This project, funded through the Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (EESE) cross-directorate program, involves interdisciplinary collaboration to design, pilot, and evaluate a web-based curriculum for graduate students, faculty and professionals. The investigators expand science & engineering ethics education by incorporating international dimensions. Specifically, the interdisciplinary project team produces teaching materials, pedagogies, teaching notes and web-based tools in: workplace ethics, international accountability, transnational spread and conduct, variation in international regulatory processes, responsible participation, ethical conflict between nations, and stakeholder and social inclusion. These materials are developed for inquiry-based web modules that are customized tutorials for diverse learners.
The researchers will pilot test these tutorials in multiple sites and disciplines. The curriculum will be evaluated objectively by tests of students? acquisition of target knowledge and reasoning skills, and subjectively by student and instructor perceptions of the content, usability and importance of the materials. The refined curriculum will be disseminated through the National Online Resource Center and the National Center for Digital Government, among other modes.
This important expansion of ethics education will be innovative in several ways: 1) by using interactive, customizable software that allows students to engage in active inquiry in the nine education modules; 2) by focusing on the ethical issues inherent in globalization of science and engineering and the international regulation of science and technology; and 3) by making visible the diversity of ethical structures and processes in governmental bodies around the world. The widely disseminated curriculum will benefit scientists and engineers across the disciplines, who face the challenges of globalization in the economy and in their research settings. This educational project is designed to effect a broad impact by affording scientists and engineers a greater capacity to work reflectively and ethically across countries and cultures and to engage ethical challenges involved in working in multiple political and social settings.
