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Upon graduating from university, many engineers will work in new product development and/or technology adoption for continuous improvement and production optimization. These jobs require employees to be cognizant of ethical practices and implications for design. However, little engineering coursework, outside the traditional ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) required Engineering Ethics course, accounts for the role of ethics within this process. Because of this, engineering students have few learning opportunities to practice and reflect on ethical decision-making.

This paper highlights one approach to integrating ethics into an engineering course (outside of engineering ethics). Specifically, the study is implemented within a five-week module with a focus on big data ethics, as part of a Supply Chain Management Technology course (required for Industrial Engineering Technology majors), using metacognition as the core assessment.

Four main themes were identified through the qualitative data analysis of the metacognitive reflections: (1) overreliance on content knowledge, (2) time management skills, (3) career connections and (4) knowledge extensions.

Three notable points emerged which contribute to the literature. First, this study showcased one example of how an ethics module can be integrated into an engineering course (other than Engineering Ethics). Second, this study demonstrated how metacognitive reflections can be used to reinforce student self-awareness of the learning process and connections to big data ethics in the workplace. Finally, this study exhibited how metacognitive reflection assignments can be deployed as a teaching and learning assessment tool, providing an opportunity for the instructor to make immediate changes as needed.

Accessibility to entrepreneurial education can be very restrictive because of associated barriers (e.g. add-on course/credit cost and prolonged duration) that prevent students from gaining entry into learning experiences. This study aims to provide an approach to address the gap of inaccessibility. This study proposes the integration of entrepreneurially minded coursework into aviation coursework using information literacy (IL) exercises by incorporating readings, videos, student-centered online discussions and student-facilitated presentations.

Students participated in an intervention consisting of five entrepreneurially minded online discussions where they watched a video or read an article and then responded to a series of questions. Upon completion of the intervention, participants completed a survey related to student learning outcomes and satisfaction.

The results from this study provide insight into changes in student perceptions after engaging in IL exercises designed to develop the entrepreneurial mindset. There is evidence that online discussions, journal article critiques and student-facilitated presentations are effective ways to integrate IL into aviation courses to cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets among students.

Several university-based approaches currently exist to help students develop an entrepreneurial mindset, including majors and minors in entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship coursework and centers for entrepreneurship that offer extracurricular learning experiences. Although these approaches offer a great foundation, they are typically viewed as “extra” with high barriers to entry. The limited focus on integration into coursework (whereby everyone gets an opportunity) prevents equitable access to a larger contingent of students. Therefore, in this study, we propose one approach to integrating the entrepreneurial mindset into coursework.