The Development of Ethical Reasoning: A Comparison of Online versus Hybrid Delivery Modes of Ethics Instruction

There is a concerted effort to improve online learning in higher education, including in the domain of engineering ethics. The benefits of online learning include ease in sharing course content, flexibility in the timing of participation, and increased variation in delivery modes for course material. However, the relative effect of online and hybrid participation in terms of developing students’ ethical reasoning is largely unknown, and interactive cases and dialogic learning are central to the pedagogy in ethics courses. An opportunity to fill this knowledge gap occurred while testing a new pedagogy for enhancing ethical reasoning among engineering students, which was implemented in a graduate-level course over three offerings in Spring 2014, Summer 2014, and Spring 2015. Of the 29 students enrolled, 11 participated on-campus in a weekly discussion-based class, whereas the remaining 18 students completed the majority of the course online. This multi-phase study presents results from a comparative analysis of the differences in ethical reasoning development and perceptions of course components across two groups as distinguished by the students’ mode of participation; the former group we classified as “online” and the latter group as “hybrid”. Both groups of students showed substantial gains in their ethical reasoning development, as determined by their pre/post N2 scores on the Engineering Ethical Reasoning Instrument. Furthermore, changes in ethical reasoning were not significantly different when students participated in the online-only versus the hybrid mode. Nonetheless, analysis from post-course surveys indicated that the hybrid group perceived course components more favorably than did their online-only peers. In sum, these results indicate that online ethics interventions can be as impactful in developing ethical reasoning as modes that include an in-class component, although students seem to be more satisfied with ethics education when they have the opportunity for face-to-face, in-class interactions with peers and instructors.