Digital Commons Network^™

Check Your Tech - The Ethics Of Gamification In Education, Dympna O'Sullivan, Ioannis Stavrakakis, Damian Gordon, Anna Becevel

Conference papers

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Medicine Is Digital: Developing Educational Materials To Explore The Ethics Of Digital Pills., Dympna O'Sullivan, J. Paul Gibson, Yael Jacob, Ioannis Stavrakakis, Damian Gordon

Conference papers

Digital Pills are a drug-device technology that permit to combine traditional medications with a monitoring system that automatically records data about medication adherence and patients’ physiological data. They are a promising innovation in digital medicine, however their use has raised a number of ethical concerns. In this paper, we outline some of the main Digital Pills technologies and explore key ethical challenges surrounding their use. In this paper, we introduce educational materials we have developed that provide an insight into the technologies and ethical aspects that underpin Digital Pills.

The Development Of Teaching Case Studies To Explore Ethical Issues Associated With Computer Programming, Michael Collins, Damian Gordon, Dympna O'Sullivan

Conference papers

In the past decade software products have become pervasive in many aspects of people’s lives around the world. Unfortunately, the quality of the experience an individual has interacting with that software is dependent on the quality of the software itself, and it is becoming more and more evident that many large software products contain a range of issues and errors, and these issues are not known to the developers of these systems, and they are unaware of the deleterious impacts of those issues on the individuals who use these systems. The authors of this paper are developing a new digital …

Momentum Towards Incorporating Global Responsibility In Engineering Education And Accreditation In The Uk, Jonathan Truslove, Emma Crichton, Shannon Chance, Katie Cresswell-Maynard

Conference papers

CONTEXT Engineering is uniquely placed to help address global challenges such as those surrounding the climate crisis, and the sustainable use and management of resources. However, studies have found UK engineering companies that have adopted sustainability strategies do not have enough staff with the skills to achieve them. There is an urgent need to upskill the current workforce and prepare future generations to operate in a responsible and ethical manner in tackling today's challenges. Recent updates to the standard of engineering accreditation in the UK provide notable opportunities to transform university curricula to create globally responsible engineers.

PURPOSE This preliminary …

Homo Ludens Moralis: Designing And Developing A Board Game To Teach Ethics For Ict Education, Damian Gordon, Dympna O'Sullivan, Ioannis Stavrakakis, Andrea Curley

Conference papers

The ICT ethical landscape is changing at an astonishing rate, as technologies become more complex, and people choose to interact with them in new and distinct ways, the resultant interactions are more novel and less easy to categorise using traditional ethical frameworks. It is vitally important that the developers of these technologies do not live in an ethical vacuum; that they think about the uses and abuses of their creations, and take some measures to prevent others being harmed by their work.

To equip these developers to rise to this challenge and to create a positive future for the use …

Homo Ludens Moralis: Designing And Developing A Board Game To Teach Ethics For Ict Education, Damian Gordon, Dympna O'Sullivan, Ioannis Stavrakakis, Andrea Curley

Conference papers

The ICT ethical landscape is changing at an astonishing rate, as technologies become more complex, and people choose to interact with them in new and distinct ways, the resultant interactions are more novel and less easy to categorise using traditional ethical frameworks. It is vitally important that the developers of these technologies do not live in an ethical vacuum; that they think about the uses and abuses of their creations, and take some measures to prevent others being harmed by their work.

To equip these developers to rise to this challenge and to create a positive future for the use …

Incorporating Digital Ethics Throughout The Software Development Process, Michael Collins, Damian Gordon, Anna Becevel, William O'Mahony

Conference papers

The media is reporting scandals associated with computer companies with increasing regularity; whether it is the misuse of user data, breach of privacy concerns, the use of biased artificial intelligence, or the problems of automated vehicles. Because of these complex issues, there is a growing need to equip computer science students with a deep appreciation of ethics, and to ensure that in the future they will develop computer systems that are ethically-based. One particularly useful strand of their education to incorporate ethics into is when teaching them about the formal approaches to developing computer systems.

There are a number of …

Understandings Of "Global Responsibility’ Expressed By Civil Engineers Working In London, Shannon Chance, Inez Direito, J. Mitchell

Conference papers

This paper discusses the term ‘global responsibility’, how it emerged and why, and analysis of interview data collected from nine civil engineers working in London regarding their understandings of the term. Professional Bodies often take the lead in envisioning change, by identifying the direction their professionals should take to help address society’s evolving needs and aspirations. Often, such Bodies charge academia with addressing society’s evolving needs through research, outreach, and preparing the next generation of professionals. In the UK, leaders in civil engineering have pressed for individual and collective action to facilitate sustainable development and decrease occurrence of corruption. Nevertheless, …

Embedding Ethical And Sustainable Thinking In The Entrepreneurial Mindset, Kathleen Farrell

Conference papers

“Entrepreneurship education is essential not only to shape the mindsets of young people but also to provide the skills, knowledge and attitudes that are central to developing an entrepreneurial culture” (European Commission, 2016, b p. 9). The recent financial crisis has focused our attention more on the importance of ethics in business and management. EntreComp, the European Commission Competence Framework (2016) defines entrepreneurship as a transversal competence. The research question has to do with whether the European Commission is right in proposing ethical and sustainable thinking as an entrepreneurial competence. What support is there in the literature for putting forward …

The Evolution Of Ethics In The Irish Real Estate Profession, Lorna Colley, Lloyd Scott

Conference papers

Since the Economic Collapse of 2008 much discussion and analysis of the role of ethics in the financial sector in Ireland has occurred. However little if any of this focus has been on the real estate profession. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Irish Real Estate Profession deals with the issue of ethics. How has this relationship evolved over time? Has the Irish political context influenced the approach to ethics on a societal level and has this fed into the profession’s approach? The role of ethics education is also examined in current Irish real estate qualifications, …

Engineering Ethics: Ontology And Politics, Eddie Conlon

Conference papers

“Ontology...acts as both gatekeeper and bouncer for methodology” (Archer 1995: 22). This exploratory paper, through a focus on the relationship between structure and agency, examines the underlying social ontologies informing the teaching, and researching of the teaching, of engineering ethics. It argues that current approaches are deficient and that Critical Realism can provide the basis for a more robust and inclusive research agenda for understanding engineering practice and the teaching of engineering ethics.

A Critical Realist Approach To Engineering Ethics, Eddie Conlon

Conference papers

This paper is focused on the teaching of engineering ethics (EE). Through a focus on safety and the lens of what sociologists call the agency/ structure relationship it examimes various approaches to this teaching. Drawing on Critical Realism it argues there are deficiencies in both the dominant approach and a number of proposed alternatives as they suffer from various forms of conflationism . By drawing on Critical Realism (CR) a more robust agenda for teaching engineering ethics can be developed. It is argued that CR offers a basis for understanding the range of factors which lead to accidents and disasters. …

Promoting Environmental Sustainability By Fostering A Culture Of Material Ethics, Shannon Chance, Pearl O'Rourke

Conference papers

Creating a culture of ‘material ethics’ can help engineers and product designers in the quest to achieve environmental sustainability. By framing this particular issue and focusing attention on it, Engineering and Product Design educators can help establish a shared language to undergird students’ conceptualizations of the natural world and instil a healthy sense of interdependency and responsibility. Overall, this paper explores the idea of ‘material ethics’ and presents arguments and applications for building such a culture at the tertiary level. As design educators, the authors of this paper aim to provide a broad and useful overview of environmental issues relevant …

Tunetracker: Tensions In The Surveillance Of Traditional Music, Bryan Duggan, Norman M. Su

Conference papers

We describe the design and deployment of the first system ever to dynamically track and publish records of folk music playing. TuneTracker is a software system that has been, at time of writing, deployed at a pub in Dublin, Ireland for five months. It captures, stores, and posts the names of tunes played in Irish traditional music sessions on a public website. This paper makes two contributions: (1) drawing from a two year ethnographic study of trad musicians, it details the design and development of a system to track and publish traditional musicians’ practices while respecting the ethos of tradition, …

Understanding The Relationship Between Entrepreneurship Education, Experiential Learning And Business Ethics, Kathleen Farrell, Thomas Cooney, Christina Benson, Gary Palin

Conference papers

Recent cognitive research in entrepreneurship describes the entrepreneur as a ‘motivated tactician’, who can be characterized as a “fully engaged thinker who has multiple cognitive strategies available” (Haynie et al., 2010: p18), and the ability to shift and choose rapidly from among them based on specific goals, motives, needs and circumstances, leading to the ability to act (or not) in response to perceived entrepreneurial opportunities. The Association for Experiential Education broadly defines experiential education as: “a philosophy and methodology in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills and …

Marco, Micro, Structure, Agency: Analysing Approaches To Engineering Ethics, Eddie Conlon

Conference papers

No abstract provided.

Integrating Engineering Ethics And Research Skills In A First Year Programme, Eddie Conlon

Conference papers

A first year module which introduces students to the social dimension of engineering is described. The key teaching tool is the use of group projects to develop students’ learning skills. The importance of addressing the motivation for engineering students studying non-technical modules is emphasised. Data used to evaluate the module is presented. It is shown that the nature of the project undertaken affects the attainment of learning outcomes. The conclusion focuses on some shortcomings of the module and highlights the importance of appropriately structuring the learning environment to facilitate self-directed learning by early year students.