IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 61

way to understand that experience. My students interview practicing engineers. Students develop interview
questions focused on what is it to be an ethical engineer. Students report that this is the assignment they
most dread but also the one that, after they've done it,
is the most meaningful to them. Talking to an engineer
about being an ethical engineer is, from all I gather, a
beneficial one for both the student and the engineer.

Technology and Being an Ethical Engineer
Readings
Readings on ethical questions posed by technology are
abundant, and I vary the reading assignments each term.
Some that I have used include: Shraeder-Frechette, Technology and Ethics [37]; Manion, Ethics, Engineering,
and Sustainable Development [38]; and Heidegger, The
Question Concerning Technology [39]. Readings should
offer wide-ranging views on ethics, technology, and the
role of engineers in the development of technology.
Heidegger is a classic if not an easy read. But his central
message is that the best way to come to terms with technology is to engage in continuous questioning so as not
to become "enframed" by it. This reading is intended to
have students begin to develop the habit of questioning,
not only technology, but their roles as citizen engineers.

Individual Student Meetings
I meet individually with each student twice during the
semester to review their research plans and progress
and to address concerns and questions. Students report
that these meetings are helpful to keep them on track
and to give them feedback. I also get feedback about
the effectiveness of coursework.

Final Research Essay
The capstone assignment is a research essay that
asks the students to use their work from the semester to address the question: what is it to be an ethical
engineer? The question requires an interpretivist [26]
approach. They must describe how they interpret and
understand the essences of what it is to be an ethical
engineer. Students are expected to refer to readings,
interviews, and other sources.

Quantitative and Qualitative Research
This project began as a hypothesis in my Engineering Ethics in Design course, a 1-credit undergraduate 3000-level
elective offered at Michigan Technological University. I
wondered if a phenomenological inquiry by the students
into the essence of what it is to be an ethical engineer
could yield more satisfactory learning outcomes and
greater student engagement with the study of engineering
ethics. In the fall semester of 2011, I offered the revised
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Engineering Ethics course. To assess the effectiveness of
the revised course, I selected the Defining Issues Test-2
(DIT-2) as a pre-test during the first week of the semester
and a post-test at the end of the semester.
The DIT-2 is a test of ethical reasoning developed by
researchers in the Center for the Study of Ethical Development. It is a multiple choice test that consists of a set
of five (non-engineering) scenarios presenting various
ethical dilemmas without obviously right answers. The
DIT-2 has a large national database. The DIT-2 gives two
principal scores, the P score and the N2 score, which
quantitatively measure the participants' ethical or moral
reasoning skills [40], [41]. The DIT (predecessor to DIT-2)
and DIT-2 have their critics [42]-[44], and alternatives are
being tried. Borenstein et al. developed the Engineering
and Science Issues Test (ESIT) that uses job-related ethical dilemmas from science and engineering, rather than
the non-engineering- specific dilemmas of the DIT-2, to
measure moral judgment [45], and researchers continue
to develop alternatives tests to the DIT-2 that will accurately measure ethical sensitivity. Nevertheless, the DIT-2
continues to be used by researchers to measure the ethical reasoning skills of engineering students [46] and the
effectiveness of engineering ethics instruction [47], [48].
Therefore, my study uses the DIT-2.
Table 1 shows the pre-and post-test results (P and N2
scores) for students in ENT 3958 for each of the three
semesters in which the course was piloted. Those scores
are compared to results of the SEED project and the DIT-2
national norms for college-aged students. (SEED - the Survey of Engineering Ethical Development - was a multi-year
research study funded by NSF and headed by PIs from
Lawrence Technological University, California Polytechnic State University, and the University of Michigan. This
research conducted a nationwide assessment of the ethical development of over 4000 undergraduate engineering
students from 18 institutions, including Michigan Tech.
The DIT-2 was used to measure ethical reasoning skills.
The study measured students' ethical development across
all undergraduate years without regard for whether students had studied ethics. SEED offers a broad snapshot
of the current ethical development of U.S. undergraduate
engineering students. 238 undergraduate engineering students from Michigan Tech participated in the study.) Mean
N2 and P scores of students in ENT3958 showed statistically significant improvement in each of the three years.
For example, in 2011, N2 scores increased by 23.40%; in
2013, N2 scores improved by 26.62%; in 2014, N2 scores
improved by 38.38%.
There are limitations of the pilot study. First, the
number of students in ENT3958 is small. Second, there
was no control group of students who studied ethics
using a traditional engineering ethics curriculum and no
control group of students who took no ethics course at

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