Educational software reflecting two philosophical approaches to ethics education

Ethics education can vary considerably in its instructional strategies based on differences in the theoretical positions underlying the approach to moral development being stressed. Two such approaches are the 'justice' approach as exemplified by Kohlberg's six stages of moral development, and the 'care ethic' approach as exemplified by Gilligan's work on empathy as a base for moral decision-making. Each of these approaches can be demonstrated through different instructional strategies in the ethics education course, but each strategy is often difficult to execute in practice, given time and resource constraints

Beta: Bioprinting engineering technology for academia

Higher STEM education is a field of growing potential, but too many middle school and high school students are not testing proficiently in STEM subjects. The BETA team worked to improve biology classroom engagement through the development of technologies for high school biology experiments. The BETA project team expanded functionality of an existing product line to allow for better student and teacher user experience and the execution of more interesting experiments. The BETA project’s first goal was to create a modular incubating Box for the high school classroom. This Box, called the BETA Box was designed with a variety of sensors to allow for custom temperature and lighting environments for each experiment. It was completed with a clear interface to control the settings and an automatic image capture system. The team also conducted a feasibility study on auto calibration and dual-extrusion for SE3D’s existing 3D bioprinter. The findings of this study led to the incorporation of a force sensor for auto calibration and the evidence to support the feasibility of dual extrusion, although further work is needed. These additions to the current SE3D educational product line will increase effectiveness in the classroom and allow the target audience, high school students, to better engage in STEM education activities

Assistive technology design and development for acceptable robotics companions for ageing years

© 2013 Farshid Amirabdollahian et al., licensee Versita Sp. z o. o. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author.A new stream of research and development responds to changes in life expectancy across the world. It includes technologies which enhance well-being of individuals, specifically for older people. The ACCOMPANY project focuses on home companion technologies and issues surrounding technology development for assistive purposes. The project responds to some overlooked aspects of technology design, divided into multiple areas such as empathic and social human-robot interaction, robot learning and memory visualisation, and monitoring persons’ activities at home. To bring these aspects together, a dedicated task is identified to ensure technological integration of these multiple approaches on an existing robotic platform, Care-O-Bot®3 in the context of a smart-home environment utilising a multitude of sensor arrays. Formative and summative evaluation cycles are then used to assess the emerging prototype towards identifying acceptable behaviours and roles for the robot, for example role as a butler or a trainer, while also comparing user requirements to achieved progress. In a novel approach, the project considers ethical concerns and by highlighting principles such as autonomy, independence, enablement, safety and privacy, it embarks on providing a discussion medium where user views on these principles and the existing tension between some of these principles, for example tension between privacy and autonomy over safety, can be captured and considered in design cycles and throughout project developmentsPeer reviewe

Criminal intent or cognitive dissonance: how does student self plagiarism fit into academic integrity?

The discourse of plagiarism is speckled with punitive terms not out of place in a police officer's notes: detection, prevention, misconduct, rules, regulations, conventions, transgression, consequences, deter, trap, etc. This crime and punishment paradigm tends to be the norm in academic settings. The learning and teaching paradigm assumes that students are not filled with criminal intent, but rather are confused by the novel academic culture and its values. The discourse of learning and teaching includes: development, guidance, acknowledge, scholarly practice, communicate, familiarity, culture. Depending on the paradigm adopted, universities, teachers, and students will either focus on policies, punishments, and ways to cheat the system or on program design, assessments, and assimilating the values of academia. Self plagiarism is a pivotal issue that polarises these two paradigms. Viewed from a crime and punishment paradigm, self plagiarism is an intentional act of evading the required workload for a course by re-using previous work. Within a learning and teaching paradigm, self plagiarism is an oxymoron. We would like to explore the differences between these two paradigms by using self plagiarism as a focal point

Research ethics and participatory research in an interdisciplinary technology-enhanced learning project

This account identifies some of the tensions that became apparent in a large interdisciplinary technology-enhanced learning project as its members attempted to maintain their commitment to responsive, participatory research and development in naturalistic research settings while also ‘enacting’ these commitments in formal research review processes. It discusses how these review processes were accompanied by a commitment to continuing discussion and elaboration across an extended research team and to a view of ethical practice as an aspect of phronesis or ‘practical wisdom’ which demands understanding of specific situations and reference to prior experience. In this respect the interdisciplinary nature of the project allows the diverse experience of the project team to be brought into play, with ethical issues a joint point of focus for continuing interdisciplinary discours