Past Research Projects
Funded Research Projects
Engineering Ethics as an Expert Guided and Socially Situated Activity
Project Leaders: Matthew J Brown, Nicholas R. Gans, Magdalena Grohman
Collaborators: Marco Tacca, Eun Ah Lee
This NSF Ethics Education in Science and Engineering funded project is a study of ethical decision making in research teams of engineering students, with the aim of improving ethics education for engineering students and ultimately ethical practice among professional engineers. The study focuses on the group dynamics of ethical decision-making in project teams and research labs to determine whether the presence of an “ethics expert” acts as an effective resource to improve ethical decision-making. Answering this question requires a multidisciplinary approach involving theoretical work in both practical ethics and situated learning as well as qualitative observational that includes experimental studies of ethical decision making in group projects. The project includes developing a normative philosophical framework for situational, collaborative ethical reflection and problem solving, and applying that framework to ethics training for engineering. Graduate and undergraduate students in engineering are observed in ethical decision making in situ and participate in activities where they consult with “ethics experts”—students in a special ethics course about ethical and social issues in technology—about concerns arising in their research projects. Experimental studies compare the behavior and results produced by teams that do and do not interact with the “ethics experts.” Learn more about this project…
Center for Values Sponsored Projects
The Role of Ethics Codes in Science
Project Leader: Matthew J Brown
Collaborators: Karen di Olivares, Magdalena Grohman, Luna Holmes, Mitchell Owen, Saagar Patel
Handbooks and manuals created by a group of individuals which dictates the behavior, practices, and ethics for an entire industry seems inherently problematic given the wide array of diversity arising out of differences in laws, cultures, and preferred practices. Yet, with assorted codes of ethics going into their fifth, sixth, seventh, and even tenth editions, one has to wonder: What is changing? What is the historical or social context surrounding that change? How are stigmas and sociocultural changes influencing the development and amendments made to the code of ethics? Are these practices even ethical at all? And by whose definition? Which codes are persisting and which codes are being significantly revised? Why?
These questions will be the guiding force of this project which seeks to answer these questions with the ultimate goal of identifying problematic elements of the current practices and content of the code of ethics, recommending better future practices for the development and changes made to the code of ethics, and potentially expand this project into a more comprehensive evaluation of the use of code of ethics in science and medicine.
By evaluating the history and potentially problematic elements of the code of ethics, particularly in science and medicine, further recommendations to policy makers, scientists, and academics may be made for a more complete and ethically sound code of practices–not just in the practices and codes themselves, but in its creation as well.
The Values Game Initiative
Project Leader: Monica Evans
The Values Game Initiative is a project intended to create and develop serious games that further the mission and themes of the Center for Values in Medicine, Science, and Technology. Games created as part of the Center for Values are designed to teach and explore the pressing issues of our times through new models for digital education, and created around content suggested collaboratively by students, faculty, community leaders, and the Advisory Board of the Center for Values.
As the Center for Values is committed to creating new future-thinking models for education, the creation of serious games as part of the Center provides a test bed for research and ideas, as well as heightened visibility for the Center. These games will be playable on the Center for Values website, and are available to a wider audience than the lecture series and courses. All parts of the development process and creative thinking are also documented online, as a way to inspire collaboration and involve the greater community in the game development process.
These values games are intended to be short, densely-packed, and introspective: to engender experiences that are jumping-off points for deeper, more nuanced thinking about the major issues in values we face today.
To reach these goals, the Values Game Initiative is implementing a four-phase project in 2010-2011 that includes collaborative idea generation, concept refinement and selection, and the creation and release of two to six online games that explore the values associated with human enhancement, modification, and genetic manipulation.