IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 62

TABLE 1. Dit-2 Scores compared mtu, nsf seed, National Norms.
DIT-2 Score

ENT 3958

NSF SEED Project

2011

2013

2014

Pretest
(n=20)

Posttest
(n=16)

Pre-test Post(n=20)
test
(n=17)

Pretest
(n=13)

Posttest
(n=13)

MTU
(n=238)

17 Other
institutions
(n=~3700)

P Score

30.1

35.75

26.10

31.29

30.77

43.33

29.9

32.9

N2 Score

28.59

35.28

26.82

33.96

34.08

47.16

29.7

32.4

all. However, because of the small number of students
who enroll in this elective course (offered only once
per year), it hasn't been practical to establish a control
group. This remains an option to be explored.
Despite these limitations, what might these results
tell us? First, results are consistent from year to year.
Second, they are statistically significant rather than
explainable by chance. Third, these results confirm that
our engineering students are capable of ethical reasoning that is on par with and in excess of their peers
across all other majors and institutions. Fourth, this
pedagogical approach in a 1-credit ethics course could
arguably make a difference in achieving student learning outcomes and engagement with the study of ethics.
Finally, I will comment on the 2014 course where
students demonstrated much stronger improvement. It's
possible that course modifications had an effect. Students
were given more autonomy in their research and a broader
selection of readings. I also introduced the individual meetings during that semester. At a minimum, all these results
strongly suggest that further research is warranted.
My intent was to design an ethics pedagogy that
would also improve my students' emotional engagement with ethics. Although improved ethical reasoning
scores are important, these scores do not measure
engagement. For that, I chose an interpretivist research
method. I hypothesize that a qualitative analysis of the
final research essays written by students in ENT3958
(all three semesters of the pilot course) could reveal
themes that signify emotional engagement with the
study of ethics. I am using NVIVO software for data
coding and a three-stage phenomenological research
method (collection of descriptions of lived experiences,
reduction of data into essential themes, and interpretation of themes) (Orbe) to determine if the thematic

DIT-2 National
Norms
for College-Aged
Students

P scores range
from 32.2 to 37.8,
increasing with age
during college.
N2 scores range from
31.1 to 36.9, increasing
with age during
college.

content of the essays is consistent with expressions of
emotional engagement.
This qualitative work is ongoing and final results are
not yet available for publication as the thematic data
must still be put to an interdisciplinary panel for interpretation and review. However, a few preliminary observations are possible. Students express their understanding
of being an ethical engineer primarily in the context of
values. They rely on the interviews with practicing engineers and use the readings to more or less confirm what
they discussed in the interviews. They do not discuss
being an ethical engineer as someone who relies on rules
or decision models. They all say that their understanding
of ethics and being an ethical engineer is more complex
and demanding that they had originally believed and that
they are now more concerned about making ethical decisions when they are working as engineers.

Engineering Students Can Improve
Ethical Reasoning Skills
Results from this phenomenology-informed pilot ethics course indicate that undergraduate engineering
students can improve their ethical reasoning skills and
their emotional engagement with the study of ethics.
Preliminary research also suggests that interpretive
phenomenology can serve as a qualitative research
method to measure the engagement of engineering
students in the study of ethics by examining themes
discussed by students in written essays that express
their understandings of what it is to be an ethical
engineer. Such research could cross-validate quantitative data obtained through DIT-2 tests or measure
engagement in ways that the DIT-2 cannot. Future work
includes completion of the interpretive phase of the
qualitative research and development and testing of a

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june 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015