The first assessment, administered at the end of Fall 2012, solicited student views about the main components of the course (e.g., lectures, readings, etc.). Student comments on the L2L unit revealed the following emerging themes:
a. 12 of 15 students noted that their exposure to real-world unfolding cases and the perspectives of marginalized stakeholders rendered engineering ethics “real,” “meaningful,” and “personal” because it gave “a face” to the ideas, concepts, and principles taught in class, making them more understandable and memorable, and inspiring self-reflection;
b. 9 of 15 students noted that their newly acquired ability to investigate a controversy ethnographically empowered them to uncover important dimensions of the case that were absent from official reports, and “brought the case home” on a deeper level than a literature review alone would have allowed.
