Search for: All records

This study aims to investigate the impact of exposure to critical narratives on students' abilities to recognize ethical dilemmas and broader impacts in engineering work. Critical narratives are place-based stories that engage students and help them enhance their critical thinking skills by making connections between the narratives, broader impacts of engineering work, and their responsibility to address these issues. The effectiveness of the critical narrative intervention was assessed by implementing a discussion-based approach around three critical narratives, which required students to listen to the narrative, respond to focus questions, engage with their peers, and reflect on the process. The intervention was completed by 58 students as part of their ethics module in a senior capstone design engineering course, while a comparison group of 60 students did not receive the intervention. Both groups completed a project-group discussion assignment where they were asked to identify and discuss ethical dilemmas and broader impacts encountered while working on their capstone design projects. Researchers developed a 5-point rubric to evaluate the responses to focus questions and reflections on the process. Results indicated that the study group that received the intervention achieved higher average scores on all three of the criteria that were evaluated, but lower scores on the reflection component. The accompanying paper will discuss the theoretical motivation, deployment of the intervention, and statistical analysis of the results. 

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.