gaming, texting, learning? teaching engineering ethics through students’ lived experiences with...

ORI GIN AL PA PER

Gaming, Texting, Learning? Teaching EngineeringEthics Through Students’ Lived Experiences WithTechnology

Georgina Voss

Received: 24 January 2012 / Accepted: 29 April 2012 / Published online: 16 May 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract This paper examines how young peoples’ lived experiences with per-

sonal technologies can be used to teach engineering ethics in a way which facilitates

greater engagement with the subject. Engineering ethics can be challenging to teach:

as a form of practical ethics, it is framed around future workplace experience in a

professional setting which students are assumed to have no prior experience of. Yet

the current generations of engineering students, who have been described as ‘digital

natives’, do however have immersive personal experience with digital technologies;

and experiential learning theory describes how students learn ethics more suc-

cessfully when they can draw on personal experience which give context and

meaning to abstract theories. This paper reviews current teaching practices in

engineering ethics; and examines young people’s engagement with technologies

including cell phones, social networking sites, digital music and computer games to

identify social and ethical elements of these practices which have relevance for the

engineering ethics curricula. From this analysis three case studies are developed to

illustrate how facets of the use of these technologies can be drawn on to teach topics

including group work and communication; risk and safety; and engineering as social

experimentation. Means for bridging personal experience and professional ethics

when teaching these cases are discussed. The paper contributes to research and

curriculum development in engineering ethics education, and to wider education

research about methods of teaching ‘the net generation’.

Keywords Engineering ethics � Group work � Curriculum development �Case-studies � Experiential learning

G. Voss (&)

Faculty of Arts, University of Brighton, East Sussex BN2 0JY, UK

e-mail: [email protected]

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Sci Eng Ethics (2013) 19:1375–1393

DOI 10.1007/s11948-012-9368-5

Introduction

Today’s engineering students have more personal experience with technologies than

ever before. They come to class with internet-enabled smartphones, tablets and

laptop computers; they share photos and messages with their friends through social

networking sites, blogs and micro-blogs, and instant messenger programs; and they

play online social multiplayer computer games such as World of Warcraft. The

current generation of 18-29 year-olds—who have been variously described as

‘millenials’, ‘digital natives’ and the ‘net generation’ (Jones et al. 2010)—are more

likely to use cellphones, laptops, games consoles and social networking sites than

any other age group (Pew Research Center 2010; Zickhur 2011). Educators have

explored the use of new learning technologies which make the most of students’

increased technological engagement (Greenhow et al. 2009; Jelfs and Colbourn

2002; Mason and Weller 2000) and many universities are now incorporating blogs,

chat-rooms and wikis as instructional tools (Patchin and Hinduja 2010). These

technologies also offer valuable opportunities for developing engineering ethics

curricula which is relevant and meaningful for students.

Engineering ethics can be a tricky subject to teach. It is meant to provide

knowledge of the applied professional ethical issues which students will face in their

future careers (Barry and Ohland 2009); yet students are themselves merely

apprentices who do not yet have professional experience to use as a context for these

issues. As a result, if engineering students fail to see the relevance of engineering

ethics to their own lives they may view the subject as abstract and irrelevant

(Abraham et al. 1997). Engineering ethics curricula has been taught to mixed

reception: some students say that it is the least interesting and most trivial part of the

curriculum, and they would rather be learning engineering than ‘wasting time’ on

ethics (Newberry 2004). However, others have found ethics instruction to be a

positive and enjoyable experience, often because it is so different from the technical

courses which make up the rest of their workload (Lau 2004).

Teaching engineering ethics in a way which is relevant for students who have had

not yet had ‘on-the-job experience’ (Pfatteicher 2001) and who may also, due to

their youth, also lack the maturity, wisdom and background to analyze ethical issues

(Smolarski and Whitehead 2002) can therefore be challenging. Recent work has

indicated that students may waver throughout their courses about whether they

wanted to become professional engineers, even if this is a path that they then follow

after graduation (Lichenstein et al. 2009). Drawing on students current experiences

with technology can be an effective way of increasing participation and enjoyment

in this complex subject, demonstrating how what they have experienced in their

daily lives has relevance to future engineering work environments if they choose to

enter them.

This paper argues that engineering students’ digital and technological practices

can be used as a personal context to teach engineering ethics through experiential

learning; and that by doing so, students may be more likely to engage and learn than

with either hypothetical or historical material. I first describe and review theories of

active and experiential learning to show how students’ experiences are effective

learning tools, and discuss how the content of engineering ethics curricula has often

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focused on preparation for future work rather than drawing on current experience.

I then examine the extent of technological engagement that young people currently

have, and how these technologies have been used in the classroom to date. Three

teaching case-studies are developed based on young people’s use of social

networking sites, multi-player role-playing online computer games, and digital

music, illustrating how they can be used to explore key parts of the engineering

ethics curricula (risk and safety, engineering as a social experiment, and group-work

and communication). Finally, I discuss the differences between personal experience

and professional ethics, and explore means for bridging the two in the classroom.

The paper contributes to the engineering ethics literature by describing how

experiential learning techniques based on lived experiences can provide a way to

increase interest and engagement in engineering ethics, and thus teach the subject

more effectively. It also contributes to the wider work on learning technologies by

suggesting that the social digital technologies can be used both as a platform and a

topic of education delivery. The paper is therefore relevant to current debates about

the role of technology in the classroom, and how best to educate the ‘net

generation’.

Engineering Ethics and Experiential Learning

There has been growing awareness since the 1980s of the importance of ethics in

engineering education (Herkert 2002) as educators recognize that engineering

students need to look beyond technical issues to have awareness of the greater social

context of their work (Colby and Sullivan 2008). Ethics is, however, a difficult

subject to teach to engineering students. To be taught successfully the topic must be

made relevant to students so that they can engage with it on both emotional and

intellectual levels (McDonald and Donleavey 1995; Barry and Ohland 2009). Yet

for students who are accustomed to laboratory work, quantitative analysis, and goals

with clearly defined outcomes, engineering ethics can be a ‘messy’ subject that they

have difficulty in becoming engrossed in, despite finding the general subject area

interesting (Newberry 2004; Harris et al. 1996; Billington 2006).

Active and experiential learning methods are powerful tools for challenging this

mindset (Sims 2002). In active learning students explore their own experience,

attitudes and values to develop higher order learning skills of analysis, synthesis and

evaluation (Bonwell and Eison 1991; Smart and Csapo 2007). Experiential learning

also draws on lived experience, transforming into knowledge through a process of

active testing, concrete experience, reflective observation and abstract hypotheses

(Kolb and Kolb 2005; Kolb 1984). There is a correlation between the use of these

methods and how much is remembered, as experience provides a resource for

learning that helps students understand and retain knowledge (Dewey 1938; Santi

2000). In ethics education these methods allow students to draw on their own

immediate personal experience around the subject as a focal point for ‘giving life,

texture and subjective personal meaning’ to the seemingly abstract concepts of

ethical theories and principles (Smart and Csapo 2007). The ‘here and now’

concrete experience also provides a publically shareable reference point for testing

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the implications and validity of ideas created during the learning process, leading to

more effective understanding of theories. Engineering students in particular learn

effectively when they are able to relate material to their own personal experience;

and experiential learning methods are valuable for engineering students who are

more likely to be ‘sensing, inductive and active’ learners who are likely to forget

something that is ‘just said to them’ (Felder and Silverman 1998).

Kolb (1984) argues that effective student learning therefore happens when it is

grounded in experience, and ideas are formed and re-formed through ongoing

reflection. However, the engineering ethics curricula have been developed to

prepare students for the challenges that they will encounter in their future lives as

professional engineers. Engineering ethics courses have become integrated into

capstone courses as a means of professionalization (Simonson 2005), preparing

students for the ‘real life’ engineering experiences including working collabora-

tively with others, communicating effectively and thinking as part of a team in

social processes (Jonassen et al. 2009; Dym et al. 2005; Devon 1999). Much of this

is predicated on the assumption that whilst engineering students will go on to

become professional engineers, they do not yet have professional and personal

experience in that area, and Vesilind (1996) describes how ‘students cannot identify

with problems facing the practicing engineer since they have never been in that

role’. Some scholars go even further to argue that as engineering ethics is a

professional subject, it is impossible to learn outside of either professional school or

practice (Colby and Sullivan 2008). This is however, a limited view of what an

engineering faculty provides for instruction in both ethics and engineering,

particularly given that these are both applied subjects which are learnt through

ongoing practice. As Feisel and Rosa (2005) describe, engineering students go to

labs to learn something that practicing engineers are already assumed to know and

to learn through doing via simulation exercises. Similarly, classroom-based ethics

instruction provides a group environment which familiarizes students with standards

of conduct and ethical judgment which, as Davis (2006) notes, will improve with

use:

If an instructor gives a student a chance to make ethical judgments, explain

them and compare them with those that other students make, the student is

more likely to learn well than if she gets no such experience.

Like lab-work, classrooms are therefore critical for providing a safe space in

which students can gain such experiences about ethics without wider judgment or

impact of their activities, enabling a ‘safe’ transition into professional working life.

Academics therefore face a challenge in creating an engineering ethics

curriculum that moves beyond abstraction and esoteric arguments to resonate with

students (Lincourt and Johnson 2004). Much of the teaching content for engineering

ethics courses has been based on the assumption that, without professional

experience, students must learn how to identify ethical problems, make ethical

decisions, and understand the wider importance of engineering ethics through other

means. Well-known and visible disasters—including the Challenger and Columbia

space shuttle disasters and the Bhopal chemicals leak—have been popular with

students, but Haws (2001) argues that a wholly ‘disaster-driven engineering

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curriculum’ isn’t necessarily appropriate as it doesn’t given students the practical

tools to deal with issues in their own work. Games and role-play have also offered a

way to engender active learning through hypothetical situations, and Lloyd and van

de Poel (2008) advocate games as a way of teaching the practical aspect of ethical

decision making, where the theory, guidelines, codes and cases are ‘one step

removed from any practice-based ethical situation’. Internships and summer

projects have also been used as sites of ethical learning: Boeing introduced a

summer fellowship program which included an ethical component, with the

intention that students would concurrently learn about ethics as they were working

on a technical problem (Gorman 2001); and the VaNTH summer research

experience for undergraduates combined bio-engineering practice with instruction

in ethics and communication in a community of practice, allowing students to

identify ethical issues within the research community that they were based in

(Hirsch et al. 2005). Community service may not be a suitable site for ethics

teaching as, in practice, faculty find it more valuable than the students that they

supervise (Bauer et al. 2007). The culture of the university itself can also be utilized

as an ethical learning environment, allowing students to engage in ethical learning

throughout their degrees, whether through research experience for undergraduates

(REUs) (Acharya et al. 1995) or laboratory work (Feisel and Rosa 2005).

Beyond the university, engineering students do already encounter ethical issues

in their daily lives which could be used as the context for experiential ethics

learning. As Pfatteicher (2001) says, one of the ways to ‘accomplish the difficult

task of teaching engineering ethics is to illustrate that engineering practice does not

begin with the job; it is something that [students] have already begun whilst they are

in school’, and she encourages the use of real-life experiences such as cheating and

binge-drinking to illustrate ethical dilemmas. Despite not being fully-fledged

professional engineers, engineering students do already have extensive experience

with technologies through their phones, their laptops, their online social networks,

and the Internet. These technologies provide an excellent opportunity for learning

tools to be developed around students’ active participation with these technologies,

analysis and reflection around what happens when there are used, and applications

of the principles learnt (Laditka and Houck 2006).

Young People and Technology

Today’s young people have been described as a new ‘net generation’ who have

grown up digitally (Heverley 2008), raised in an internet-enabled world where their

social lives and personal interactions can take place via blogs, social networking

sites and smartphones (Hinduja and Patchin 2008). By the time they arrive at

university, the current cohorts of engineering undergraduates are part of a

demographic which has greater and more intense use of digital technologies than

any other age group: they are more likely to use the internet; own a gaming console

and a portable gaming device; go online wirelessly (via laptops or cellphones); share

digital content; own an iPod or other mp3 player; make use of social networking

sites such as Facebook; and download ‘apps’ onto smartphones (Zickhur 2011).


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These patterns have been driven in part by the increasing presence of internet

connectivity in the home and schools, and lowered cost around the ownership and

maintenance of devices. The social nature of the technologies is also a massive

incentive for use—texting is the most popular cellphone feature, and the typical US

teenager will send over 50 texts in 1 day, mostly to friends (Pew Internet 2010).

Young people have embraced the concept of creating ‘virtual presences’ in a digital

world, and have become the driving force behind the development of online

communities and social networking sites (Boyd 2006).

Education establishments have responded to this new generation of ‘digital

natives’ by developing new forms of education delivery methods including wikis,

blogs and virtual worlds; although recent research has indicated that although

students do use digital technologies for leisure and social purposes, they don’t use

them for educational purposes (Bennett et al. 2008). There are ongoing debates

about whether the use of electronic devices in class is actually a help or a

hindrance (Yardi 2008). Livingstone (2008) challenges the ‘myth of the cyberkid’,

arguing that the young people who are engaging with social digital technologies

are not digital experts, but are still negotiating the rules and norms around them.

Digital technologies therefore have the potential to be used as reflexive instruction

tools around the social aspects of the use and engagement with the technologies.

Through the use of social network platforms such as MySpace and Facebook,

young people can learn to appreciate and respond to differing viewpoints, and

develop and refine their own self-identity (Patchin and Hinduja 2010). Hinduja

and Patchin (2008) argue that these tools can therefore be used to teach youth

about various social and emotional skills such as tolerance and communication,

based on their own lived experiences. The social nature of young people’s

engagement with digital technologies and content therefore has potential as an

instructional tool for ethics education, as the way that young people use social

networking sites and online games are key ways in which they ‘grow into adults

who manage, produce and consume technology intelligently on a daily basis’

(Cassell and Cramer 2008).

Whilst the purpose of engineering ethics instruction has been widely debated

(e.g. Scheurwater and Doorman 2001; Lincourt and Johnson 2004; Pfatteicher 2001)

there is broad consensus that this topic should familiarize students with the types of

ethical issues that emerge within the profession, the means of judging and acting on

them, and the value of doing so. Teaching material based around students’ lived

experiences with technologies therefore needs to be framed by this set of issues,

rather than solely as a means to raise students’ critical awareness about their own

behaviors (although there is overlap between the two, as discussed later). In the

following part of this section common experiences which young people have around

computer games, social networks and digital content sharing are described. Three

case-studies are presented to demonstrate how these experiences can be incorpo-

rated into three key parts of the engineering ethics curriculum: group work and

communication; risk and safety; engineering as social experimentation. The relevant

ethical issues, potential teaching formats and learning outcomes for each case are

also described with details summarized in Table 1, with discussion-based seminar

groups being the most useful format as means for students to share and compare

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their own experiences with their peers within the specific context of each case. In

preparing ethics curricula around students’ experiences with digital technology, it is

important to recognize that student experiences are not homogenous but are affected

Table 1 Teaching format and learning outcomes for cases

Case 1: Online gaming

Ethical themes Group work and communication

Teaching

format

Assess prior experience of online games (Before class)

Large group discussion of purpose of group work, tutor-led

Small group reflection on experience of collective play in online games.

Large group discussion, tutor-led: examine differences between context of online

games and professional engineering practice.

[Supplementary: Teacher-designed group work in game such as Minecraft]

Learning

outcomes

Students should be able to:

Understand and describe the importance of group work and coordinated activities in

engineering projects.

Understand and describe the importance of practices including communication,

knowledge sharing and group-norms for effective group work, and means and

challenges of achieving them.

Case 2: Social networking platforms

Ethical themes Risk and safety

Teaching

format

Introduction of definitions of social construction of risk, safety and ‘acceptable’ risk.

Discussion of the ways in which students use social media platforms and perceived

risks, tutor-led. Examination of cyber bullying, and loss of control.

Discussion about how notions of ‘risk’ and ‘safety’ are socially constructed and change

with context; what that tells us about how (and whether) risk and safety can be

calculated; and the responsibilities of that engineers have in creating ‘safe’ products.

Learning

outcomes


Understand and describe the terms ‘risk’, ‘safety’ and ‘acceptable risk’.

Critically evaluate how risk perception of technologies such as social networking

platforms is affected by context of use.

Understand and evaluate the role and responsibilities of engineers in creating ‘safe’

products.

Case 3: Digital music

Ethical themes ‘Social experimentation’ in engineering

Teaching

format

Write short reflection of expectations and practices around sharing digital content

(Before class).

Introduction to the concept of ‘engineering as social experimentation’

Case analysis of the development of iTunes and Napster, drawing in students’ short

reflection.

Discussion of long-term impact, control and uses of technologies; and the

responsibilities that software engineers have in these processes.

Learning

outcomes


Understand and describe the differences and similarities between social and lab-based

experiments (e.g. control, consent, length and scale of impact) around technologies

such as iTunes and Napster.

Critically evaluate the role and responsibilities of engineers in social experimentation.


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by factors including gender, nationality, ethnicity and social background. The

prevalence of digital technologies provides a starting point for reflection and guided

discussion in each case, rather than being developed on the assumption that all

students in each class will have identical experiences.

Case 1: Group Work, Communication and Computer Games

The industry case for engineering ethics has been strengthened by perceptions from

the engineering industry that new graduate engineers have weak communication

skills, and little skill or experience of working in teams (Knox et al. 1995). Social

ethics and the norms of engagement are now an important part of engineering ethics

education, as much of ethical decision making in engineering is done as part of a

team rather than in isolation (Devon 1999). Engineering students need to learn how

to co-operate because, as professional engineers, they will mostly work in groups

and must gain experience of collectively sharing responsibility (Springer et al.

1999). The first case presents a way to explore the norms around communication

and group work through community practices in multiplayer online computer

games.

Computer games are extremely popular with young people, and teenagers are

more likely than any other age group to own a games console (e.g. Microsoft’s

XBox) or a portable gaming device (e.g. Nintendo DS) (Zickhur 2011). But they are

not just passive players: the role of users—and especially younger users—in

creating and modifying computer games has been widely acknowledged. Users,

rather than manufacturers, have been credited with inventing the first computer

games and have had an active role in developing them since (Jeppesen and Molin

2003). Many recent versions of games, including ‘The Sims’, have encouraged these

activities by incorporating digital ‘toolkits’ within them which allow people to work

with in-game scripting language to develop personal modifications and develop-

ments. In ‘The Sims’—a strategic life-simulation game—players create virtual

people (‘Sims’) and direct them through various social and emotional activities, and

the toolkit allows users to modify their Sims’ appearance, including hair colour and

clothing. However, users often go beyond the official company toolkits, which have

limited functionality and outcomes, to create kits based around their own personal

needs and preferences. This development, like many other user innovation activities

(e.g. Rodeo kayaking, music software), often happens in a community where users

are able to support each other by providing feedback and sharing innovations with

each other (Prugl and Schreier 2006).

Collaborative practices are also explicitly designed into many multiplayer online

computer games. ‘World of Warcraft’ (WoW) is the largest of the massive

multiplayer online role-player games (MMPORG), with over 11 million subscribers

globally (Cifaldi 2011). Players control a character in a virtual world where they

have the choice of simply exploring the environment, or can engage in ‘quests’

throughout the world which involves developing new skills, exploring new areas

and inevitably involves fighting with monsters and other players along the way.

Participants have the option of playing alone or with others—however, many

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challenges are designed in such a way that they can only be overcome through

collective group activity. Players therefore often join together in either permanent

guilds or temporary parties and groups, and can talk with other members via the in-

game chat or out-of-game chat channels to co-ordinate their activities together.

‘Minecraft’ is another multiplayer online game which was released by Mojang in

2009, and has, at the time of writing, sold over 4 million copies. The game is

focused around creativity and construction, as players use resources such as tools

and weapons to build things out of cuboid ‘blocks’ whilst fending off attacks by

monsters. As in WoW, players can collaborate with each other to build together and

collectively protect and defend each other from danger. Industry commentators

have stated that the reason why Minecraft is so successful is that it appeals to the

‘basic human activities’ of exploration and collaborative co-construction (Edwards

2011).

Online in-game user communities therefore provide a familiar means for students

to explore the ethical issues around the importance of group work and commu-

nication for engineering projects, as summarized in Table 1. Prior to teaching this

case, instructors should assess who in their teaching group has experience of in-

game user communities, and which ones (e.g. Minecraft, WoW, Sims). The class

itself can begin with a discussion facilitated by the instructor about the purpose of

group work in engineering practices, and the perceived challenges to that way of

working. Instructors can then divide the class into smaller groups, with each group

containing a variety of experience across different gaming communities. Students in

each group are asked to share and compare their stories of working and playing

collectively in online games including details of how they picked their team; what

their mission was; why they needed to work in a group (i.e. What they were unable

to achieve on their own); what the team learnt from each other; and how they

managed group dynamics when there was friction between players. Points for

discussion can include reflection on the ways in which in-game groups enable

players to learn about how best to communicate problems by improving skills

around language, behavioral codes, and social norms (NESTA 2009). Based on their

reflections, each small group should develop a shortlist of answers to the questions:

What are the benefits of working in groups? What are the challenges? What have

they learnt from their experiences of collective online playing? These answers will

be brought back into a final discussion with the entire class where students reflect on

these answers, and examine how these issues will vary between the context of

online games, and of real-life engineering practice. Tutors can also supplement

these discussion-based activities with additional game-play with tools like the

MinecraftEdu customized modification which allows tutors to easily set up

situations in the Minecraft game, whereby set groups of students will need to

work collectively in order to complete their goal. These activities will further

complement the above discussions by allowing students to reflect on whether the

experience of group working was different when they were working with people

that they already knew from their course and potentially saw on a more regular

basis. The darker sides of these group dynamics in social technologies can also be

explored in the second case study on cyber bullying.


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Case 2: Risk, Safety and Social Networking Platforms

In the engineering ethics curriculum, risk and safety are treated as social constructs

that are shaped by factors including voluntarism and control, available information,

social and work-based context, and magnitude and proximity (Rowe 1977). Risks

are often framed in terms of physical safety (e.g. Exposure to asbestos), but

technologies also have the potential to facilitate economic, social and psychological

harms too. This is particularly true for digital media, where images and texts can be

sent rapidly to scores of people across digital networks; and teenagers frequently use

the Internet and phones to send these types of messages to each other (Cassell and

Cramer 2008).

Through these practices, the prevalence and low cost of smartphones, and

emergent understanding of social issues around privacy and control, ‘cyber

bullying’ has emerged. This is a form of harassment in which people make use of

the Internet, cellphones or other technologies to post text or images intended to hurt

or embarrass another person (Moessner 2007). Unlike ‘traditional’ forms of

bullying, cyber bullying doesn’t involve physical violence—although it may allude

to the threat of physical harm—but instead focuses on threats, rumor and gossip

(Wolack et al. 2007). Victims may have embarrassing or compromising photos of

themselves posted onto social networking sites such as Facebook, or be sent abusive

and threatening text messages. In an important minority of cases the perpetrator is

anonymous which can cause further distress to the victim (Ybarra et al. 2007).

Cyber bullying is not just a schoolyard problem but a system of abuse that continues

out of the high school and onto campus, with between 10 and 15 % of university

students reporting online harassment (Finn 2004).

Heverley (2008) argues that when young people speak about digital media, they

speak of it as something that they use with little recognition that it may use them.

This is a particularly pertinent point when teaching risk, as risk is evaluated in terms

of control and people are more likely to engage in risky behavior if they feel they

have choice and control (Slovic et al. 1980). Young adults are becoming

increasingly concerned about how much choice they have over privacy of personal

information on social networking sites. The factors which affect how much

information they reveal include whether the benefits of revealing to strangers

outweighs the cost of privacy; apathy towards personal privacy; and trust in the

social network hosts (Gross et al. 2005). Young people are increasingly likely to

protect themselves as, like adults, they face issues around safety, privacy and

audience management. Students may therefore view the use of Social Networking

Sites (SNS) as low risk as they feel that they have control about what they are

revealing. Similarly, 93 % of 18–29 year-olds own a cellphone, and texting and

photo functions are the most popular activities (Zickhur 2011)—as young people

perceive that they have control over what messages they take and what text

messages are sent, it may be seen as a safe activity. In the case of cyber harassment,

control is wrested from victims and put into the hands of bullies.

This case allows students to explore the ethical issues around how familiar

technologies such as social media which are ‘safe’ in one context become risky in

another, as the acceptability and control of the risks and harms changes; and the

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implications for designing ‘safe’ products and services. At the beginning of class

(summarized in Table 1) the themes of risk and safety can be introduced, defining

how ‘acceptable’ risk and safety can be socially constructed, and how perceptions of

risk change according to different factors. This leads to a tutor-led discussion which

draws on the material presented in the case above which explores students’ use of

social media platforms, and how risky or safe they perceive such spaces to be and in

what circumstances. Students will be asked to reflect on issues including whether

they use different platforms in different ways (e.g for social or professional

purposes); whether they have any private or anonymized profiles and how that

affects the types of behaviors that they engage in; and how much control that they

feel that they have when using these platforms. The topic of cyber bullying should

then be introduced, with questions posed to students about who has control of

information in that situation and how perception of risk might change if exposed to

such behavior. Students should also consider whether their experiences with these

platforms means that they feel a greater sense of safety in using them than other

parties (e.g. their parents, the media). In the final part of the class, students should be

asked to build on this discussion to reflect on how the use of social media platforms

can be constructed as ‘risky’ or ‘safe’ in certain circumstances, and the implications

for engineers when constructing ‘safe’ products. The ways in which the meaning

and use of a technology change depending on context are also examined in the final

case.

Case 3: Social Experimentation and Digital Music

The conceptualisation of engineering as a social experiment is found in many

engineering ethics curricula (Martin and Schinzinger 2005), and relates to concepts

from science and technology studies (STS) about the social construction of

technological systems (Bijker et al. 1989). Like laboratory-based experiments,

social experiments are carried out in partial ignorance and have uncertain outcomes

that require monitoring and feedback. The concept allows students to explore how

the long-term impacts, social and otherwise, of an engineering project can never be

known until it is released into society and raises questions about what responsibility

engineers ultimately have for their work. Products can be put to new uses that their

designers did not intend or imagine; for example, the Ford Model T automobile was

adapted by rural users in North America for various novel uses including acting as a

tractor and as a washing machine (Kline and Pinch 1996). The development of the

Napster file-sharing network and subsequent changes in music-consumption habits

provides an example of the uncertain uses, policing and long-term social impact of

technologies. This is a particularly relevant case for young people who are more

likely to view music and other digital media content as a shareable resource, rather

than privately owned property. Teenagers and young adults are more likely to own

an iPod or other MP3 player than any other age group (Pew 2010). They are also

more likely to engage in downloading copyright-protected music (Madden and

Lenhart 2004) and are confused by what is legal and what is illegal when it comes to

downloading music (Atkinson 2004).


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These changing social expectations around the consumption of digital content

have been driven by the diffusion of technologies such as Napster which facilitate

widespread downloading, copying (‘ripping’) and sharing. Napster was developed

in 1998 and launched in 1999 by Shaun Fanning, and was a computer program

which allowed users to share and swap music files through a centralised file service.

Fanning had, like many user-innovators (von Hippel 2005), developed the

technology as a response to the difficulty that he had experienced and downloading

music online. The service was massively popular, particularly with college students

who were able to take advantage of the fast internet connections available on

college campuses; and by December 2000 there were an estimated 50 million

Napster users, according to the service (Bergman 2004). However, Napster also led

to massive copyright violations as users bypassed the established incumbent paid

market for music and instead downloaded (rather than streaming) content from other

users. Following initial action by musicians including Metallica and Dr Dre, Napster

was subsequently sued by several recording companies for copyright infringement

under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The company lost the case, shutting

down its services in July 2001.

Despite its short-lived and illegal lifespan, Napster generated a lasting legacy

around the consumption of music by creating a widespread shift in the shared

practices and expectations around online music sharing services. Users now

expected that they would be able to download music straight to their computers,

rather than purchasing it from a store; and that they would be able to access vast

online catalogues which also included unreleased recordings and older songs. These

practices were adopted and developed into commercial products by other companies

and, without Napster, Apple would not have been able to develop its own music

downloading service, iTunes (Flowers 2008). Other peer-to-peer music sharing

services were also set up in the wake of Napster’s demise, including LimeWire and

Kazaa—as one industry commentator noted, record companies may have won the

battle against Napster, but they lost the war against online music services.

As this case demonstrates, technologies have unexpected potential uses and

widespread social impacts which can be difficult to control. The long-term

consequences of engineering projects can also be hard to predict, as can be seen

with the way that Napster led to a change in the way people purchased and

consumed music and the subsequent knock-on effects for the structure and business

models of the music industry. This case allows students to draw on the ethical theme

of ‘engineering as social experimentation’ to reflect on their own consumption

habits and expectations around digital music, examining how they have developed

and been reinforced by emergent technologies, and the wider implications for

professional engineering practice. Prior to the class (overview in Table 1), students

should write a short reflection on how they consume and share digital content—for

example, whether they digitally share files with friends—and whether they think

that their expectations about these processes differs from other social groups. As

with the previous cases, the class should begin with an overview of the concept of

engineering as social experimentation (Martin 2005) and how it differs from

laboratory-based experimentation. Students should then work through the case of

the development of Napster and iTunes, considering questions about who had

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control and responsibility over these technologies, and at what times (e.g. Apple,

Shaun Fanning, users); who was affected by the technologies (e.g. users, musicians,

music companies) and whether they consented to be affected; who gained

knowledge as the ‘experiment’ progressed (e.g. Apple learning about user

expectations); and whether the long-term impacts of these technologies could have

been predicted. Students should also draw on their short reflection to discuss where

and how their own norms and expectations around digital content consumption have

been shaped by the emergence of these technologies. To conclude, the tutor can

draw the case and personal reflections back to the beginning of the class, and lead

discussion about how the emergence of Napster and iTunes could be viewed as a

social experiment in terms of its long-term and wide-scale impact; and the role and

responsibilities of software engineers in this process. This final point is particularly

important as, like all the cases presented here, students are asked to reflect on their

experiences as users of different types of digital technologies. Yet as professional

engineers, they will have a different set of responsibilities around the design,

research and development and management of these technologies and thus different

ethical issues to grapple with. In the following section, the ways in which personal

experience and professional ethics can be bridged in these cases will be discussed in

further detail.

Between Personal and Professional Ethics

An individual’s participation in a profession is embedded within the full narrative of

their lives (Martin 2002). The three cases presented here frame students’ personal

experiences with digital technologies within important constructs in the engineering

ethics curricula. This framing is critical as students need theoretical grounding in

order to allow them to formulate, articulate and defend ethical resolutions to a

broader community (Haws 2001). This section discusses how to facilitate translation

between personal experience and personal ethics, to the professional ethics of the

engineer. As Pfatteicher (2001) notes, a core part of this subject is providing

students with an understanding of the nature of engineering ethics, questioning

whether the topic only includes the technical work that engineers do as part of their

job, or whether it also includes what engineers do in their personal lives. This is key

as, although engineering ethics can be described as a form of professional ethics, the

divide between personal and professional ethics is fuzzy—engineers face problems

which are unique to their profession, but the solution to these problems may be the

same as those to comparable problems elsewhere (Bouville 2008).

There are direct links between the ethical problems which are commonly

encountered by students and those encountered by professional engineers, and

instructors must be able to make these bridges visible through classroom activities

(Vesilind 1996). Some scholars advocate that it can be useful for these discussions

to be led—at least in the first instance—by students or faculty with industry

experience, as younger undergraduates simply don’t ‘‘get’’ the difference between

personal and professional ethics without this guidance (Abraham et al. 1997).

Others argue that students are able to reconcile the social expectations of engineers


123

together with their own personal identity, as part of a process of role acquisition;

and that they themselves are able to see how the skills that they have learnt in the

classroom—working in teams, being neat and conscientious—can be transferred

into their professional lives (Loui 2005). Pfatteicher (2001) describes the types of

discussion that might be introduced to tie together issues around personal ethics

with professional ethics; here I build on her work to develop four areas of

questioning for each of the three cases, detailed in Table 2, which can be used in the

group discussions to draw out the links between the ethical facets of the cases and

broader professional practice.

Exploring how students might recognize and react to ethical dilemmas, and what

the consequence of both action and inaction are, allows students to explore the

notion of uncertainty in engineering situations. This is particularly important

because engineering students need to become comfortable with ambiguity, learning

that there is no single ‘best way’ which happens when the ‘right’ principles are

applied (Pfatteicher 2001, Rabins 1998). Understanding the nature of the

professional responsibilities associated with these issues is also critical in moving

discussion beyond personal responsibilities to consider the responsibilities that they

will hold as a professional engineer—as Schlossberger (1995) notes, engineers do

not act as individuals, but from a position of public trust. Considering the wider and

temporal nature of ethical actions and responsibilities allows students to consider

whether the impact of their professional activities will be felt in the near or far

future; and whether they would respond differently to a similar situation in several

years’ time. This follows the recommendations of institutions such as the Delft

University of Technology who advocate that future engineers be capable of

envisioning the ethical consequences of the actions in the context of their future

professional activities (Scheurwater and Doorman 2001). Finally, by considering the

location of these activities students can explore whether there is anything more, or

less, ethical about them occurring as part of their working professional lives and

thus prepare students for being able to identify ethical issues within their own

workplace (Lincourt and Johnson 2004). When facilitating the discussions around

these questions it is also important to draw on concepts and language that are used

in everyday life when talking about moral problems (Harris et al. 1996), such as

‘‘drawing the line’’ to describe which actions are acceptable and unacceptable, and

‘‘conflict’’ when talking about how individuals can be pulled in different directions

by competing considerations.

Conclusion

In this paper I have examined the literature around experiential learning and young

people’s extensive engagement with current digital technologies and platforms, to

develop case-studies describing how these experiences can be drawn on to develop

engineering ethics curricula based on technology practice and lived experience. The

paper also adds to the body of work around the role of learning technologies,

showing how contemporary digital technologies can be used as platforms for

learning delivery and sites of experiential learning.

1388 G. Voss

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Sandvig (2008) argues that the linkage of play, young people and innovation in

digital media is ordinary and not transformative—students see nothing unusual

about the way that they engage with smartphones, computer games and social

networking sites. It is precisely this ordinariness which makes these practices so

valuable for ethics education. Aspects of ‘ordinary’ mundane everyday life can be

Table 2 Questions to bridge personal experience and professional ethics (drawing on Pfatteicher 2001)

Case 1: Online gaming—group work and communication

Identifying and responding to

ethical problems

How can you improve communication in your group? How can you

tell when a group is working poorly together? Do you have a

responsibility to resolve tension and friction within your group, and

if so how?

Professional responsibilities

and consequences

Do professional engineers have a responsibility to work well together?

How would your career be affected by weak group work?

Wider impacts over time Who is affected by your group’s activities, and does this change over

time? Do you think that you will get better at working in groups as

your career progresses?

Work-based context Would you treat your work colleagues differently to the members of

your gaming group? Is good communication more important in the

workplace than in online games, and why?

Case 2: Social networking platforms—risk and safety


ethical problems

What are the risks around the use of social networking platforms? Can

users change their behaviour to make social networking platforms

safer, and should they have to? Can social networking platforms, or

other technologies, ever be designed to be completely safe?


and consequences

Do engineers have a responsibility to create safe products and

services? What would the professional consequences be of producing

unsafe technologies?

Wider impacts over time Do the risks associated with technologies change over time? Are

technologies seen to be safer if people have a choice about whether

to use them?

Work-based context How much control and responsibility do engineers have around

whether the products that they design are used safely? Do engineers

and users have different perceptions about how safe these products

are?

Case 3: Digital music—engineering as social experimentation


ethical problems

Who benefitted from the development of Napster, and who was

adversely affected? Was the response from recording companies and

Apple appropriate and if not, what could have been done differently?


and consequences

What responsibilities do engineers have for the long-term impact of

their projects, and can these impacts ever be predicted? How can the

unexpected uses of technologies affect the engineers who developed

them?

Wider impacts over time How do technologies affect the ways in which social norms and

expectations change over time? Which different groups of people are

affected by the impact of technology in society, and in what ways?

Work-based context What can engineers learn from the social impact and unexpected uses

of the technologies that that they develop? Who do engineers have a

responsibility to when they design products (e.g. users, employers,

shareholders)?


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harnessed into means of experiential learning, allowing students to draw on their

own experiences around contemporary technologies to create a focal point and

meaning around abstract ethical concepts. Engineering students are already aware of

the social qualities of technology via their use of personal digital technologies and

social media, and it seems counter-intuitive not to draw on this experience when

teaching engineering ethics. In the cases presented here, students will be able to

engage in active learning as they look beyond ‘just the facts’ to explore the

motivations, relationships, place, emotional and sociological factors at play in their

own lives (Menkel-Meadow 2000), and translate these personal experiences into

knowledge about professional engineering ethics. As Lincourt and Johnson (2004)

note, in order to successfully prepare students for professional work, engineering

ethics education must de-emphasize hypothetical cases and abstraction.

The cases presented in this paper are also primarily focused on digital technology

practices, rather than being representative of work found in the wider engineering

profession itself (e.g. Large scale projects, practices around mechanical and

electrical engineering). They are therefore intended to complement current

engineering ethics teaching content, drawing on personal experiences in a way

that will resonate with students and will allow them to view ethical behavior as an

ongoing and pervasive aspect of engineering practice.

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