Improving the Learning Experience in Ethics Education with Groupware: A Case Study

Incorporating ethics into engineering education is crucial to address the intricate challenges of societal technologization, artificial intelligence, and automation. A cross-disciplinary and ongoing ethical education, engaging students with practical scenarios relevant to their field, has been identified as a superior approach for ethical training of engineers. Realizing this advanced ethical training necessitates dedicated support for both instructors and students. This paper introduces a major enhanced version 2.0 of EthicApp, a case-based collaborative learning platform that facilitates ethical education. The platform enables individual and collective examination of ethical cases across various disciplines. EthicApp 2.0 promotes analysis and collaborative decision-making in ethical contexts. A formative study of EthicApp 2.0 was conducted with software engineering students at a South American university (N = 109). The study utilized tasks involving semantic differential scales and the ranking of case stakeholders. Students performed these tasks on personal computers and smartphones, with random assignment. The study confirmed that EthicApp 2.0 could be used for various task types without prior training. Instructors can repurpose learning designs and monitor activities in real-time effectively. However, it was observed that the mobile interface posed usability challenges, and responses submitted via smartphones tended to be shorter. Despite these limitations, EthicApp 2.0 shows promise for scalability to larger samples and integration into diverse courses, aiding in developing ethical competencies as a cross-disciplinary skill.