| Topic area | Whistle-blowing |
| Target audience | Undergraduate and graduate level IS/CS/CE/EE majors in general. |
| Activity type | Group presentation, paper. |
| Time required | 1.5 class periods (2 hours?) |
| Attachments | None. |
| Additional materials |
Copies of the IEEE Guidelines for Engineers Dissenting on Ethical Grounds
describing the steps of ethical dissent. Copies of case materials for each group. |
| Background needed to complete the assignment | Students should have been introduced to the stages of ethical dissent as described in the IEEE Guidelines for Engineers Dissenting on Ethical Grounds. Students in each group will need copies of case materials or pointers to such materials as would be sufficient to allow them to construct a mapping of the case events onto the ethical dissent stages. They should be encouraged to pursue additional materials to clarify their mappings. |
| References |
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| Last modified | August 1998 |
Goals for the activity:
To create a better understanding of the steps of ethical dissent by
having the students map the ethical dissent steps onto a real scenario.
To encourage students to consider actions and responses which might have resolved
the ethical issue at each stage of dissent.
To provide students experience in organizing material and presenting it orally
and in written form.
Knowledge / skills / attitudes to be developed (behavioral objectives):
Students will learn to apply and manage the steps of ethical dissent in the
context of actual cases.
Procedure:
Students will be given a copy of the IEEE Guidelines for Engineers Dissenting
on Ethical Grounds. The instructor should spend a few moments briefly
introducing the guidelines in class. The instructor should divide the class
into groups with approximately four students per group. Each group will be
given materials introducing one of the ethical dissent case studies.
If the class is large, this might mean that each case study will be the topic
for more than one group. Each group will be responsible for preparing an analysis
of its case for presentation in the next class period. The group members
should be prepared to make an oral presentation briefly describing the background
of their case, tracing the unfolding of the events of the case, and mapping
this progression onto the ten steps of ethical dissent. It would be expected
that each presentation would require approximately 20-30 minutes. This
allows for two or three presentations in the class period.
Since there are likely to be more that two or three groups of
students, it is suggested that all groups be prepared to present,
but on presentation day only a single group be selected to present
each case. During discussion, members of the non-selected groups could offer
any additional insights which might have occurred during their
groups' analyses. All students would be required to write a
brief paper describing their group\106s analysis of their case.
For each stage of dissent, the students should suggest the actions
or responses which would have allowed for problem resolution at that point.
Assessing outcomes:
Both the oral presentations and the written analyses will provide the
instructor will provide the instructor with opportunities to evaluate the
students' level of understanding of ethical dissent.
Additional remarks:
This module assumes that some discussion of the concept of ethical dissent
will have already occurred prior to the distribution of the IEEE guidelines.
When the guidelines are distributed, the instructor should indicate that
all of the identified steps may not have occurred or may not be documented
for each case. This is also an appropriate time to make the point that it
should be the intent of the ethical dissenter to achieve a correction of the
perceived problem as early as possible without progressing far along the step
sequence. Students should be encouraged to identify actions of participants
at each stage might have resulted in a satisfactory problem resolution
at that point. After the oral presentations, one possible topic of discussion
would be the presence or absence in each case of active support of ethical
dissent by the relevant professional organization.
Author contact information:
Gerald Engel
Computer Science and Engineering
University of Connecticut at Stamford
Stamford, CT06901-2315
Fax: (203) 251-8431
E-mail: g.engel@compmail.com
Dewey Rundus
Computer Science and Engineering
University of South Florida
Tampa, FL 33620-5399
Fax: (813) 974-5456
E-mail: rundus@csee.usf.edu
Elise Turner
Computer Science Department
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469-5752
Fax: (207) 581-4977
E-mail: eht@bronte.umcs.maine.edu