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Ethics Across the Curriculum and the EAC Toolkit Concept

Module by: William Frey, Jose A. Cruz-Cruz

Summary: This module has been built around a presentation given at the Teaching Business Ethics Conference on June 8, 2006. It outlines the ethics across the curriculum program being implemented at the University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez by discussing (1) a hybrid approach to ethics across the curriculum (EAC) that combines freestanding courses in practical and professional ethics with ethics integration modules for mainstream BSE (business, science, and engineering) courses, (2) an EAC Matrix that identifies existing ethics integration projects and correlates them with moral objectives and accreditation goals, (3) an EAC Toolkit designed to generate pedagogical best practices, and (4) a summary of the process carried out in Business Administration at the University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez that culminated in the adoption of a Statement of Values for faculty, administration, students and staff. The purpose of this module is to describe these components of the EAC program in some detail and show how they fit together into a broad, comprehensive strategy for integrating ethics into the mainstream business, science, and engineering curriculum. This is part of an NSF-funded project, "Collaborative Development of Ethics Across the Curriculum Resources and Sharing of Best Practices," NSF SES 0551779.

I. Introduction

Ethics across the curriculum is an approach to ethics education that relies heavily on ethics modules integrated directly into mainstream business, science, and engineering courses. A four-part strategy has been adopted to implement EAC at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez:

  • First, a hybrid model called 15/85 has been adopted that combines recommended freestanding courses in practical and professional ethics with ethics integration projects that take place throughout the undergraduate BSE curriculum. By recruiting and empowering 15% of the BSE faculty through faculty development workshops, plan leaders project that they will reach 100% of UPRM BSE students with ethics activities and have a significant, measurable, and positive impact on 85%.
  • Second, an EAC Matrix occupies a central place in the assessment plan. This matrix is a heuristic device that identifies extant EAC integration projects and correlates them with important moral development objectives as well as the accreditation requirements of agencies such as AACSB and ABET. The EAC Matrix captures what BSE faculty are already doing to implement ethics and outlines further opportunities for expanding this effort.
  • Third, an EAC Toolkit provides faculty development opportunities, employs faculty in the creation of EAC best practices, and helps solidify committed faculty into a vibrant community.
  • Finally, a statement of values has been developed and implemented by the faculty of Business Administration at UPRM to identify and develop the core values that bring faculty together into a community that remains committed to educational and ethics objectives.

II. EAC Toolkit Concept

By allowing business, science, and engineering (BSE) professors to serve as ethics mentors, ethics across the curriculum (EAC) has proven effective in integrating ethics into mainstream BSE curricula and in providing BSE students with a practical ethics education. EAC, however, requires a robust educational infrastructure which empowers BSE professor as ethics mentors and provides them with renewable materials to carry out this role.

Taking advantage of innovations in software development effectively used by computer programmers to collaborate, such as open source code, and an existing open courseware tool, Connexions, this project, known as the EAC Toolkit, proposes to establish an online environment to enable the sharing of best practices in ethics instruction. The Toolkit will provide an online platform that facilitates integrated access, collaborative creation, continual improvement, and interactive dissemination of EAC resources and instructional best practices. It will include resources authored by and collaboratively developed through the EAC community. It will also generate meta-knowledge as members of the EAC community share insights gained by using EAC resources.

By featuring a robust interactive element, the Toolkit will add value to current and future websites, books, papers, cases, activities, etc. Because the Toolkit will serve as a continuous virtual retreat/workshop, it will build an online community where engineering, science, business, and ethics educators can come together, interact, and collaborate. Updating, refining and expanding the Toolkit's EAC materials will become self-sustaining processes as the supporting EAC community is formed and solidified by the very Toolkit it will come to sustain.

III. Toolkit Roles

  • The first level (guest features) provides a library of resources such as cases, modules, and assessment instruments that have been developed by EAC faculty. It also includes contextualized links to other resources available online. The objective is to highlight the availability and promote the dissemination of EAC resources in a practical, efficient and user-friendly fashion.
  • The second level (member features) builds upon the first by adding registered membership capabilities. Registered users will be able to participate interactively in the EAC community by contributing reviews, comments, and feedback. The objective is to promote widespread assessment and documentation of EAC resources.
  • The third level (author features) adds authoring and collaborating capabilities. Users will be able to customize existing materials, contribute new materials, and share meta-knowledge gained by using EAC resources. More importantly these members can collaborate online to co-author resources. In this way, the Toolkit will provide an environment that promotes multi-institutional, interdisciplinary collaboration in the development and refinement of EAC resources and best practices.
  • A series of valuable editing and mentoring collaborations would emerge from these three levels of Toolkit activities. Ethicists and BSE faculty working in the Toolkit environment will educate and mentor each other and work together as a team (1) throughout the conceptualization, editing and refinement of cases, and (2) throughout the assessment of materials, classroom activities, and instructor resources.
Figure 1: These slides summarize the elements of the EAC Toolkit and the different roles played by members of the Toolkit Community.
Toolkit Slides
Media File: ToolkitSlides.ppt

IV. Workshop Formats Designed to Support EAC Toolkit

Below are two workshops that EAC Toolkit developers have proposed to develop resources that will later be refined in Toolkit spaces. These workshops will also help recruit Toolkit partners who will play the roles of browsers, members, and authors/editors. Much of the recruiting strategy is based on employing EAC veterans (those experienced in EAC) to mentor EAC rookies (those new to EAC) in the development, teaching, and assessment of EAC integration activities and exercises.

Table 1: Table 1: Workshop A--Spring 2007 at UPRM
Activity Description/Objective
EAC Toolkit and Connexions Introduce EAC Veterans to Toolkit Concept and Connexions
Exploring Repository Familiarize Veterans with Toolkit use by having them explore the modules they authored in past EAC workshops
Module Refinement Veterans will share with participants how they have used modules in class, including revisions and assessments
Authoring Modules Veterans will author new EAC cases and modules for BSE classes. Cases, modules, and other EAC materials will be loaded directly into Connexions
Evaluation and Assessment Workshop Assessment will includeinformal brainstorming with participants plus a formal, confidential questionnaire

Past experience has demonstratred that the best way to recruit new BSE faculty into EAC efforts is to show them that their peers are already involved in this effort and have produced significant results. Those experienced and successful in EAC (faculty veterans) form teams with those new to this area (faculty rookies). In December 2003, UPRM ethicists held a successful faculty mentoring workshop and reported the results in the Proceedings of Frontiers in Education, 2004. (A similar two-day activity was held in the Dominican Republic for engineering faculty at at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra.) Just below is a table describing the activities of this workshop modified to integrate Toolkit activities.

Table 2: Table 2: Workshop B - Spring 2007 at UPRM and Summer 2007 at ASEE (Projected)
Activity / Objective Description
Introduce Ethics Across the Curriculum Introductory presentation on EAC. Demonstration of EAC using the pre-test exercise.
Learn to Use Ethics Tests Presentation on the Ethics Tests. Gray Matters: Ethics scenarios with solution alternatives evaluated and ranked by participants
Introduce Case Writing Modeling cases in Pre-Test and Gray Matters Activities. Short Presentaton on Case Writing
Introduce Toolkit Concept and Connexions Overview of Connexions and Toolkit capabilities. Exploration of Toolkit Repository/Prototype on CNX
BREAK LUNCH
Write Cases Participants form teams and write cases
Learn to use Toolkit and join Toolkit community Participants will post their draft cases into the Toolkit
Community Building Participant teams will debrief on the cases they developed and receive feedback from other teams
Evaluation and Assessment A brainstorming session and discussion with participants will elicit suggestions for improvement of the Toolkit Concept and the training activities. A written survey will be used to assess the workshop in general and allow for anonymous feedback
Figure 2: This presentation describes the main components of UPRM's EAC program: 15/85 (integration of ethics through a hybrid approach), the EAC Matrix (for assessment), developing a faculty Statement of Values, and the EAC Toolkit.
Presentation on Ethics Across the Curriculum for Teaching Business Ethics Conference
Media File: TBE Presentation Short Version.ppt

On October 29 at Frontiers in Education 2006, the Toolkit team presented on different aspects of the EAC program summarized above. Topics covered were the hybrid nature of EAC at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, the 15/85 plan that provides the support for an empowered 15% of the faculty to have a measurable, positive impact on 85% of the students, the EAC Matrix which is currently being used to document continuous improvement at UPRM between ABET visits, and a reconceptualization of the EAC Toolkit. This presentation can be accessed by clicking on the media file just below.

Figure 3: This presentation updates the EAC Tookit Concepts and also provides insight into other components of the UPRM EAC program.
FIE 2006 EAC Toolkit Presentation
Media File: FIE_2006_EAC_TOOLKIT.ppt

Several EAC modules that have been published in the CNX Content Commons are currently being "wrapped" into a module template that has been developed by the Toolkit team. This template is designed to provide a road map for the future development of the module as other EAC Toolkit Community members use the module, provide feedback, add to it, and make modifications to fit it into their own classes. Below are several screen shots that show different Toolkit modules, display the materials being refined in the Toolkit CNX Workgroups, and provide examples of module "cores" that have been wrapped inside the template and are at different stages of completion.

Figure 4: These screen shots provide examples of EAC Toolkit module cores wrapped in the module template.
EAC Toolkit Screen Shots
Media File: FIE_2006_CNX_SCREENS.doc

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