Supporting students in the analysis of case studies for professional ethics education

Intelligent tutoring systems and computer-supported collaborative environments have been designed to enhance human learning in various domains. While a number of solid techniques have been developed in the Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) field to foster human learning in fundamental science domains, there is still a lack of evidence about how to support learning in so-called ill-defined domains that are characterized by the absence of formal domain theories, uncertainty about best solution strategies and teaching practices, and learners' answers represented through text and argumentation. This dissertation investigates how to support students' learning in the ill-defined domain of professional ethics through a computer-based learning system. More specifically, it examines how to support students in the analysis of case studies, which is a common pedagogical practice in the ethics domain. This dissertation describes our design considerations and a resulting system called Umka. In Umka learners analyze case studies individually and collaboratively that pose some ethical or professional dilemmas. Umka provides various types of support to learners in the analysis task. In the individual analysis it provides various kinds of feedback to arguments of learners based on predefined system knowledge. In the collaborative analysis Umka fosters learners' interactions and self-reflection through system suggestions and a specifically designed visualization. The system suggestions offer learners the chance to consider certain helpful arguments of their peers, or to interact with certain helpful peers. The visualization highlights similarities and differences between the learners' positions, and illustrates the learners' level of acceptance of each other's positions. This dissertation reports on a series of experiments in which we evaluated the effectiveness of Umka's support features, and suggests several research contributions. Through this work, it is shown that despite the ill-definedness of the ethics domain, and the consequent complications of text processing and domain modelling, it is possible to build effective tutoring systems for supporting students' learning in this domain. Moreover, the techniques developed through this research for the ethics domain can be readily expanded to other ill-defined domains, where argument, qualitative analysis, metacognition and interaction over case studies are key pedagogical practices

Student-Centered Learning: Dozier-Libbey Medical High School

This case study is one of four written by SCOPE about student-centered practices in schools. The case studies address the following questions:1. What are the effects of student-centered learning approaches on student engagement, achievement of knowledge and skills, and attainment (high school graduation, college admission, and college continuation and success), in particular for underserved students?2. What specific practices, approaches, and contextual factors result in these outcomes?The cases focus on the structures, practices, and conditions in the four schools that enable students to experience positive outcomes and consider the ways in which these factors are interrelated and work to reinforce each other

Enhancing professionalism - progressing the career development sector

Much has changed in the career development sector since the launch of the Careers Profession Task Force report, ‘Towards a Strong Careers Profession’ in 2010. The report made recommendations for enhancing the professionalism of the career sector including the establishment of an overarching professional body, new qualification levels and common professional standards. The Careers Profession Alliance (CPA) and then the Career Development Institute (CDI), launched in April 2013 have striven to facilitate the sector to be stronger and more cohesive by addressing these recommendations. This article explores what was needed, what has been achieved and plans for the future

Supervision and Scholarly Writing: Writing to Learn - Learning to Write

This paper describes an action research project on postgraduate students’ scholarly writing in which I employed reflective approaches to examine and enhance my postgraduate supervisory practice. My reflections on three distinct cycles of supervision illustrate a shift in thinking about scholarly writing and an evolving understanding of how to support postgraduate students’ writing. These understandings provide the foundation for a future-oriented fourth cycle of supervisory practice, which is characterised by three principles, namely the empowerment of students as writers, the technological context of contemporary writing, and ethical issues in writing

Ethics Education in the First Year: An Experiment

Bundy presents an account of the University of California at Berkeley\u27s School of Law\u27s experiment with teaching the required professional responsibility course in the first year. During this experiment, the faculty members involved in the course developed a strong set of teaching materials and a strong commitment to teaching from those materials

Values ethics and legal ethics: the QLD and LETR recommendations 6, 7, 10, and 11

The LETR Report recommended increased attention to ethics and values and to critical thinking. These aims could be achieved jointly through teaching ethical thinking: not as theory but as part of developing the capacity for ethical conduct. Such a pedagogy has the potential to become a QLD signature pedagogy supporting "life-narratives" of students. The LETR Report recommends a review of the QLD emphasising legal values and ethics. Concern with values and ethics is linked to concern with professional conduct. Maintaining the law degree as a general or liberal qualification is also strongly desired. These potentially conflicting drivers generate ambivalence towards legal ethics as a subject for study, especially if legal ethics is perceived as teaching the professional codes. Resolution of this tension is achievable through recognising the potential role of ethical teaching as part of an identity apprenticeship. Developing ethical character is as much a liberal as a professional aim. Ethics teaching can play an integrative role in the QLD. Formation of student identity is a central part of Higher Education taking colouration from being situated in legal education. In this context teaching legal ethics becomes the use of a salient example for carrying out the broader project of developing ethical capacity