More Like this

1. Early Career Engineers’ Views of Ethics and Social Responsibility: Study Overview

   Claussen, S.; Jesiek, B. K.; Zoltowski, C. B.; Howland, S. (July 2021, Proceedings of the 2021 American Society of Engineering Education Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Amidst growing concerns about a lack of attention to ethics in engineering education and professional practice, a variety of formal course-based interventions and informal or extracurricular programs have been created to improve the social and ethical commitments of engineering graduates. To supplement the formal and informal ethics education received as undergraduate students, engineering professionals often also participate in workplace training and professional development activities on ethics, compliance, and related topics. Despite this preparation, there is growing evidence to suggest that technical professionals are often challenged to navigate ethical situations and dilemmas. Some prior research has focused on assessing the impacts of a variety of learning experiences on students’ understandings of ethics and social responsibility, including the PIs’ prior NSF-funded CCE STEM study which followed engineering students through the four years of their undergraduate studies using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. This prior project explored how the students’ views on these topics changed across demographic groups, over time, between institutions, and due to specific interventions. Yet, there has been little longitudinal research on how these views and perceptions change (or do not change) among engineers during the school-to-work transition. Furthermore, there has been little exploration of how these views are influenced by the professional contexts in which these engineers work, including cultures and norms prevalent in different technical fields, organizations, and industry sectors. This NSF-supported Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) study responds to these gaps in the literature by asking: RQ1) How do perceptions of ethics and social responsibility change in the transition from undergraduate engineering degree programs to the workplace (or graduate studies), and how are these perceptions shaped or influenced?, and RQ2) How do perceptions of ethics and social responsibility vary depending on a given individual’s engineering discipline/background and current professional setting? This paper gives an overview of the research project, describing in particular the longitudinal, mixed-methods study design which will involve collecting and analyzing data from a large sample of early career engineers. More specifically, we will present the proposed study contexts, timeline, target subject populations, and procedures for quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. We will also describe how this study leverages our prior project, thereby allowing unique longitudinal comparisons that span participants’ years as an engineering undergraduate student to their time as an early-career professional. Through this project, we aim to better understand how early career engineers’ perceptions of social and ethical responsibility are shaped by their prior experiences and current professional contexts. This paper will likely be of particular interest to scholars who teach or research engineering ethics, social responsibility, and professional practice. 

   more » « less
2. Social responsibility views in science and engineering: An exploratory study among engineering undergraduate researchers

   Fernandez, K.; Rivera-Jimenez, SM. (July 2023, American Society for Engineering Education, 2023)

   In 2017, the report Undergraduate Research Experiences for STEM Students from the National Academy of Science and Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) invited research programs to develop experiences that extend from disciplinary knowledge and skills education. This call to action asks to include social responsibility learning goals in ethical development, cultural issues in research, and the promotion of inclusive learning environments. Moreover, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) all agree that social responsibility is a significant component of an engineer’s professional formation and must be a guiding force in their education. Social Responsibility involves the ethical obligation engineers have to society and the environment, including responsible conduct research (RCR), ethical decision-making, human safety, sustainability, pro bono work, social justice, and diversity. For this work, we explored the views of Social Responsibility in engineering students that could provide insight into developing formal and informal educational activities for future summer programs. In this exploratory multi-methods study, we investigated the following research question: What views of social responsibility are important for engineering students conducting scientific in an NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)? The REU Site selected for this study was a college of engineering located at a major, public, comprehensive, land-grant research university. The Views of Social Responsibility of Scientists and Engineers (VSRoSE) was used to guide our research design. This validated instrument considers the following major social responsibility elements: 1) Consideration of societal consequences, 2) Protection of human welfare and safety, 3) Promotion of environmental sustainability, 4) Efforts to minimize risks, 5) Communication with the public, and 6) Service and Community engagement. Data collection was conducted at the end of their 10-week-long experience in Summer 2022 using Qualtrics. REU students were invited to complete an IRB-approved questionnaire, including collecting demographic data, the VSRoSE-validated survey, and open-ended questions. Open-ended questions were used to explore what experiences have influenced positive student views of social responsibility and provide rich information beyond the six elements of the VSRoSE instrument. The quantitative data from the VSRoSE is analyzed using SPSS. The qualitative data is analyzed by the research team using an inductive coding approach. In this coding process, the researchers derive codes from the data allowing the narrative or theory to emerge from the raw data itself, which is great for exploratory research. The results from this exploratory study will help to strategically initiate a formal and informal research education curriculum at the selected university. In addition, the results may serve as a way for REU administrators and faculty to create metrics of impact on their research activities regarding social responsibility. Finally, this work intends to provoke the ethics and research community to have a deeper conversation about the needs and strategies to educate this unique population of students. 

   more » « less
3. Assessing Awareness and Competency of Engineering Freshmen on Ethical and Responsible Research and Practices

   Johnson, M.D. (January 2023, American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference)

   This paper presents the progress made in the first year of a five-year NSF ER2 (Ethical and Responsible Research)-funded project on ethical and responsible research and practices in science and engineering undertaken at a large public university in the southwestern United States. The objective of this research is to improve instructor training, interventions, and student outcomes in high schools and universities to improve awareness and commitment to ethical practices in STEM coursework. The paper will describe the progress made in several components of the grant: i) Preliminary analysis of measures of ethical knowledge, reasoning skills, attitudes, and practices of several hundred undergraduate freshmen and seniors, correlated with demographic data, based on data captured in the first year of the grant; ii) Progress made in the development of the concept of “ethical self-efficacy” and an instrument to measure it for freshmen and senior engineering students, and in assessing how it relates to ethical competency and student background; iii) Implications of these analyses in the construction of a three-week professional development program that guides high school STEM teachers through the development of learning modules on ethical issues related to their courses; iv) The assessment of the undergraduate engineering curriculum in two majors to determine appropriate courses for ethics interventions to help students understand how technical activities fit within broader social, economic, and environmental contexts; the construction of these interventions; and the development of measures to track their success; and, v) Initial steps toward measuring impact of other experiences (e.g., undergraduate research, internships, service learning) and courses (e.g., humanities, social science, and business courses) on development of ethical practices, on assessments taken in senior engineering capstone courses. 

   more » « less
4. Left on their Own: Confronting Absences of AI Ethics Training among Engineering Master’s Students

   Goldenkoff, Elana; Cech, Erin A (June 2024, American Society for Engineering Education)

   Although development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies has been underway for decades, the acceleration of AI capabilities and rapid expansion of user access in the past few years has elicited public excitement as well as alarm. Leaders in government and academia, as well as members of the public, are recognizing the critical need for the ethical production and management of AI. As a result, society is placing immense trust in engineering undergraduate and graduate programs to train future developers of AI in their ethical and public welfare responsibilities. In this paper, we investigate whether engineering master’s students believe they receive the training they need from their educational curricula to negotiate this complex ethical landscape. The goal of the broader project is to understand how engineering students become public welfare “watchdogs”; i.e., how they learn to recognize and respond to their public welfare responsibilities. As part of this project, we conducted in-depth interviews with 62 electrical and computer engineering master’s students at a large public university about their educational experiences and understanding of engineers’ professional responsibilities, including those related specifically to AI technologies. This paper asks, (1) do engineering master’s students see potential dangers of AI related to how the technologies are developed, used, or possibly misused? (2) Do they feel equipped to handle the challenges of these technologies and respond ethically when faced with difficult situations? (3) Do they hold their engineering educators accountable for training them in ethical concerns around AI? We find that although some engineering master’s students see exciting possibilities of AI, most are deeply concerned about the ethical and public welfare issues that accompany its advancement and deployment. While some students feel equipped to handle these challenges, the majority feel unprepared to manage these complex situations in their professional work. Additionally, students reported that the ethical development and application of technologies like AI is often not included in curricula or are viewed as “soft skills” that are not as important as “technical” knowledge. Although some students we interviewed shared the sense of apathy toward these topics that they see from their engineering program, most were eager to receive more training in AI ethics. These results underscore the pressing need for engineering education programs, including graduate programs, to integrate comprehensive ethics, public responsibility, and whistleblower training within their curricula to ensure that the engineers of tomorrow are well-equipped to address the novel ethical dilemmas of AI that are likely to arise in the coming years. 

   more » « less
5. Expanding the Boundaries of Ethical Reasoning and Professional Responsibility in Engineering Education Through Critical Narratives

   Brown, Jeff; Long, Leroy; Rohrbacher, Chad; Mitchell, Taylor (August 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   The basic tenets of professional responsibility in engineering require a commitment to ideals that elevate the public health, safety, and welfare of communities while also acknowledging the complex interactions between social, environmental, and economic factors. To fulfill these tenets, engineering curriculum can enhance students’ critical thinking through the inclusion of critical narratives. Critical narratives are structured, place-based stories intended to foster connections between the audience, specific cultures, and communities. For this pilot study, seniors in capstone design courses answered questions about three critical narratives, responded to peers’ answers, and reflected on this process. Researchers sought to increase students’ critical thinking skills and their understanding of ethics and professional responsibility. This paper describes only the qualitative results from a larger quasi-experimental mixed-methods study aimed at evaluating the impacts of student engagement with critical narratives. During each stage of coding, researchers used memos to document their thinking and rationale for coding items in particular ways and calibrated to ensure that codes were validated. From these codes, the following generalized themes were identified: Critical Thinking Transference, Ethical Responsibilities, Contextualizes Professional Responsibility, and Interaction Matters. Preliminary findings suggest that engagement with critical narratives does help some students make connections between their profession and the broader impacts of engineering work. For example, the critical narratives encourage students to engage in metacognition, apply and synthesize information, practice dynamic learning, identify clear aspects of professional ethics, and see “grey” areas of ethical or moral dilemmas. Prompts to the critical narratives also encouraged students to weigh influence, potential harm, and passion in relation to their ethical responsibility as an engineer. Some students even provided unsolicited declarations of appreciation for the critical narrative intervention. Lastly, interaction with peers concerning the critical narratives encouraged meaningful dialogue about ethical dilemmas that some students might not otherwise engage in throughout the capstone design sequence. 

   more » « less