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Arranged Stories Reflecting the Thinking of Students in Engineering Ethics Case Study Method  

Yasui, Mitsukuni (Division of Applied Chemistry, Muroran Institute of Technology)
Publication Information
Journal of Engineering Education Research / v.17, no.5, 2014 , pp. 28-32 More about this Journal
Abstract
Engineering Ethics is a fundamental and essential subject and the understanding of ethics is of great importance for students in engineering courses and professional engineers. Most courses would consist of ethical tests, decision making opportunities, case studies, case methods, and group discussion. It is important to consider each case carefully, so we offer a number of hypothetical short stories to students as case methods that they cover in detail. We check the behavior decisions of students as they read the hypothetical short stories. In this study, the short story was about 200 words in length. This paper shows how, with the addition of minor changes to the text, some students changed their behavioral decisions. For example, with the addition of "if you take financial liability for the losses," some thought that they would not want to carry the debt. Other cases showed how some students disliked the majority rule. The paper shows that this arranged hypothetical short story method can often guide student's decision-making process, and can result in decreased undesirable decisions.
Keywords
Engineering ethics; Group discussion;
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  • Reference
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