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1. Board 72: Why Engineering Ethics? How Do Educators and Administrators Justify Teaching Engineering Ethics?

   Fatehiboroujeni, S. ( January 2019 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This work-in-progress paper presents preliminary findings on how teaching engineering ethics is justified by academic administrators and policymakers, drawing from data collected in a multi-institution collaborative project called “The Distributed System of Governance in Engineering Education”. The project seeks to understand the practice of engineering education reform using data collected from a larger number of oral interviews at a variety of academic institutions and other organizations in engineering education. Investigations of effective strategies for the ethical development of engineering students have been pursued extensively in engineering education research. Canvassing this literature reveals not only diverse approaches and conceptions of engineering ethics, but also a diverse set of rationales and contexts for justifying the development and implementation of engineering ethics coursework and programs. It is also evident that the students’ ethical development is shaped by how the subject is delivered, e.g., the use of case studies or “best practices”, as well as the underlying reasons given to them about why ethics is taught. Institutions send signals to their students, even without intending to, about the importance of engineering ethics to their professional identity through their choice in how and why they address this matter. Our initial analysis of interview data from over a hundred subjects from more than twenty universities demonstrates the diverse ways in which ethics education is justified. The most common reason offered are satisfying ABET accreditation requirements and complying with the recommendations of a disciplinary professional association (e.g., ASME or ASCE). Resistance to notions such as professional judgment, and the absence of any substantial reference to engineering ethics in general conversations about educational decision making and governance are other initial findings from our work. 

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2. Why Engineering Ethics? How Do Educators and Administrators Justify Teaching Engineering Ethics?

   Fatehiboroujeni, S. ; Akera, A. ; Riley, D. ; Cheville, A. ; Karlin, J. ; Appelhans, S. ; De Pree, T. ( January 2019 , ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   This work-in-progress paper presents preliminary findings on how teaching engineering ethics is justified by academic administrators and policymakers, drawing from data collected in a multi-institution collaborative project called “The Distributed System of Governance in Engineering Education”. The project seeks to understand the practice of engineering education reform using data collected from a larger number of oral interviews at a variety of academic institutions and other organizations in engineering education. Investigations of effective strategies for the ethical development of engineering students have been pursued extensively in engineering education research. Canvassing this literature reveals not only diverse approaches and conceptions of engineering ethics, but also a diverse set of rationales and contexts for justifying the development and implementation of engineering ethics coursework and programs. It is also evident that the students’ ethical development is shaped by how the subject is delivered, e.g., the use of case studies or “best practices”, as well as the underlying reasons given to them about why ethics is taught. Institutions send signals to their students, even without intending to, about the importance of engineering ethics to their professional identity through their choice in how and why they address this matter. Our initial analysis of interview data from over a hundred subjects from more than twenty universities demonstrates the diverse ways in which ethics education is justified. The most common reason offered are satisfying ABET accreditation requirements and complying with the recommendations of a disciplinary professional association (e.g., ASME or ASCE). Resistance to notions such as professional judgment, and the absence of any substantial reference to engineering ethics in general conversations about educational decision making and governance are other initial findings from our work. 

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3. Upskilling to Meet Cloud Talent Needs

   Meyer, Lawrence E. ; Billionniere, E. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Miami Dade College, based on demands in the workforce, has focused on creating emerging technology education, particularly Cloud technology. Business Cloud migration has accelerated over the last several years, and companies around the world are investing in their future with the cloud. With the increased demand for cloud-skilled professionals the last four years, we launched a cloud literacy initiative to meet cloud talent needs. This initiative aims to provide our students in the computing/IT fields with the knowledge, abilities and skills needed to accelerate their cloud-related learning. With the support of NSF ATE, we collaborated with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create a new pathway for the next generation of cloud computing professionals. The course sequence was designed in conjunction with an AWS Educate team assisting in the design of course sequencing and degree plans to leverage their educational experience in teaching cloud technologies. The core curriculum designed for the cloud literacy initiative leveraged an existing pathway for an associate degree in networking technology, and then partially pulled classes from the design of the bachelor’s in information systems technology degree. The classes identified, used current offerings across our programs and included a focus on the supporting infrastructure of cloud systems: Databases, Linux OS, and Networking. With these three foundational classes that were cloudified, three cloud-focused courses based on industry certifications were developed: Cloud Essentials for AWS Cloud Practitioner and Cloud Infrastructure and Services for AWS Solutions Architect certifications with a capstone class completing the academic pathway. This new curriculum includes pedagogical changes to utilize project-based learning by incorporating resources and learning from multiple sources to best mimic real-world application, data, and design attributes. In addition to the associate degree, a college credit certificate in cloud computing was created to strengthen (re-)entering students in the workforce and dual enrollment students with credentials and employability skills by using high impact educational practices. Our cloud curriculum incorporates project-based learning approach, a real-world experience using the cloud technology. This poster shares strategies and pedagogical tools for teaching a cloud-focused curriculum for broader impact and student success. 

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4. Privacy Research with Marginalized Groups: What We Know, What's Needed, and What's Next

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3555556  

   Sannon, Shruti ; Forte, Andrea ( November 2022 , Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction)

   People who are marginalized experience disproportionate harms when their privacy is violated. Meeting their needs is vital for developing equitable and privacy-protective technologies. In response, research at the intersection of privacy and marginalization has acquired newfound urgency in the HCI and social computing community. In this literature review, we set out to understand how researchers have investigated this area of study. What topics have been examined, and how? What are the key findings and recommendations? And, crucially, where do we go from here? Based on a review of papers on privacy and marginalization published between 2010-2020 across HCI, Communication, and Privacy-focused venues, we make three main contributions: (1) we identify key themes in existing work and introduce the Privacy Responses and Costs framework to describe the tensions around protecting privacy in marginalized contexts, (2) we identify understudied research topics (e.g., race) and other avenues for future work, and (3) we characterize trends in research practices, including the under-reporting of important methodological choices, and provide suggestions to establish shared best practices for this growing research area.

    

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5. Using a Critical Incident-centered Transition Theory Framework to Explore Engineering Education Research Faculty Transitions

   Strong, A. C. ; Smith-Orr, C. S. ; Bodnar, C. A. ; Lee, W. C. ; Faber, C. J. ; McCave, E. J. ( June 2018 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This research paper describes the development of a critical incident-centered analysis methodology based on Schlossberg’s Transition Theory to explore transitions experienced by engineering education researchers as they begin new faculty positions. Understanding the transition experiences of scholars aiming to impact change within engineering education is important for identifying approaches to support the sustained success of these scholars at their institutions and within engineering education more broadly. To date, efforts to better prepare future faculty for academic roles have primarily focused on preparing them to be independent researchers, to teach undergraduate courses, and to support their ability to advance their career. Research of early career faculty is similarly limited in scope, focusing mostly on new faculty at research-exclusive universities or on faculty member’s teaching and research practices. To address this gap in the literature, our research team is examining the role of institutional context on the agency of early career engineering education faculty as it relates to facilitating change. As part of this larger project, the focus of this paper is on the integration of critical incident techniques and Schlossberg’s Transition Theory to create “incident timelines” that explore the transition of early career engineering education researchers into new faculty positions. Our paper will illustrate how this integration provided an effective methodology to: 1) explore a diverse set of transitions into faculty positions, 2) identify critical events that impact these transitions, 3) isolate strategies that supported the faculty members in different aspects of their transitions, and 4) examine connections between events and strategies over time and across faculty members’ transitions. Transition Theory provides a lens to explore how individuals identify and adapt based on transitions in their lives. An individual’s transition, according to Schlossberg, tends to include three phases: moving in, moving through, and moving out. Over the course of those phases, the individual’s experiences are influenced by the context of the transition, the characteristics of the individual such as their motivations and beliefs, the extent to which they have support, and the strategies they utilize. Given the complexity of a transition into a faculty position, it was necessary to determine the extent to which particular events and the relationship between events impacted a new faculty member’s experience. To accomplish this, we integrated a critical incident analysis to specifically investigate individual events that were considered significant to the overall transition leading to the development of an incident timeline. We applied our approach to monthly reflections of six new engineering faculty members from diverse institutional contexts who identify as engineering education researchers. The monthly reflections asked each participant to provide their impressions of the faculty role, in what ways they felt like a faculty member, and in what ways they did not. Through an iterative data analysis process, we developed initial incident timelines for each participant’s transition. Follow-up interviews with the participants allowed us to explore each event in more detail and provided an opportunity for reflection-on-action by the participant. These incidents were then further explored to distinguish strategies used and support received. Finally, we examined connections between events and strategies over time to identify overarching themes common to these types of faculty transitions. In this methods paper, we will demonstrate the usefulness of this variation of the critical incident approach for exploring complex professional transitions by highlighting the details of our incident timeline analysis. 

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