Work in progress - ethical model eliciting activities (E-MEA) - extending the construct

Mastery of the professional skills is needed if our graduates will continue to excel in the increasingly global engineering environment. To date, much of the research associated with studying ethical decision making in organizations has focused on business and individual decisions with little empirical research focused on team-based ethical decision making specific to engineering. As part of a Phase III CCLI project, we are developing E-MEAs, which are open-ended, realistic problems that challenge student teams to recognize and resolve potential ethical dilemmas embedded within a larger engineering problem requiring skills integration. By extending the AMA construct to ethical situations we are able to better identify and understand the various strategies teams use to resolve complex ethical dilemmas. We are both adapting existing cases and creating our own scenarios that bring out differing perspectives, in order to provide a rich body of work that will enable the analysis of studentspsila ethical decision making processes in the context of engineering problem solving. To capture needed process data, we are adapting MEA reflection tools and utilizing PDA devices and team Wikis. Further, to assess performance outcomes, we are utilizing two rubrics, one of which (P-MEAR) was developed previously to assess the ethical dimension of student projects. Data collected will be analyzed using cluster and statistical methodologies to classify students according to performance and strategies employed.