Evaluating the Impact of Ethics Instruction on Student Awareness

Abstract

Engineers must frequently make decisions during their careers without understanding or knowing the full set of consequences. These decisions can have unintended or harmful results. Therefore, it is imperative that engineers consider the ethical dimensions of their decisions while working to satisfy their employer’s interests even if these decisions conflict with their organization’s objectives or their own goals. Engineers have a responsibility to uphold a level of ethical standards that produces trust in not only their organization but also in their profession. Students entering the workforce must reflect the same level of ethical standards expected of their profession. Therefore, it is crucial to educate students on the importance of ethics and its impact on their future careers. This research examined the impact of ethics training in an upper-level engineering course consisting of 156 students. Students were presented with several scenarios that required them to make ethical judgments in the role of an engineer. A questionnaire, which evaluated the degree of ethical behavior of the students, was distributed at the start of the study. The same questionnaire was administered to the students after attending an educational session on ethics and ethical considerations in the engineering workplace. The responses were analyzed using the Chi-square test of independence and Wilcoxon signed-rank test to assess if ethics training had a significant impact on the ethical perspectives of the engineering students.

Meeting Name

ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition (2019: Jun. 16-19, Tampa, FL)

Department(s)

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering

Second Department

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Third Department

Psychological Science

Fourth Department

Arts, Languages, and Philosophy

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2019 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), All rights reserved.

Publication Date

24 Jun 2019

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