Tips and Tricks

By instructors, for instructors.

Ethics games are beneficial for engineering students of all majors.

Gamification encourages students in new and exciting ways.

 

Toxic Workplaces

Before diving into gameplay, try to get students to understand the ethical questions as a group. Have them discuss the ethical dilemmas present in the scenario, explain the different perspectives of each person involved, and discuss the course of action they would take to resolve the situation.

After playing the game, try having the students place the responses in the order that they feel are most ethical (as opposed to based on percentage responded) with justifications. Next have them reflect on the original response to the situation that they wrote down. Encourage the students to reflect on any changes to their responses after going through all of the others.

Have students respond to Debrief questions to inspire their knowledge and understanding of ethics in engineering. Here are some examples for questions students can reflect on.

• Did this game change the way you think about ethics in the engineering workplace?
• Reflect on the strategies you used while playing the game. (i.e. beneficial actions, detrimental actions, and what you would do differently to improve your score) (how did your interactions with your team influence your decisions??)
• How did your experience and feelings differ from others in the group?
• Reflect on an ethical dilemma that you have personally encountered in your life.
• How was your decision making process similar to that of this game?
• How would you have handled a professional situation/scenario that you may have heard or seen (i.e. from the media, class, or word of mouth).
• How do the ethical theories relate to the responses in this activity? Perform a clustering exercise placing each theory that applies under each response. Check with other teams.
• What changes would you make to this game, if any?