Group 6 created a board game they felt would teach kids about engineering ethics.

The board itself was very colorful and creative, but there were certain areas on the board such as, “Mountain of Fear,” that didn’t seem to really mean anything. Making a cute and colorful board is a good thing, but it partially depends on the age group, which was one of the biggest concerns about this project. The ethical issues they would bring up as the focus of the game would have to be simple enough for children to understand, but still have a complex ethical dilemma. Most college students wouldn’t be interested in this kind of game, and there might be better and more informative ways to teach about ethics. High school kids might enjoy it as a break from regular class, as long as they topics are understandable and interesting. Before high school, kids might not understand the ethical issues, and might not see other perspectives or learn as much, but the board game looks like it was aimed at this age group. Then again, monopoly isn’t a super simple game either.

 

In fact, over-simplifying the board game might remove the analysis aspect that is crucial to the game- the object is to have players evaluate the pros and cons to each situation and then make their moves accordingly. Younger groups may have a simple “morally right” versus “morally wrong” situation, as there are the only “ethical dilemmas” they are capable of understanding.

Another issue was about who makes up the ethical issues, and how do they decide which issues to highlight. Some people care about specific issues more than others, and sometimes the difficulty in ethics is identifying the issue. Real life ethics issues are often quite complicated and often the ethical decision might cost you your job. It’s hard to say how you would act until you’re actually in one of these situations, and it’s unsure whether a board game could capture this idea. The idea that the players could come up with the ethical issues themselves is interesting, but might be difficult to actually implement.

 

 

Overall, if the board game was targeted at the right age group, the ethical issues where selected carefully, and the rules were simple to understand, this could be a great tool for teaching younger kids about difficult situations in ethics. It was proposed that this group could be an icebreaker for future E125 classes, and we feel like this would be an appropriate audience and setting. Also, we were wondering how this game would be marketed. Is the game meant to be sold to the general public or only to educators? Would this change the design of the game?