Within engineering design teams, engineering educators are concerned not only with how individual students develop ethically, but also how ethical decision-making emerges during team interactions and becomes integrated in design solutions. These ethical decisions often do not present themselves as traditional dilemmas, but are issues that are confronted in the everyday process of design, and are influenced by the cultural and disciplinary backgrounds of the members and the ethical climates of the team and the organization. This project seeks to understand how everyday ethical decision-making is integrated in the processes and interactions of diverse engineering design team and their recognition of the long-term design consequences of the solutions they produce. This study combines social network analysis with structuration theory to examine the structure of project teams while also examining the institutional and contextual factors that contribute to team climate, and to the development of group norms that affect team interactions.
Intellectual Merit: This study builds on prior NSF funded work and a broad literature from engineering education and the social sciences to address the compelling issue of ethical awareness and ethical reasoning within diverse design teams. Design is a central function of engineering and ethics is often learned within undergraduate design courses where many ethical decisions are made through smaller more frequent design decisions and involve interactions with team members. This project examines how everyday ethical decision-making is integrated systematically in the design processes and interactions of diverse design teams. The well-qualified research team will guide the study with an ambitious yet realistic research strategies, clear goals and objectives, and strong, multi-disciplinary evaluation and dissemination plans. Broader Impacts: The findings of this research have potential impacts across engineering education, as well as society. Today's technology provides the engineering community with an enormous opportunity to positively impact society if applied appropriately. Today's global society adds complexity to the social and ethical issues that need to be addressed by designers and professionals as technology is applied to address needs. Better understanding the development of ethical reasoning within diverse design teams as they make design decisions can greatly enhance the way engineers and other technical professionals learn key attributes called for by ABET, the NAE's Engineer of 2020, and industry stakeholders. The findings of this study can be used to inform curriculum, assessment, and pedagogical strategies that enable educators to guide students' ethical development across engineering. The project also introduces cross-disciplinary research methods from communication into engineering education.
