Learning to Link Micro, Meso, and Macro Ethical Concerns Through Role-Play Discussions

In this Research-to-Practice paper, we present findings from a study of role-play discussions for teaching technology ethics. In recent years there has been an increased emphasis on preparing students who are not only aware of microlevel aspects of ethics but are cognizant of broader ethical obligations at organizational and societal levels. In order to prepare engineers who can contribute towards addressing the grand challenges facing the world, such as sustainability, poverty, and social justice, among others, this approach is necessary. Students have to develop the ability to look beyond a narrow problem or issue, e.g., ethical design choice related to the use of a certain chemical compound and harms to users, to the larger environmental implications of this choice. Ethics is taught in a variety of ways in engineering, including diverse pedagogical approaches and topics, but one core technique is the use of case studies. Although case studies have been used by engineering ethics educators for decades, their efficacy for teaching issues beyond micro-ethics and linking different levels of ethical concerns is unclear. In this paper, we present a research study examining the efficacy of one genre of case studies, role-play discussion, in allowing participants to link ethical concerns at multiple levels. As exemplars, we discuss two cases we designed and used. We collected data from 20 groups of 4-6 students each that discussed a specific case and find evidence that when designed with appropriate roles and related narrative, role-play case studies can be an effective pedagogical intervention. This paper presents findings from qualitative analysis of student discussions and other pre/post assessment measures to show how students link micro, meso, and macro ethical concerns through role-play discussions.