Course Design: "Ethics and Moral Reasoning"
This is a 5-week course that aims to introduce students to the major theories about what ethics is and how to think through ethical disputes and decisions. It begins with a general consideration of why this is important to study at an academic level, and proceeds to cover the three most prominent ethical theories. In the final week, students apply what they have learned by discussing an ethical issue that affects their local community.
Instructor Guidance: “Ethics and Moral Reasoning”
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5
In the initial design of the course, there were no adequate resources for students to learn and apply the essential ideas, so I created a series of webpages to fulfill that task.
“Week 1” covers some of the major challenges to the idea that that there are ethical truths, and Weeks 2-4 discuss the three major ethical theories.
I include these examples to showcase not only my vision for instructional design, but my skills with web design, which were entirely self-taught.
Textbook: How should one live? An introduction to ethics and moral reasoning.
On the basis of the webpages that I created, I secured a contract to write a complete textbook for the course that expanded on the webpage material and added chapters on several major ethical controversies.
The version of the textbook that students use is interactive in many places, including quizzes, videos, games, pop-ups, and similar features designed to provide a variety of learning approaches besides simple text. Unfortunately, that version is only accessible to students; this version is the PDF which does not include those extra features.
Written Assignments
These are the written assignments for the Ethics and Moral Reasoning course.
Following principles of adult learning, the first two build toward the final paper, allowing the students to learn how to write an ethics paper by doing it step-by-step. They also allow students to draw upon their own interests and experiences rather than just focusing on abstract theories, also modeling adult learning approaches.
Assignment Guidance Video
In recognizing that many students were having trouble understanding the assignment instructions, and some may respond better to an alternative mode of presentation, I thought it would be beneficial to create a video that provides an overview of the final assignment. This is a bit rough as I did not have a chance to polish it as much as I would have liked.
Ethics Conversations
The Ethics and Moral Reasoning textbook and course present students with certain ideas regarding the process of moral reasoning. These can be hard for students to grasp in the abstract, and so we thought it could be helpful to illustrate that through some hypothetical conversations. I wrote the script for these conversations, and the textbook publishers hired some actors to film them.
Scenario 1: Relationship Ethics
Short Audio Lectures
These are short lectures on some basic ethical concepts, which I scripted and which were recorded by a professional voice actor.
Lecture 1: The Standard of Utility
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