Misc,
Learning and Intelligent Systems: Modeling Learning to Reason with Cases in Engineering Ethics: A Test Domain for Intelligent Assistance
NSF Proposal Grant Number NSF-LIS 9720341 1997-2001, (September 2002)
Abstract
A clinical ethicist, cognitive psychologist, law professor/computer
scientist, and computer scientist/linguist team up to examine how
students reason with and learn from case-based texts in the context
of a two-term required graduate engineering ethics course. Taught
by the clinical ethicist, the course is structured so that students
regularly discuss and resolve cases as they are introduced to ethical
reasoning and a set of methodological tools developed to aid in the
resolution of ethical dilemmas. The overall goal of this research
is to help students learn to identify ethical components in practical
engineering problems and to enhance their ability to apply the methodological
tools and justifications as they resolve the dilemmas. More specifically,
the project goals are to (1) examine how engineering students adapt
conceptual tools for ethical reasoning as they are introduced to,
discuss, and resolve dilemmas presented in the case-based texts;
(2) descriptively model this process using a Web-browser-compatible
automated drafting environment (ADE) as a data gathering tool; (3)
examine how ADE's on-line data base of case-based texts, conveniently
accessible in ADE's Web-browser-like drafting environment, can assist
this process; (4) explore how to use computational models of the
underlying case-based reasoning to enable ADE to provide intelligent
assistance in aspects of the process; and (S) evaluate how having
access to ADE compliments or interferes with students' developing
ability to identify, articulate, analyze and resolve ethical problems.
The resulting methodological tool, ADE provides convenient access,
for both teacher and student, to an on-line database of textual materials
such as methodologies and cases outlined in the required course texts,
mid-level principles, professional codes of engineering ethics, decisions
of a professional association ethics review board and an existing
on-line repository of engi neering ethics cases and commentary. ADE
acts like an intelligent assistant engaging students in a dialectical
process. It provides an ärgument worksheet", a checklist to help
the student analyze an ethical problem, case-based access to information
for constructing the arguments, and feedback. ADE is evaluated empirically
in terms of a cognitive model to be developed in an empirical investigation
of case-based learning to solve ill-defined problems. Building ADE
also contributes to three main research areas in Artificial Intelligence,
Case-Based Reasoning, and Intelligent Tutoring: 1. Case representation
and relevance assessment, 2. Planning ethical arguments and explaining
those plans, and 3. Recognizing students' solution plans.
