Using Roleplay Case Studies Based on Real Scenarios to Teach Relevance of Ethics and Decision Making to Undergraduate Engineering Students

Workshop Recommended citation: Jurado, N. (2025). Using Roleplay Case Studies Based on Real Scenarios to Teach Relevance of Ethics and Decision Making to Undergraduate Engineering Students. In Kangaslampi, R., Langie, G., Järvinen, H.-M., & Nagy, B. (Eds.), SEFI 53rd Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Tampere, Finland. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17631661. This Conference Paper is brought to you for open access by the 53rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) at Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. USING ROLEPLAY CASE STUDIES BASED ON REAL SCENARIOS TO TEACH RELEVANCE OF ETHICS AND DECISION MAKING TO UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING STUDENTS N. Jurado a, 1 a Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London, Torrington Place, WC1E 7JE, London, UK, ORCID 0000-0002-0759-1590 Conference Key Areas: Engineering skills, professional skills, and transversal skills; Engineering ethics education. Keywords: Ethics Education, Decision Making, Engineering Professional Conduct, Critical Thinking ABSTRACT This paper proposes a practical workshop, similar to what our Mechanical Engineering first year students have to complete as a formative assessment to gain a better understanding on how ethics and decision making plays a key role in professional engineering practice. The basis for the workshop consists of four different case studies, all based in real scenarios, which are used as a basis for discussions to allocate which of the actors involved bears the responsibility of the incident. A reflective exercise takes place at the end of the workshop assessing to what extent the intended learning outcomes expected have been achieved. A follow up comparison of these reflective responses is planned to be benchmarked between the responses of the attendants to the workshop and those gathered from undergraduate engineering students during the last six years that this formative assessment has been running. 1 Corresponding Author N. Jurado n.jurad[email protected]k 1 BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE 1.1 Teaching Context of Ethics Case Studies This paper proposes using Ethics case studies based on real scenarios to enhance the understanding that Professional conduct, Ethics and Decision Making plays a key role in the professional practice of engineers. This exercise was implemented for the first time six years ago in UCL Mechanical Engineering, in 2019. I have been running it for the first year mechanical engineering students since. Considering the departmental cohort size for that period of time, the sample size is 1400 students. This formative assessment is fulfilled within a module dedicated to Design and Professional Skills, part of the Integrated Engineering Program (Mitchell et al., 2021), during the week dedicated to Ethics and Professional Conduct. 1.2 Rationale behind the Ethics Case Studies based on real Scenarios The implementation of this methodology , i.e. using real scenarios for which key names of the actors or locations are changed, has been a successful attempt to create interest in the Ethics subject from our undergraduate engineering students. This was identified to be necessary to overcame the initial scepticism that many first year engineering students present when they are informed that not only they will be taught the core mechanical engineering subjects, but also professional skills. This scepticism comes from a quite naïve perspective on engineering, that some of our undergraduates have, who believe that the only skills needed to succeed as a professional engineer are the ones related to technical sciences ( i.e. calculus, algebra, materials science, thermodynamics, etc.). This viewpoint has been observed by other practitioners ain the related literature(Balakrishnan & Tarlochan, 2015). Consequently, when our students are presented with the fact that one of the first modules they will study in university will be focused on training their professional skills (i.e. Ethics, Professional Conduct, Technical communication, Teamwork &Leadership, Visualisation, Critical thinking, etc), which is the context of where the formative assessment focus of the present paper takes place, they do not hesitate on showing their initial reluctance. Encouragingly enough, by the end for the first term, that is when most of the curriculum on professional skills has been delivered, the fraction of the cohort that keeps believing that professional skills are not important for their future as professional engineers is minimal. By then, the students understand and agree with one of the premises stated in the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Report ‘Engineering Ethics in Practice Report’, where it says: “Engineers invent the future and their work affects the lives of millions of people, for better or worse.”(The Royal Academy of Engineering, 2011). This formative assessment is a preparatory activity for a summative assessment that the students need to complete two weeks after they participate in the Ethics Case Studies. The subsequent summative assessment is an Ethics Debate that is focused on the ethical implications of an technological solution that the students have been researching and working on for two months, by the time they need to debate on the ethical implications of it. Hence, having completed previously the Ethics Case studies and understanding the cause-effect relation between professional decisions and the real consequences they have (i.e., number of deceases as consequence of an accident, or environmental impact that takes decades for the ecosystem to recover) helps the students to recognise the importance of adopting an ethical professional conduct. This vision is promoted by (Atesh et al., 2016). Furthermore, these Case Studies help the students to understand the potential impact that a bad or not sufficiently evaluated engineering decision can have down the line (i.e. when the technical solution reaches the users). A similar approach has been used before by other academics (Vilaza & Bækgaard, 2022) This way the students gain an enhanced view and are better prepared for their summative assessment (i.e. Ethics Debate) to evaluate comprehensively the worst case scenarios that their technical solution could give place to, and, hence, to anticipate for those issues by addressing that topic in the design stage. Or, at least, being aware of the potential implications to be able to justify the decision made against other possible alternatives, applying critical thinking together with ethical considerations on the society, and environment. For instance, a decision made at the design stage about using material A instead of material B because it is cheaper, not considering the material characteristics needed for the specific use (i.e. strength requirements, conditions of temperature and pressure that the material will be working at). Our first year students , before completing the Ethics Case Studies tend to stop the evaluation after acknowledging that one material is less expensive that the other. However after having completed the Case Studies, they will keep questioning that the financial criterion might not be sufficient to select the best material for a specific application. This has been extensively acknowledged in the student feedback collected after completing this formative assessment. 2 WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES 2.1 Target audience The target audience for this practical workshop are teaching practitioners and/or students ( MSc students, PhDs students) who would like to explore this type of formative exercise with the potential to be added into their practice. The participants will be able to experience in first person and complete the ethical discussion around the scenario presented, by adopting the roles of the students. This workshop will be facilitated in small groups of 5-6 people each. 2.2 Expected learning outcomes The expected learning outcomes gained upon completing this workshop are described as follows: - Simultaneous training and enhancement of Ethics, Decision Making and Critical thinking skills. - Better understanding that Ethics and Decision Making play a key role in engineering professional practice because it has important consequences on society and environmental impact (for the better or for the worse). - Training empathetic skills by being able to acknowledge different points of views and justification for decisions from different actors. - Exercising the allocation responsibilities linked to decisions made and the impact they generate. 3 WORKSHOP DESIGN 3.1 Time plan The time plan for this practical workshop is as presented in Table 1. Table 1 Time plan for Ethics Case Studies Workshop Run time Activity Notes 7 min Introduction and context of the exercise All participants 3 min Setting small groups (5-6) In groups: allocated by the facilitator 10 Briefing on Case study allocated In groups: Individual quiet reading time. Each participant will have access to a segmented piece of the information linked to the scenario. 10-12 min Interactive activity 1: each of the actors present their role and the decisions they made to the rest of the participants within their Case Study (2 minutes per group member) In groups: During this discussion is when all the participants acquire the full picture of the situation. This mimics what occurs in reality when an expert hearing takes place, which often occurs after an accident or disaster. 15min Interactive activity 2: Discussion and allocation of responsibility In groups: Here it is where the ethical implications of the decisions made by each of the actors are evaluated. The participants have to come to an agreement of who is hold responsible for the incident/accident/situation 5min Gathering reflections in the room All participants: A Mentimeter survey will be completed and comments available for the participants to discuss on 5 min Conclusions All participants: preliminary comparison with reflections from the undergraduate students who have completed this as an assessment. 3.2 Brief description of the Case Studies The description included in the present paper is purposedly succinct, in an attempt that prospective attendants to the workshop experience it in a similar way to the students, i.e., with minimal previous information. This way, the participants will not have access to additional information (given that the case studies are based on real accidents/disasters) to what is included in the briefing of the exercise, which will be provided during the workshop. There will be a maximum of four cases run in parallel during the workshop, around different topics: fire, flood, oil spill, and drug overdose. Each participant will be allocated to one case by the workshop facilitator, which will be the only one they get information about and do the subsequent ethical discussion on. The information that each of the participants taking part in an Ethics roleplay will be tailored to the role they are representing, which tries to replicate the information that these actors might have had access at the time of the real accident. Several roles (46) will be available within each case, and will be assigned by the facilitator. Examples of these roles are: Chief engineer of a project, Local authorities, Government regulator, internal companies providing engineering services, external contractors, researcher, chief scientist, company acquiring goods, company supplying with the goods, safety equipment manufacturer, etc. 3.3 Interactivity This practical workshop is very much based on the interactive discussions between the members of each group, which will be representing the main actors involved in the real case scenario/disaster/accident. It is expected that minimal intervention from the facilitators will be needed; only key questions will be set to guide the conversation for the discussions to be more effective and to help reaching the stage of allocation of responsibilities as early as possible, but without missing important details of the cases studied. 4 WORKSHOP RESULTS An evaluation comparing the reflective comments provided by the attendants to the workshop and the feedback submitted by the undergraduate students has been completed, looking at similarities and differences between the two groups sampled. 4.1 How the workshop took place: practical notes. The workshop took place having 18 attendants and being aided by three facilitators. Hence, the comments are from a total sample of 21 participants. A decision was made on the day to use the same case scenario for all of the groups to ease the subsequent conversation, and so everyone had the same knowledge about the cases comments. The session was interactive, where all the participants intervened very actively, assuming their assigned roles within the roleplay scenario enthusiastically. 4.2 Benchmarking impressions from workshop participants and Y1 Mechanical Engineering students 4.2.1 Sampled examples when the question asked was “Something that surprised me about the session”. 4.2.1.1 Similar responses: - How well people took on the roles and argued the case. - The overlapping roles and the complexity of the case. Especially when communicating your own role// How complex this problem is and how many stakeholders are involved. - Ethics are complicated! There are no easy answers.//That there is not a single nor simple solution. - How unfortunately rich the material (based on real case) is with the conflicts of interest. - It was an interesting exercise especially with the multiple nuances and no resolution 4.2.1.2 Comments from workshop attendants not observed for engineering students: - The efficiency of the one-page description - Timing for individual responses. - It was much more versatile than I expected. 4.2.2 Sampled examples when the question asked was “Something I enjoyed about the session”. 4.2.2.1 Similar responses. - Listening, discussion, topics.// Everybody was active in their roles. - Active and chance to debate and discuss.// The discussion and chance to reflect.// Joint discussion on the case. - Respectful discussion - Feeling involved immediately. - Good case to understand decision making impact. I think this is often underestimated in engineering. 4.2.2.2 Comments from workshop attendants not observed for engineering students. - The discussion and the different moral intuitions people have. This helps in building critical moral thinking. - The psychological safety of playing roles, communicating failures and our lack of knowledge. 4.2.3 Sampled examples when the question asked was “What could be improved about the session” 4.2.3.1 Similar responses. - Time//More time//Enough time. - Outcome in real life or where the case stands - For the role play - a bit more information of the explicit role. - I would like to know what happened 4.2.3.2 Comments from workshop attendants not observed for engineering students. - Some feedback on how students experience this might be interesting for us researchers. - Include the residents association as a role. - Maybe something tangible would help focus the discussion, line a picture or an object - the cladding, a fire extinguisher... - Adding a final voting element on each group to appoint the actor most responsible. // A voting system at the end. For the latter comment listed, this might diminish one of the main LOs of this exercise which is understanding that all the actors involved had some responsibility the disaster. So maybe this could be applied, framing is well as the actor with most responsibility, clarifying that everyone held some kind of accountability. 5 CONCLUSIONS This practical roleplay exercise has shown to be very versatile in terms of audiences it can be applied to; in terms of level of expertise of the participants and different engineering specialities. This was later confirmed by follow-up conversations held after the workshop with the participants, where they had started thinking how they could change some details of the case scenarios or the example used to be implemented in their teaching. Lots of interest in applying this approach and use these roleplays scenarios in other settings - i.e., other universities as an example of gamification, and within other subjectsi.e. civil engineering, architecture, electrical engineering-. This tool shows great potential to obtain the learning outcomes originally stated in the introduction section Mostly, same LOs and experience from attendants to workshop during SEFI2025 as from Y1 engineering students. This means it is inclusive to a wide range of experiential backgrounds: from first year engineering students to HE practitioners. REFERENCES Atesh, M., Ward, T., & Baruah, B. (2016). Analyzing the perception, judgment and understanding of Ethics among engineering students in higher education. 2016 15th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training, ITHET 2016. https://doi.org/10.1109/ITHET.2016.7760702 Balakrishnan, B., & Tarlochan, F. (2015). Engineering students’ attitude towards engineering ethics education. IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, EDUCON, 2015-April. https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2015.7095944 Mitchell, J. E., Nyamapfene, A., Roach, K., & Tilley, E. (2021). Faculty wide curriculum reform: the integrated engineering programme. European Journal of Engineering Education, 46(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2019.1593324 The Royal Academy of Engineering. (2011). Engineering ethics in practice : a guide for engineers. Royal Academy of Engineering. www.raeng.org.uk/ethicsinpractice Vilaza, G. N., & Bækgaard, P. (2022). Teaching User Experience Design Ethics to Engineering Students: Lessons Learned. Frontiers in Computer Science, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2022.793879