Students design an action plan to voice an ethics concern at work.

This module was designed to help students learn to develop an action plan for ethics. The book by Mary Gentile, "Giving Voice to Values" argues that most students already know that they should never build a bad bridge. However, when faced with the complexity of workplace politics they sometimes do not have a plan for properly articulating an ethical concern.

The module was designed to be added to an existing class project so students had context for building an action plan for ethics. The module was implemented in a heat transfer course, but was also implemented in a slightly different context/project in a fluids course. With small modifications it could be added to other classes.

Ethics Dilemma - The students worked the first half of the project to design a device to transport a vaccine and keep it cold for 48 hours. During the ethics module, students were then told that the company they work for has changed the plan, and the device will now be used to transport the vaccines for 5 days longer (7 days total) without the ability to refrigerate the vaccines in the interim.

This dilemma is the focus of how the students proceed to make an action plan. They are guided to analyze the needs of all the stakeholders, and then determine how they will communicate the plan they developed to a manager. All of this to develop skills and habits to help them make an action plan for an ethical concern in the future. 

Who: This module was designed for a junior level required class on heat transfer. The students were mostly mechanical engineers. The project was groups of 2-3 students, with around 40 students in the class.

Where: This was implemented in a lecture course during the second half of the class, after students had already completed the preliminary design for a vaccine carrier. An example of the full report generated by one student group is provided below, the ethics portion is appendix 6 of the report.

When: The in-class portion required one class session for the worksheet activity (attached below). The in class activity started with a four-squares voting activity with several options for students to think about. Then they worked through the worksheet in the normal project groups. Out of class time was 4 weeks, this was part of the final project for the course.

What: Students needed knowledge of cost estimation and could then research the alternative ethics scenarios they proposed. Lecture materials and homework prior to the project included heat transfer material, specifically the thermal resistor analogy, transient analysis, and multi-mode analysis.