Three times throughout the year, the Elizabethtown Magazine publishes a list of the most recent accomplishments of the College’s faculty and staff. Whether a faculty member is honored with a prestigious award or is asked to speak at a national conference in their respective field of expertise, this list is compromised of the most distinguished, scholarly work being conducted at the College. This August, the accomplishments list included the publication of papers authored by Etown professors in the departments of Engineering and Communications.
In June, assistant professors of engineering Dr. Sara Atwood and Dr. Brenda Read-Daily presented their peer-reviewed paper “Using a Creative Fiction Assignment to Teach Ethics in a First-year Introduction to Engineering Course” at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education. Atwood and Read-Daily presented their work to national and international audiences attending the conference in Seattle.
Atwood says has always been interested in the study of engineering education methods that will improve the performance of students in engineering through creative and engaging means. Read-Daily holds a strong belief that engineering provides undergraduate students with a unique perspective on how to make a difference in the world.
The objective of Atwood and Read-Daily’s research was to increase student understanding of ethics in the field of engineering. Rather than the traditional lessons on ethics, which rely on practice scenarios and case studies, the professors taught ethics through a creative fiction assignment.
“Instead of me trying to come up with or find practice scenarios,” Atwood said, “I thought that it would be a lot more fun to flip that around on the students.”
A total of 95 students enrolled in first-year engineering courses taught by Atwood and Read-Daily over the past two years were asked to work in groups of two or three and write a 1500 word creative short story or comparable project which reflected on an ethical dilemma. The assignment asked students to consider a dilemma that had long-ranging impacts, and Atwood reported that many of the stories focused on societal impacts, environmental impacts, and disasters, and added that a lot of her students “foresaw the end of the world” in their writing.
“Creativity plays an important part in being a successful engineer, but is less important right now in terms of studying engineering,” Atwood said. “While practicing engineers are creative problem solvers, often in engineering classrooms it’s about getting one single ‘right’ answer. That’s why I think creativity needs to be further emphasized and developed in engineering education.”
Not all students chose to write a short story for their creative fiction assignment. Atwood said that some groups of students preferred to make short films. She said that one group of students rewrote lyrics to a popular song and presented the video in class.
“We are aiming to make [engineering] exciting and to show the creativity that can go into it,” Read-Daily said.
The professors’ research concluded that the assignment provided students with effective preparation to understand some of the ethical responsibilities that they may encounter in the engineering field. “We looked at the end-of-semester evaluations in terms of how students ranked their ability to reason ethically and did see that there was improvement,” Atwood said.
Atwood said that she drew inspiration for her research from the course “Ecology in Short Fiction,” co-taught by associate professor of biology Dr. David Bowne and associate professor of English and director of English education Dr. Matthew Skillen. In Ecology in Short Fiction, students wrote a short story to demonstrate knowledge of ecological concepts. “I talked with Dr. Bowne and got some of the examples of what he had done,” Atwood said. “I was seeing what he was doing with [Ecology in Short Fiction] and I thought that that might be an interesting way to get students to engage with ethics on a little more of deep level.”
“I think that everyone enjoys the assignment,” Atwood said. She added that she enjoyed seeing how talented her students are in areas other than engineering. She admired the quality and creativity in the writing, and said “it’s my favorite assignment to grade, for sure.”
Other professors in the engineering department have also adopted Atwood’s assignment into their curriculum. Engineering and physics professor Dr. DeGoede used the creative fiction assignment in a course he taught in spring 2015.
Atwood said this paper fits into her broader research interest in creativity in engineering education. She is currently working with associate professor and chair of psychology Dr. Jean Pretz on another paper that will provide a more rigorous statistical analysis of creativity in engineering students.
This peer-reviewed paper was presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of American Society for Engineering Education Conference this past June in Seattle, Wash. The ASEE Annual Conference is the first and only conference that is devoted to all engineering and engineering technology education disciplines. The purpose of this conference is to allow for faculty members, deans and researchers to exchange ideas to enhance the teaching methods of engineering education. Dr. Atwood has presented at this conference almost every year since 2010 and this year, was met with “several requests for more information and continuing correspondence.”
Dr. Kirsten Johnson, associate professor of communications, began her career in local radio and television as a professional journalist. At the College, Johnson teaches courses in news writing and video production and serves as the advisor for the college’s chapter of the Society for Collegiate Journalists. In the past, Johnson has co-authored papers and written books concerning citizen journalism and user created content. Citizen journalism refers to the concept of public citizens participating in the collection and reporting of news and information. Johnson’s most recent paper, “Citizen Journalists’ Views on Traditional Notions of Journalism, Story Sourcing and Relationship Building: The Persistence of Legacy Norms in an Emerging News Environment,” which she co-authored with Dr. Burton St. John of Old Dominion University, was published in August in the journal Journalism Studies.
“A lot of journalists are becoming citizen journalists, so they are helping to dispel the myths [about citizen journalism],” Johnson said.
Johnson says that this paper explores the much-debated idea that “citizen journalists will threaten the traditional notions of mainstream journalism.” According to the study’s findings, “Most citizen journalists value the traditional journalism notions of objectivity, balance and gatekeeping,” Johnson said. Citizen journalists strive to present both sides of the story and to keep personal opinions and biases out of the reporting process. The findings of the paper have helped to dispel the myth that citizen journalists do not care about proper journalistic procedures.
“Some people think citizen journalism is like the Wild West, where no one cares about the traditional notions [of journalism],” she said.
Last month, Johnson received the top faculty paper award in the Electronic News Division through a blind peer-review process at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference in San Francisco. The AEJMC conference is an educational association of journalism and mass communication media professionals, educators and students who seek to promote the freedom of communication and advance scholarly research being conducted in the field. The AEJMC 2015 conference featured multiple sessions showcasing the most current research and teaching methods in various topics concerning journalism and mass communication. Johnson first met her colleague and co-author St. John at a past AEJMC conference and they have since written several papers together Johnson believes that the AEJMC conference is “a great place to make partnerships and to network with other professionals [in the field]”.
-Crystal Uminski & Shaye Dipasquale
