cover the spectrum of issues typically raised in Engineering Ethics. Furthermore, instructors and judges need to be sensitive to gaps that arise in student preparation and to highlight these through questions and feedback during and after the competition. Our implementation of the Ethics Bowl places a great deal of trust in cooperative learning strategies and just-in-time feedback. But there is good evidence that this trust is justified. (Herkert 2000). Second, the Ethics Bowl needs to be supported by continual efforts at issue identification and case generation. We have found two ways of responding to this. First, the students themselves have provided several new cases and have offered insightful suggestions for revising old ones. This has worked so well that we are considering developing a new course where students who are Ethics Bowl veterans will develop new cases for the following semester s competition. A second response lies in the continuing series of faculty development workshops in ethics we have held at UPRM over the last three years. In these workshops, business, science, and engineering faculty present their ethics integration projects and the results of their efforts to integrate these exercises into their classes. During these workshops they also develop new integration projects and ethics cases. For example, 40 new cases in ethics were developed in workshops held from 2001 through Workshops held in generated an additional 20 cases. Each Ethics Bowl competition requires a pool of 15 cases. Changing the cases, responding to new issues, and integrating new cases poses a considerable challenge. Third, identifying and maintaining a pool of committed and qualified judges remains a daunting challenge. While our faculty development workshops have played an effective role in recruiting and training faculty judges, busy schedules have made it difficult to enlist judges in certain semesters at particular times. Last minute cancellations make it necessary to have an alternate plan. Fourth, students have raised the issue of judge consistency, especially in close competitions or in competitions where the judges have reached split decisions. Some students object to being judged by engi-

12 26 Teaching Ethics, Spring 2004 neers outside their particular area of study. Others are uncomfortable making arguments before judges from areas outside of engineering, say from humanities or business. In response, we don t find this to be a problem since these audiences are representative of the perspectives that students will face when they graduate. But it is important to recognize that some mentoring will be necessary here. Students need to be reminded that they will most likely be working in interdisciplinary groups and need to practice making arguments to this audience. CONCLUSION In summary, we believe that the Ethics Bowl can produce significant and measurable improvement in students moral judgment and behavior, help develop their communication skills, and make them adept at functioning in work teams. It can empower participants to become ethics mentors. We also believe that it provides a useful and fun way of learning Engineering Ethics. Finally, it gives engineering faculty a chance to develop their ethical understanding and to work with criteria-based evaluation. It does present challenges in that it takes up a large amount of class time, requires a continuous supply of up to date cases, and calls for recruiting qualified and committed judges. But the benefits we have mentioned clearly outweigh the challenges. Moreover, we have uncovered promising responses to these challenges. Because of this, we feel that our effort at integrating the Ethics Bowl into the Engineering Ethics class has been successful. José A. Cruz is Associate Professor in the College of Business Administration at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. William J. Frey and Halley D. Sanchez are Professors in the Humanities Department at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. All three are members of UPRM s Center for Ethics in the Professions. NOTES 1 Based on a presentation at the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Association for Practical & Professional Ethics, February 26-29, 2004, in Cincinnati, Ohio. 2 See for example:

13 Cruz, Frey, and Sanchez: The Ethics Bowl in Engineering Ethics 27 or 3 This paper is based on the following report submitted as part of the IIT Ethics Across the Curriculum Summer Workshop: Report on Ethics Integration Projects Fall 2003 & Spring 2003, post_workshop/finalreport_josecruz.pdf (March 7, 2004). 4 UPRM Ethics Cases are taken from National Science Foundation grant SBR Other UPRM cases come from 2 UPR Central Administration Grants and UPRM Engineering Ethics workshops. The National Society of Professional Engineers Board of Ethical Review cases have been taken from Harris, Pritchard & Rabins, Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases (Book and CD- ROM). Two other cases used in competitions come from a website devoted to computer ethics developed by Chuck Huff of St. Olaf College, funded by the National Science Foundation DUE and DUE The Boeing Ethics Challenge illustrates a similar activity. It can be viewed online at: REFERENCES Cruz, J. A., Frey, W. J. An Effective Strategy for Integrating Ethics across the Curriculum in Engineering: An ABET 2000 Challenge, Science and Engineering Ethics, October 2003, 9(4): Davis, M., Ethics and the University, Routledge, London and New York, Harris, Charles E. Jr., Rabins, Michael J. & Pritchard, Michael S., Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases, Wadsworth/Thompson Learning: Belmont, CA, Herkert, Joseph, Collaborative Learning in Engineering Ethics, Science and Engineering Ethics, March 2000, 3(4): pp Ladenson, Robert F., The Educational Significance of the Ethics Bowl. Teaching Ethics 1(1) March 2001, pp Marrero-Soto, Deliz M. (ed.) Crees que sea necesario implantar cursos de ética como requisito en los currículos de la universidad pública?, Dialogo, November 2002.

14 28 Teaching Ethics, Spring 2004 APPENDIX Assessment Results and Evaluation Forms UPRM Ethics Bowl Evaluation Summary: Fall 2002 to Spring 2004 I found the cases used in this semester s Ethics Bowl interesting. The cases used in this semester's Ethics Bowl are representative of situations that occur in the real world. These cases made me more aware of the ethical issues that arise in engineering. This exercise gave me an opportunity to practice the four ethics tests presented in class. (Reversibility, harm, publicity, and code) This exercise helped me to learn better these four tests. Fall 2002 S131 Fall 2002 S121 Fall 2002 S101 Spring 2003 S131 Spring 2003 S081 Fall 2003 S136 Spring 2004 S136 AVG % 93.8% 93.8% 92.7% 91.1% 90.0% 93.6% 89.5% 92.1% 93.8% 93.8% 94.5% 93.3% 95.6% 100.0% 88.4% 94.2% 92.5% 96.3% 96.4% 94.4% 94.1% 98.2% 92.6% 94.9% 96.3% 98.8% 92.7% 95.6% 96.7% 100.0% 97.9% 96.8% It was helpful to prepare the summaries of the 12 cases assigned for the Ethics Bowl with my Ethics Bowl team. We discussed the case summaries in our Ethics Bowl team either in class, outside of class, or both. I learned about engineering ethics by discussing the Ethics Bowl cases with my team. Through the Ethics Bowl, I learned more about the engineer's responsibilities to the public. Through the Ethics Bowl, I learned more about the engineer's responsibilities to the client. Overall, I think this was a good exercise. Number of Evaluation forms submitted = 96.3% 97.5% 92.7% 94.4% 94.4% 95.5% 93.7% 94.9% 88.8% 88.8% 93.6% 90.0% 88.9% 94.5% 90.5% 90.7% 93.8% 97.5% 94.5% 91.1% 93.3% 94.5% 93.7% 94.1% 91.3% 95.0% 92.7% 88.9% 91.1% 92.7% 94.7% 92.3% 95.0% 96.3% 94.5% 92.2% 95.6% 95.5% 92.6% 94.5% 95.0% 95.0% 95.5% 94.1% 94.4% 91.8% 94.7% 94.4% 96.3% 100.0% 97.3% 96.7% 94.4% 100.0% 93.7% 96.9%

15 Cruz, Frey, and Sanchez: The Ethics Bowl in Engineering Ethics 29 Ethics Bowl Module Evaluation Form Directions: You have just completed an exercise designed to show how ethics is a part of and can be integrated into the activity of engineering. We would like your input on how effective you found this exercise. Assess these different topics using the following scale: 1 Strongly Disagree 2 Disagree 3 Neither agree nor disagree 4 Agree 5 Strongly Agree I found the cases used in this semester s Ethics Bowl interesting. The cases used in this semester s Ethics Bowl are representative of situations that occur in the real world. These cases made me more aware of the ethical issues that arise in engineering. This exercise gave me an opportunity to practice the four ethics tests presented in class. (Reversibility, harm, publicity, and code) This exercise helped me to learn better these four tests. It was helpful to prepare the summaries of the 12 cases assigned for the Ethics Bowl with my Ethics Bowl team. We discussed the case summaries in our Ethics Bowl team either in class, outside of class, or both. I learned about engineering ethics by discussing the Ethics Bowl cases with my team. Through the Ethics Bowl, I learned more about the engineer s responsibilities to the public. Through the Ethics Bowl, I learned more about the engineer s responsibilities to the client. Overall, I think this was a good exercise

16 30 Teaching Ethics, Spring 2004 Ethics Bowl Experience Evaluation (see complete form below) Fall 2002 S131 Fall 2002 S121 Fall 2002 S101 Spring 2003 S131 Spring 2003 S081 Spring 2004 S Has preparing the Ethics Bowl helped you to develop the YES ability to function on multidisciplinary teams? NO Did the Ethics Bowl help you to develop your ability to YES identify, formulate and solve engineering ethics problems? NO Did the Ethics Bowl better your understanding of YES professional and ethical responsibility? NO Did the Ethics Bowl help you to develop your ability to YES communicate? NO Number of Evaluation forms submitted = Student Comments: Comments from Q#6 when Q#5 was answered NO (see form below) I already consider my responsibilities * Comments from Q#8 when Q#7 was answered NO (see form below) Having smaller groups I have no idea Should be a requisite that everyone talks I really never had a problem communicating my ideas Although I was communicative in my group, speaking at least once during the Ethics Bowl was not required, nevertheless, I participated but, it could be a requirement for all members of the group* Had example of situation before the bowl ** Blank - No Comment Legend: text in quotes non-edited text * - translated by authors ** - edited by authors for clarity

17 Cruz, Frey, and Sanchez: The Ethics Bowl in Engineering Ethics 31 Ethics Bowl Experience Assessment Form [based on the evaluation form described in Davis (1999), pp ] Please answer the following questions: 1. Has preparing the Ethics Bowl helped you to develop the ability to function on multidisciplinary teams? Yes No 2. If you answered No, how could it be changed to help in this matter? If you answered Yes, how did the Ethics Bowl help? 3. Did the Ethics Bowl help you to develop your ability to identify, formulate and solve engineering ethics problems? Yes No 4. If you answered No, how could it be modified to help? If you answered Yes, how did it help? 5. Did the Ethics Bowl better your understanding of professional and ethical responsibility? Yes No 6. If you answered No, how could it be modified to help? If you answered Yes, how did it help? 7. Did the Ethics Bowl help you to develop your ability to communicate? Yes No 8. If you answered No, how could it be modified to help? If you answered, Yes, how did it help you?

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