Applied Ethics in the Engineering,Health, Business,and Law Professions: A Comparison |
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| Authors: | Brock E Barry Matthew W Ohland |
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| Affiliation: | 1. United States Military Academy, West Point;2. Brock E. Barry is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He completed this work as a post‐doctoral research assistant in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. Dr. Barry received his Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University and holds a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering Technology from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a M.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a licensed professional engineer in four states and has over ten years of consulting engineering experience. His research interests include engineering ethics, assessment, motivation theory, and integration of professional skills in the engineering curriculum.;3. Purdue University;4. Matthew W. Ohland is an associate professor in Purdue University's School of Engineering Education. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Florida in 1996. Dr. Ohland is the Past President of Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society, and has delivered 95 volunteer seminars as a facilitator in the award‐winning Engineering Futures program. He served as assistant director of the NSF‐sponsored SUCCEED Engineering Education Coalition and a NSF postdoctoral fellow. His research on the longitudinal study of engineering student development, peer evaluation, and high‐engagement teaching methods has been supported by over $9 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, and his research team has been recognized with multiple conference best paper awards and the Wickenden Award for the best paper in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2008. He is Chair of ASEE's Educational Research and Methods division and an At‐Large member the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Education Society. |
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| Abstract: | Background Applied ethics plays a critical role in engineering, health, business, and law. Applied ethics is currently a required component of the pre‐practice education for these professions, yet the literature suggests that challenges remain in how we define, instruct, and assess professions‐based ethics education. Purpose Based on the on going debate associated with the instruction and assessment of applied engineering ethics, an exploratory investigation was performed to determine what could be learned by looking across professions. Scope /Method Ethics, as an educational topic, can be very broad in scope. This study was limited to literature at the intersection of ethics terminology, historical development, instruction, and assessment within engineering, health, business, and law. Many references associated with each profession and the input of profession‐specific content experts informed the literature survey. Conclusions Ethics within the engineering, health, business, and law professions have historically developed in isolation. Even case studies, which the engineering profession seems to have adopted from law, are framed differently within engineering. There are common lines of debate related to instructional methods, curricular methods, and instructor qualifications, but no profession has resolved these debates. A common trend in applied ethics research is a focus on assessment of student learning, rather than evaluation of instructional methods and/or curriculum incorporation methods. Assessment tools have been developed and applied widely for many years in several of the health care sub‐disciplines, business and law. An engineering‐specific applied‐ethics assessment tool has recently been developed, but has yet to see extensive application. |
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| Keywords: | assessment curriculum ethics |
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