英文原文
Games are great teaching tools, but can they help produce more ethical engineers? Scott Streiner, assistant professor of industrial engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, is working to find out, one game at a time. Streiner, with a team of researchers from the University of Connecticut, Rowan University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, has received a cross-institutional $116,890 NSF grant to help develop and explore the role of games in ethics education. The project, “Collaborative Research: Using Digital Narratives and Data Analytics to Enhance Ethical Judgment Education and Assessment,” will use large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) to assess student responses and help scale data-informed, game-based ethics education in engineering. “Too often ethics are taught abstractly in engineering courses. Students will have a module on ethics, complete some readings and an activity, and then get assessed. Possibly they will do a pre-post assessment using some sort of ethical instrument,” said Streiner, who is also part of the Swanson School’s Engineering Education Research Center. “This grant seeks to make ethics education more engaging, more holistically woven into the material, and more data-driven,” Steiner added. The project builds off the team’s earlier NSF research in which they developed and used three games to teach ethics in undergraduate engineering courses: Cards Against Engineering Ethics, a card-based game modeled on Cards Against Humanity; Toxic Workplaces, a scenario-based game inspired by TV game show Family Feud; and Mars: An Ethical Expedition, an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure game. Mars: An Ethical Expedition, developed at the University of Connecticut, presents a narrative where students play the roles of different engineers colonizing Mars. Originally static and led by an instructor, the game has been automated and can be used by teams of students or individuals over a 12-week period. During play, students face ethical dilemmas as they build their society on Mars, and each choice leads to a different outcome or new ethical dilemma. “We're interested in how context and situation impact decisions,” said Streiner. “We'll continue to develop this game and use the data to train large language models and natural language process to assess the game play.” Central to the game is stealth assessment. While teaching students about ethical decision making and behaviors as well as ethical dilemmas, instructors can assess their students’ reasoning without the participants knowledge. “One of the advantages of this game, especially with ethics, is that many students are afraid of saying the wrong thing or feeling that they're going to be judged when they are responding to a certain scenario, especially in the class discussions,” Streiner said. “It’s easy to make the right decision when you know the outcome in advance. It's harder when you don't. That’s what this game shows.” By making Mars: An Ethical Expedition readily available and developing a repository of data, the team will learn more about student decision making and the ethical context. What are the normal pathways through the game? What's the most likely path given a certain scenario, and how are students differing in these situations? How do decisions change over time? Answering questions like these, the team seeks to improve ethics education and better prepare students to make ethical decisions. “When engineers leave college and enter the workforce, they eventually will face ethical dilemmas, and the consequences of making a wrong choice can be incredibly costly,” said Streiner. “Game play engages students to wrestle with the complexity and the possible consequences of ethical lapses using a familiar, fun medium. With this grant, we hope we’ll get more engineering students to click the button to start a new game.”
中文翻译
游戏是绝佳的教学工具，但它们能否帮助培养更具伦理道德的工程师？匹兹堡大学斯旺森工程学院工业工程助理教授斯科特·斯特赖纳正在努力寻找答案，一次一个游戏。斯特赖纳与来自康涅狄格大学、罗文大学和新泽西理工学院的研究团队合作，获得了一项跨机构的116,890美元国家科学基金会（NSF）资助，以帮助开发和探索游戏在伦理教育中的作用。该项目名为“协作研究：利用数字叙事和数据分析增强伦理判断教育与评估”，将使用大型语言模型（LLMs）和自然语言处理（NLP）来评估学生反应，并帮助扩展基于数据的游戏化工程伦理教育。斯特赖纳说：“伦理在工程课程中往往被抽象地教授。学生会上一个伦理模块，完成一些阅读和活动，然后接受评估。他们可能会使用某种伦理工具进行前后评估。”斯特赖纳也是斯旺森工程学院工程教育研究中心的一员。斯特赖纳补充道：“这项资助旨在使伦理教育更具吸引力，更全面地融入材料，并更以数据为驱动。”该项目建立在团队早期的NSF研究基础上，他们开发并使用了三款游戏在本科工程课程中教授伦理：《工程伦理对抗卡牌》，一款基于《反人类卡牌》的卡牌游戏；《有毒工作场所》，一款受电视游戏节目《家庭问答》启发的基于场景的游戏；以及《火星：伦理远征》，一款互动式的选择你自己的冒险游戏。《火星：伦理远征》由康涅狄格大学开发，呈现了一个叙事，学生扮演不同工程师的角色，在火星上殖民。最初是静态的并由教师引导，该游戏现已自动化，可由学生团队或个人在12周内使用。在游戏中，学生在火星上建立社会时面临伦理困境，每个选择都会导致不同的结果或新的伦理困境。斯特赖纳说：“我们对情境如何影响决策感兴趣。我们将继续开发这款游戏，并使用数据训练大型语言模型和自然语言处理来评估游戏玩法。”游戏的核心是隐形评估。在教授学生伦理决策、行为和伦理困境的同时，教师可以在参与者不知情的情况下评估他们的推理。斯特赖纳说：“这款游戏的一个优势，尤其是在伦理方面，是许多学生在回应特定场景时害怕说错话或感觉会被评判，尤其是在课堂讨论中。”“当你知道结果时，做出正确决定很容易。当你不知道时，就更难了。这正是这款游戏所展示的。”通过使《火星：伦理远征》易于获取并开发数据存储库，团队将更多地了解学生决策和伦理背景。游戏中的正常路径是什么？在特定情境下最可能的路径是什么？学生如何在这些情境中表现不同？决策如何随时间变化？回答这些问题，团队旨在改进伦理教育，更好地为学生做出伦理决策做准备。斯特赖纳说：“当工程师离开大学进入职场时，他们最终会面临伦理困境，做出错误选择的后果可能极其昂贵。游戏通过熟悉、有趣的媒介吸引学生应对伦理失误的复杂性和可能后果。有了这项资助，我们希望更多工程学生会点击按钮开始新游戏。”
文章概要
本文报道了匹兹堡大学斯科特·斯特赖纳教授团队获得NSF资助，研究游戏在工程伦理教育中的应用。项目使用《火星：伦理远征》等游戏，结合大型语言模型和自然语言处理进行隐形评估，旨在使伦理教育更吸引人、数据驱动，以帮助学生应对未来职场中的伦理困境。
高德明老师的评价
从TA沟通分析视角看，这款游戏巧妙地运用了“成人自我状态”，通过模拟火星殖民的互动场景，让学生在安全环境中练习伦理决策，避免了“儿童自我状态”的恐惧和“父母自我状态”的评判，促进了健康的自我对话和理性思考，展现了沟通分析在游戏设计中的积极应用。
从焦点解决心理学视角看，项目聚焦于“如何通过游戏提升伦理决策能力”这一目标，利用数据驱动的方法探索学生决策路径，赞美了团队以解决方案为导向的创新精神，未来有望通过游戏化学习培养更多具备伦理敏感性的工程师，体现了焦点解决的核心价值。
从佛学专家视角看，游戏中的伦理困境模拟了“缘起”和“业力”概念，每个选择都导向不同结果，教导学生因果关联和责任感。这种沉浸式体验有助于培养“正念”和“慈悲心”，未来可能引导学生在现实生活中做出更明智、利他的决策，契合佛学智慧的教育意义。