Effectiveness and Utility of a Case-Based Model for Delivering Engineering Ethics Professional Development Units

This article describes an action research project conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to resolve a problem with the ability of licensed and/or certified engineers to obtain the ethics-related professional development units or hours (PDUs or PDHs) needed to maintain their credentials. Because of the recurring requirement and the static nature of the information, an initial, in-depth training followed by annually updated refresher training was proposed. A case model approach, with online delivery, was selected as the optimal pedagogical model for the refresher training. In the first two years, the only data that was collected was throughput and information retention. Response rates indicated that the approach was effective in helping licensed professional engineers obtain the needed PDUs. The rates of correct responses suggested that knowledge transfer regarding ethical reasoning had occurred in the initial training and had been retained in the refresher. In FY13, after completing the refresher, learners received a survey asking their opinion of the effectiveness and utility of the course, as well as their impressions of the case study format vs. the typical presentation format. Results indicate that the courses have been favorably received and that the case study method supports most of the pedagogical needs of adult learners as well as, if not better than, presentation-based instruction. Future plans for improvement are focused on identifying and evaluating methods for enriching online delivery of the engineering ethics cases.