Tying Ethics to Teamwork Training in a Minimodule

Abstract

Most CS and engineering curricula require that students take ethics training and acquire competence in teamwork skills before graduation. Both ethics and teamwork are course objectives mandated by the Accreditation Board for Engineering & Technology (ABET). However, ethics and teamwork are difficult to teach by regular STEM faculty. Lingard (2010) suggests that faculty may not have had much teamwork training themselves. Students can take ethics courses in other departments which may/not help the students to engage in moral reasoning or help them in considering societal implications of technologies they learn in CS or Engineering courses. Thus, there is a growing recognition of the need for a more integrative approach, such as to teach ethics across the curriculum (Pease and Baker, 2009) or embed ethics within the CS curriculum (Grosz et al, 2019). At the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), we are pilot testing a short, integrative approach, i.e., a 4-class period minimodule, covering both ethics and teamwork, embedded in CS or ECE courses. It includes a short refresher on moral reasoning, examples of cooperative behavior in animals and student-led teamwork demonstrations. Using an andragogical approach we provide questions to guide discussions by student teams after viewing video lectures by renowned experts. Outside of class, student teams prepare teamwork demonstrations for the class. We report results and observations. We also report on an event in progress: the intercollegiate Ethics in Action Challenge --https://www.ub.edu/engineering/ece/news/127-ethics-in-action