Shelly McCallum-Ferguson, DBA, professor of business, and Joseph Tadie, Ph.D., associate professor of philosophy, published a paper titled “Learning business ethics through making: Integrating a makerspace approach in business ethics instruction.” The paper will appear in the Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics (ISSN# 1913-8059) in volume 17 (5), 2020.
This paper presents the progress made over the last few years to introduce a makerspace module into an existing business ethics course. This integration was undertaken as a means of addressing some of the many challenges ethics teachers face. The paper explores an approach to course design which engages students with ethical principles in the first half of the course in a standard theoretical approach. In the second half of the course, a business-like, project-based setting emerges where ethical dilemmas arise spontaneously, thus providing opportunities to reflectively identify, consider, and make decisions from the ethical theories studied.
Designed, in part, to identify and express ongoing work that squarely meets our strategic plan, the paper attests neatly to a response to both strategic plan initiative 1’s call to develop values-based assessment efforts and initiative 3’s call to further develop a makerspace to support innovation.
The paper was also the basis of a presentation accepted at the 2020 MBAA International Conference, March 25–27, 2020 in Chicago, Ill., but was canceled due to the pandemic (rescheduled for presentation at the 2021 conference).