Using Roleplay Case Studies Based on Real Scenarios to Teach Relevance of Ethics and Decision Making to Undergraduate Engineering Students

This paper proposes a practical workshop, similar to what our Mechanical Engineering first year students have to complete as a formative assessment to gain a better understanding on how ethics and decision making plays a key role in professional engineering practice. The basis for the workshop consists of four different case studies, all based in real scenarios, which are used as a basis for discussions to allocate which of the actors involved bears the responsibility of the incident. A reflective exercise takes place at the end of the workshop assessing to what extent the intended learning outcomes expected have been achieved. A follow up comparison of these reflective responses is planned to be benchmarked between the responses of the attendants to the workshop and those gathered from undergraduate engineering students during the last six years that this formative assessment has been running.