By Cindy Rottmann and Douglas Reeve, in Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education (2020).
Abstract:
Case studies have been used by engineering ethics educators for several decades, following a path paved by legal educators in the late nineteenth century. Unfortunately, few of these cases connect the micro-ethical decisions of individual engineers with the macro-ethical consequences of their actions, leaving intact a long-standing division between ethics and equity in engineering education. Our paper highlights a curricular intervention aimed at helping bridge this ethics-equity divide. In particular, we document a three-year initiative to replace engineering ethics lectures with open-ended case study workshops. While early assessment results indicate that students found our workshops to be significantly more engaging than their first-year ethical compliance lectures, a recent episode of backlash demonstrates the ease and rapidity with which equity-based interventions can be derailed. Iterative optimization of our workshop in response to this critical incident suggests that engineering educators can bridge ethics with equity if they combine two pedagogical strategies emerging from distinct paradigmatic traditions: (1) infuse critical analyses into case study learning to avoid the pitfalls of moral relativism and (2) shift the tone of discussion from rational argumentation to respectful dialogue by including mindful listening activities.

by Cindy Rottmann, Douglas Reeve, Robin Sacks, & Mike Klassen, Paper presented at the Canadian Engineering Education Association Conference, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (2015).

The Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) requires faculties of engineering to incorporate graduate attribute 3.1.10 “ethics and equity” into their curricula. More than the CEAB requirement, engineering educators have an obligation to prepare students for the ethical dilemmas they will inevitably face in their workplaces and their lives. Our analysis of survey data collected during a pilot study of our ethical case studies project examines a gap between students’ perceptions about the effectiveness and importance of engineering ethics education. While there was a considerable range in participants’ ratings of the effectiveness of previous engineering ethics coursework, they consistently placed a high value on the importance of ethics in engineering education. This finding is significant because it challenges the prevailing assumption that engineering students’ disinterest in non-technical education is the primary barrier to effective ethics instruction.

by Dr. Cindy Rottmann, Dr. Robin Sacks, Ms. Annie Elisabeth Simpson, and Dr. Doug Reeve, Paper presented at the American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition, Seattle, Washington, USA (2015).

Introduction:
Despite some progress, women and other minoritized groups continue to be under-represented in faculties of engineering and engineering workplaces [1-4], a disparity that intensifies at each stage of an engineers’ career [5, 6]. Our primary objective in this paper is to examine an unexpected finding emerging from our study of engineering leadership—the significant over-representation of men in engineers’ identification of exemplary leaders. We explore two possible explanations for this finding—individual women’s disinterest in leadership and structural constraints limiting their rise. We use a post-hoc statistical analysis to examine the former and a focused literature review to generate hypotheses about the latter.