Effects of an Audience Response System for Peer Evaluations of Student Presentations in an Engineering Ethics Course

Abstract

Engineering Ethics is an example of a subject in which there is no single correct answer. Unlike most other cources in the engineering field, where problems have a unique answer, students need to derive an optimal solution according to the context. For the ethics course, the objective is being able to apply the ideas in practice in the real world, and this should be more of a focus than being able to understand the specialist terminology and derive model solutions. Group discussion and analysis of past cases are effective ways of cultivating this kind of ethical sense. In this study, we used an audience response system in classes and evaluated the learning benefits. Having student's own responses visualized in real time encourages active learning while still maintaining continuity of instruction. In particular, in the group presentationsfor ethics case studies, peer evaluations of the presentation techniques as well as the content of the ideas presented were used. Having the voting results visualized in real time was useful for encouraging students to take an active interest in listening to the presenttations. This was an effective way to encourage students to come to their own conclusions while understanding the diverse range of values held by other people.