Institute for Social Science Research

This project, funded through the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, investigates problem-based learning as an effective methodology to instill ethics as a foundation during students’ enrollment in an introductory ECE course. During the three years of this project, ethical problems in electrical engineering will be introduced to undergraduate students working in teams using either traditional lecture-based activities or problem-based learning activities developed by the principal investigators. Students are assessed through their course-work assignments and survey instruments to evaluate their learning in terms of identifying and communicating ethical dimensions of engineering problems, opinions regarding the teaching approach, and their perspectives on the social responsibilities of engineers. The results will be used to evaluate the efficacy of this problem-based learning implementation at increasing and retaining attitudes towards ethical and social responsibility in engineering, which has broad applications for tech students across all disciplines of science and engineering.