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1. It’s All Relative: Examining Student Ethical Decision Making in a Narrative Game-Based Ethical Intervention

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962629  

   Burkey, Daniel D. ; Cimino, Richard T. ; Young, Michael F. ; Dahm, Kevin D. ; Streiner, Scott C. ( October 2022 , 2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents a novel, narrative, game-based approach to introducing first-year engineering students to concepts in ethical decision making. Approximately 250 first-year engineering students at the University of Connecticut played through our adventure, titled Mars: An Ethical Expedition, by voting weekly as a class on a presented dilemma. Literature shows that case studies still dominate learning sciences research on engineering ethical education, and that novel, active learning-based techniques, such as games, are infrequently used but can have a positive impact on both student engagement and learning. In this work, we suggest that games are a form of situated (context-based) learning, where the game setting provides learners with an authentic but safe space in which to explore engineering ethical choices and their consequences. As games normalize learning through failure, they present a unique opportunity for students to explore ethical decision making in a non-judgmental, playful, and safe way.We explored the situated nature of ethical decision making through a qualitative deconstruction of the weekly scenarios that students engaged with over the course of the twelve-week narrative. To assess their ethical reasoning, students took the Engineering Ethics Reasoning Instrument (EERI), a quantitative engineering ethics reasoning survey, at the beginning and end of the semester. The EERI scenarios were deconstructed to reveal their core ethical dilemmas, and then common elements between the EERI and our Mars adventure were compared to determine how students responded to similar ethical dilemmas presented in each context.We noted that students' responses to the ethical decisions in the Mars adventure scenarios were sometimes substantially different both from their response to the EERI scenario as well as from other decisions they made within the context of the game, despite the core ethical dilemma being the same. This suggests that they make ethical decisions in some situations that differ from a presumed abstract understanding of post-conventional moral reasoning. This has implications for how ethical reasoning can be taught and scaffolded in educational settings. 

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2. Participatory science for coastal water quality: freshwater plume mapping and volunteer retention in a randomized informational intervention

   https://doi.org/10.1039/c9em00571d  

   Jennings, Wiley C. ; Cunniff, Sydney ; Lewis, Kate ; Deres, Hailey ; Reineman, Dan R. ; Davis, Jennifer ; Boehm, Alexandria B. ( January 2020 , Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts)

   Among the biggest threats to coastal water quality are freshwater discharges. It is difficult to predict the spatial extent of freshwater plumes at marine beaches because processes governing mass transport in the surf zone are complex. Participatory science approaches could facilitate collecting shoreline data, although volunteer sampling campaigns can be challenged by data quality and volunteer retention. The goals of this study were to (1) work with volunteers to estimate safe swimming distances at beaches that receive polluted discharges, and (2) test whether informational feedback to volunteers increased retention. Forty-six volunteers participated over 12 weeks in 2019 by collecting 1452 salinity measurements at beaches near the mouths of two Central California freshwater discharges and completing participation surveys. These measurements resulted in 145 distinct estimates of safe swimming distances ( D 90 ), spanning a range of environmental conditions during rainy and dry periods. Median D 90 s were 150 and 100 m at San Pedro Creek south and north, and 490 and 330 m at San Lorenzo River west and east, respectively. D 90 was significantly associated with adjacent freshwater discharge rate at both discharges and tide level at one discharge. On average, the odds of volunteers conducting sampling decreased by 4% (95% CI: 1%, 7%) with each successive week. A randomized intervention providing repeated data feedback via email to volunteers did not affect their retention in the study. 

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3. Application of sentence-level text analysis: The role of emotion in an experimental learning intervention

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104278  

   Li, Manyu ( March 2022 , Journal of Experimental Social Psychology)
4. Autophagy in Adipocyte Browning: Emerging Drug Target for Intervention in Obesity

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2019.00022  

   Ro, Seung-Hyun ; Jang, Yura ; Bae, Jiyoung ; Kim, Isaac M. ; Schaecher, Cameron ; Shomo, Zachery D. ( January 2019 , Frontiers in Physiology)
5. Psychological affordances help explain where a self-transcendent purpose intervention improves performance.

   https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000246  

   Reeves, Stephanie L. ; Henderson, Marlone D. ; Cohen, Geoffrey L. ; Steingut, Rebecca R. ; Hirschi, Quinn ; Yeager, David S. ( July 2020 , Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)