DEVELOPING SCENARIOS FOR THE VIRTUAL SIMULATION OF MORAL DILEMMAS

The paper presents a preparatory phase of a more ampleresearch project: designing an interactive educationalsoftware meant to support the development of the leadershipcompetences of the military students. This software could beused by future military leaders for practicing different ways toapproach and solve moral dilemmas. The first phase of theproject refers to designing a set of scenarios of someprofessional situations with controversial moral potential. Wewere focused on the relationships in the military, the ways ofexercising leadership in different contexts, and the decisionsmaking process in case of ambiguous ethical conditions. Inorder to set some possible courses of action for the interactivevirtual simulations, we conducted a qualitative research on theground, applying structured interviews. At first we collected alot of stories related to the leadership in Romanian Army, andthen we made a qualitative analysis of them, using the Atlas.tisoftware. These led us toward several suggestions and cluesconcerning the moral values which should guide the virtualscenarios. Likewise, there were outlined some alternatives forsplitting the possible course of action in the key points. In thenext stage of the project, the scenarios shall be validatedthrough the focus group method, in order to strengthen theirveracity and their scientific basis, before converting them intoan effective virtual simulation.