Pedagogical innovation to captivate students to ethics education in engineering

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of the article is to develop an innovative pedagogic tool: an escape room board game to be played in-class, targeting an introduction to an ethics course for engineering students. The design is student-centred and aims to increase students' appreciation, commitment and motivation to learning ethics, a challenging endeavour for many technological students.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology included the design, development and in-class application of the mentioned game. After application, perception data from students were collected with pre- and post-action questionnaire, using a quasi-experimental method.

Findings

The results allow to conclude that the developed game persuaded students be in class in an active way. The game mobilizes body and mind to the learning process with many associated advantages to foster students' motivation, curiosity, interest, commitment and the need for individual reflection after information search.

Research limitations/implications

The main limitation of the game is its applicability to large classes (it has been successfully tested with a maximum of 65 students playing simultaneously in the same room).

Originality/value

The originalities and contributions include the presented game that helped to captivate students to ethics area, a serious problem felt by educators and researchers in this area. This study will be useful to educators of ethics in engineering and will motivate to design tools for a similar pedagogical approach, even more so in areas where students are not especially motivated. The developed tool is available from the authors at no expense.

Citation

Monteiro, F. and Sousa, A. (2023), "Pedagogical innovation to captivate students to ethics education in engineering", Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-02-2023-0056