Integrating Mechanical and Ethical Reasoning through Inverted Instruction of Ethical Cases

Christopher Papadopoulos and William FreyUniversity of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez

Association for Practical and Professional Ethics20th Annual Meeting

Cincinnati, OHMarch 3-6, 2011

Grupo Interdisciplinario de Filosofía, Ingeniería y Tecnología (FIT)

Outline

1. Inverted Instruction

2. Methodology: Application to Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse (1981) in Engineering Statics class

3. Summary of Results

4. Synthesis & Conclusions: Integration of Ethics & Mechanics

Inverted Instruction

The Regular Classroom

The Inverted Classroom

The Inverted Classroom (Really)

• “[E]vents that have traditionally taken place inside the classroom now take place outside the classroom and vice versa.” [Lage, Platt & Treglia, 2000]

• Often leverages online instructional tools

Pre Lecture

Learn material Short quiz

During Lecture

Active Exercises, Q&A

Post Lecture

HW/reflective exercises; Supervised group study session

Online-Offline Synergies

1. “Certainly, online course delivery can magnify bad pedagogy. Online activities can also magnify, enhance, and supplement good pedagogy.”

[MPPE, Huff/Frey, 2005, SEE 11(3)]

Online-Offline Synergies

2. After the assignment

– Provides space for reflection– Students can reflect upon and capture

what they have learned• They assess their learning experience• They can experiment with module language,

concepts, and activity

– Enables teachers to assess the module• Students write out their views on the module• They answer questions (take pre and post

tests)

Online-Offline Synergies

3. Is this good?

– Something gained– Something lost

Pedagogical Underpinnings

Also:

• “Active” learning [many]

• Immediate feedback [many]

• Time on task [Taraban]

• Subject-focused [Palmer]

See also: Dollár & Steif, 2008;Papadopoulos & Santiago-Román, 2010

Dual feedback loops proposed by M. Lovett, unpublished; c.f., Zuboff, 1989

Methodology

Pedagogical Strategy

• Inverted Case Method: Engage students in making a decision from the participatory standpoint, rather than simply doing a retrospective, arm chair analysis.

• Create strategic insertions based on the case of Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkway (KCHRW) collapse because content is available and directly relevant to Engineering Statics.

Insertions

Insertion 1Week 6

Mechanical analysis abstract model that represents, but does not identify, KCHRW

Find real examples corresponding to model

Insertion 2Week 15

Hypothetical choice to redesign a hotel walkway that mimics, but does not identify, KCHRW

Relation to Insertion 1 is suggested

Insertion 3Week 16

Direct presentation of KCHRW case

Clear description of mechanical issues

Discussion of ethical issues

Write reflective essay

Insertion 1A

B

C

W

W

A

B

C

W

W

Case 1 Case 2

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

4

5 6

• Are there any significant differences in the forces carried by the struts and the contact forces between the bolts and the blocks between Case 1 and Case 2?

• Can you think of any examples of real structures whose static behavior could be modeled by either case?

Insertion 1

Insertion 2

• Which design would you choose?• Which design would you have chosen if you had not completed

Insertion 1?

4th Floor

2 nd Floor

Initial Design Proposed Modification

Long rods threaded over entire length

Shorter rods threaded only near connections

Insertion 3

Reveal case of KCHRW:

• Short case narrative & chronology

• Mechanical analysis

• Socio-technical description of case

• Video from before & after collapse

18

Mechanical Analysis

A

B

C

W

W

1

2

3

4

A

B

C

W

W

Case 2

1

2

3

4

5 6

Case 1

Mechanical Analysis

A

B

C

W

W

1

2

3

4

2

W

2

W

2

W

2

W

W

W

A

B

C

W

W

1

2

3

4

5 6

W2

W

2

W

2

W

2

W

WW W

Summary of Results

Tabulated Results

ChoiceInsertion 2

Reasons CitedInsertion 2

Score/10Insertion 1 (N)

InitialDesig

n

Modified

Design

Cost

lower/higher

Safety/

Risk

cited

MechanicalReasoning

correct/incorrect

9-10 (4) 2 2 3/1 4 1/3

6-8 (8) 2 3 1/0 1 2/3

0-5 (7) 2 3 1/1 2 1/4

Total (19) 6 8 5/2 7 4/10

• N = 19 total respondents completing Insertion 1

Tabulated ResultsIssues Identified and Coded in Insertion 3

N N-grou

p

Understanding which design is betterImportance of good FBD

74

9

Importance of Individual Responsibility/Integrity/DutyNeed to pay attention to detail/check resultsNeed to avoid risk

1064

13

Tradeoff of Safety over saving time/moneyBearing on human life/safety in engineering

1112

17

Importance of Collective Responsibility 2 2

• N = 20 total respondents completing Insertion 3

Synthesis & Conclusions

Insights from Student Comments

“ We first looked at the Hyatt Regency design problem a long time before we knew it was an actual design for the Hyatt Regency. Many of us thought that the difference between the two designs was very little maybe even nothing. Some thought that the weight that was distributed evenly in both, but as we found out the day of the presentation the second design is half as good as the first.”

Evidence that an ethics case can “finish” and accomplish a lesson in engineering mechanics and statics

Insights from Student Comments

“It shocked me so much thanks to the fact that the night before we were assigned a statics problem which was similar to the design used for this walkway. But the problem was that to save time I did it as fast as I could and didn’t even think about double-checking my results”

Case also accomplishes moral imagination

Student imaginatively projects classroom activities into actual engineering situation

Insights from Student Comments

“Something that I learned is that is the importance of every decision. As an engineer every decision you make is very important, so you have to carefully analyze every detail of every decision. Also, I learned how every decision you make you have make knowing other people’s lives could depend on it.”

Importance of detail and bearing on life safety in engineering

Insights from Student Comments

“And I would also like to say that thanks to his words on the subject and those of other engineers I have spoken with since this special class was given I will promise to never again do my work (In the classroom and on the work field) just to "get it out of the way" but I will do it and continue double checking it until I am one hundred percent sure that there are no errors in what I did.” (emphasis added)

Motivation to take individual responsibility/ownership for actions

Insights from Student Comments

“The persons who did this error probably didn’t noticed it because of the opportunities they viewed on saving money because the whole bars costs much more than shorter bars.”

Issue of cost vs. careful design

Insights from Student Comments

“This was the moment those engineers should though about when the world noticed those walkways collapsed not beacuse of weather, materials, or an attack to the hotel but because of a simple mistake that even students of a statics class could had noticed and fix.” (emphasis added)

Ironic: this perhaps explains why the case is so complex, and why the failure happened

General Pedagogical Issues1. Big cases overwhelm students with information

– Moral Imagination challenges:• Struggle to frame the case• Fail to separate relevance from irrelevance

– Moral Creativity challenges:• Need to challenge students to go beyond the obvious

solutions

2. Big cases also raise a fundamental question about the role of basic and intermediate moral concepts

– Are cases merely means of modeling these concepts so that the teacher can then integrate them into a covering law approach to moral decision-making?

– Or must students learn to use the concepts as tools to help them respond to the challenges presented by moral imagination and creativity?

Ethics as Engineering Pedagogy

1. Two objections to carrying out EAC interventions, rebuked by student comments:

• I don’t have the expertise• I don’t have the time

2. Reformulates the interdisciplinary relation between ethicist and engineer as a cooperative, synergistic, and interdisciplinary collaboration

• Engineers without ethics are blind (See other student comments describing how he rushed through the assignment)

• Ethicists without engineering content (such as structural mechanics) are irrelevant (=empty of essential content)

The ethical problem in Hyatt case could not be fully formulated or understood without the explanation of the underlying mechanical principles

More Pedagogical Strategies1. If we characterize moral responsibility as Fingarette does as

“response to relevance” then the central problem in the Hyatt case is seeing the relevance of the change in design

2. How can we train engineers to see theoretical models in real world instantiations?

• As the student comments indicate, seeing the video of the collapse of the walkway dramatizes to students the ethical relevance of such engineering decisions

• Students need to see engineering concepts in some kind of dramatic context and realize what Dewey calls a “dramatic rehearsal”

3. To some, this sounds like approaching moral responsibility and adopting the pedagogy of teaching virtue

• Virtues can be seen as skills that students must practice, refine, and hone

• Virtues also consist of an ecological aligning of thought and reason with emotion, perception, sensitivity, and, of course, action

Interdisciplinary Synergies

1. Bill conceived of a fresh way to help Chris experiment with this mode of teaching the case = (new approach to old case)

2. Chris taught Bill how to formulate the ethical problem in the case

• The ethical problem flows out of the theoretical models

3. Bill presented a simple case narrative that showed videos taken just before and after the collapse of the walkway

4. Chris provided activities in the inverted classroom that both prepared students for the module and guided them in reflecting on its content in the aftermath

5. There is a trajectory to this collaboration that I find interesting

• It began as a multi-disciplinary activity: an engineering teaching activity juxtaposed with an ethics presentation and reflection

• But it transformed into an interdisciplinary collaboration where each of us learned to reframe our approaches to engineering ethics

Questions & Discussion