ECE/Phil 216
FIELDWORK ASSIGNMENT
Spring 1999

This fieldwork assignment has two primary purposes:

(1) To apply your case analysis skills to an actual ethical problem
(2) To learn how to work in groups

The entire class will be divided into four groups, with three or four students in each group. Each group will visit a site in Champaign-Urbana and will interview professionals in the organization at that site to learn about an ethical problem that they encountered, and how the problem was solved. Each group will write a six page paper that presents the problem as a case and provides a case analysis. In the case narrative, the names of the participants must be changed to protect their privacy. Here are the sites:

Carle Hospital, 602 W. University Ave., Urbana: a large hospital
Contact: Steven Johnson, 383-5999, Steve.Johnson [AT] carle [DOT] com

Daily & Associates, 1610 Broadmoor Dr., Champaign: a consulting engineering firm
Contact: Scott Morrison, 352-4169

Demaco, 100 Trade Centre Dr., Champaign: developer of radar cross-section software
Contact: Dennis Andersh, 355-4746

Kuck & Associates, 1906 Fox Dr., Champaign: a software tools development firm
Contact: Mark Byler, 356-2288

Carefully detach the site/group selection sheet and complete it. I shall try to match you with one of your top two site choices, while balancing the personalities and strengths among groups.

Schedule

February 23 Site/group selection sheet due
February 25 Students assigned to groups
February 25-26 First phone call to the contact person
March 1-5 On-site interviews
March 22-26 Second on-site interviews
April 1 Paper due; peer evaluation forms distributed
April 15 Revised version of paper and peer evaluations due

Group Work Principles

Groups will be heterogeneous, with a mix of backgrounds. (Research on cooperative learning strongly supports heterogeneous groups, to provide a diversity of ideas and viewpoints.)

Groups should meet as often as necessary, at least once per week. The Grainger Engineering Library has rooms specifically designated for group meetings, but you can meet in any public place, such as at Honors House. For each meeting, one student will serve as the manager. The manager role should rotate, so that each student will be the manager at least once.

The manager is responsible for scheduling and running the meeting. The manager should

All group members should strive to be professional and civil at meetings. The following Credo presents some basic principles. Each group should discuss the group work process: what each person did well, what could be improved, etc. (Research indicates that conscious ongoing reflection on the functioning of the group is crucial for success.)

Credo for Listening

I encourage everyone to participate.
I seek out differences of opinion to enrich the discussion.
I stick to the subject and avoid dominating the discussion with long stories.
I restate what someone has said if it is not clear to me.
I summarize what the last speaker said before I add my own contribution.
I criticize ideas, not people.
I try to understand all sides of an issue.
I change my mind when the evidence is compelling.
I focus on reaching the best decision, not on winning.

(Adapted from Barbara Gross Davis, Tools for Teaching, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1993, pp. 64-65.)

Structured Brainstorming

  1. Discuss the mess.
  2. Define the problem.
  3. Generate solution alternatives.
  4. Generate and select solution criteria.
  5. Rate alternatives according to the criteria.
  6. Select a proposed solution or set of solutions.
(Taken from David E. Goldberg, Life Skills and Leadership for Engineers, McGraw-Hill, 1995.)

Group members should formulate their ideas individually before a brain-storming meeting. (Research shows that advance preparation greatly enhances the diversity of ideas and reduces the chances of premature consensus--"groupthink.") During steps 3 and 4, no idea should be evaluated critically: dumb ideas often lead to smarter ideas.

To facilitate communication among group members between meetings, you may use the course Webboard at http://www.ece.uiuc.edu/~ece216/wwwboard which can be reached from the course home page at http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~ece216/home.html In the Webboard, there will be one thread for each group.

Resources for Group Work

Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Penguin Books, 1981. An excellent book on conflict resolution.

Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas T. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, Harvard Business School Press, 1993. A popular account of teams in organizations, particularly in corporations.

Interviews

The contact persons and the other professionals whom you will interview are donating their time. They are busy people. In your interviews, be courteous, and use the time efficiently: ask specific questions, listen carefully, and take detailed notes. Remember to thank the people whom you interview.

In the initial phone call, ask about the general outline of the ethical problem, and determine who was involved, to help decide who should be interviewed. Also, arrange a date and time for the first on-site interview with the contact person.

If you must leave a message, leave your name, phone number, and times you will be available at that number.

Remember that a controversy always has two sides. Your group should interview at least two persons. Soon after the initial phone call, make phone calls to set up interviews with professionals besides the contact person.

Your group may decide to split up the interviews. I recommend, however, that at least two students jointly conduct each interview.

During the first round of interviews, you will ascertain the facts of the ethical problem, identify the assigned duties and moral responsibilities of the participants, and inquire about the cultural, organizational, and legal constraints on possible solutions. Ask specific, open-ended questions­­questions that do not have simple "yes" or "no" answers.

After the first round of interviews, each group should brainstorm to decide how to present the case narrative, to analyze the case, and to formulate alternative solutions. The group should write a detailed outline or full draft of the paper.

During the second round of interviews, you will check on the accuracy of your case narrative and evaluate the feasibility of your proposed alternative solutions.

If necessary, you may schedule interviews during a class period. In that case, you would be excused from class for the day.

The Paper

The paper should be at most six pages long, double-spaced, divided into a case narrative and a case analysis.

Although the case narrative should be faithful to the spirit of the actual incident, the narrative may embellish the details of the case. For example, the narrative may include snippets of conversations that might have occurred. (This is another reason to change the names of the participants.) The case narrative should run approximately three pages.

The case analysis should be similar to other case analysis papers, and it should be approximately three pages long.

There are several ways to organize the production of the paper. For example, one student can draft a section, and a different student can rewrite that draft. Alternatively, all students can write or edit all sentences together. Everyone should contribute ideas to all parts of the paper, however.

Grading

The paper will be graded on the same scales as the individual mini-papers: 1 to 5 for content, 1 to 5 for presentation. Furthermore, each student will submit a peer evaluation of each of the other students in the same group, on a five point scale (Excellent, Good, Satisfactory, Fair, Poor). Each studentıs grade on the fieldwork assignment will be the sum of the grade on the paper (2 to 10) and the maximum of the peer evaluations (1 to 5).

The evaluation form will be available later.