ETHICS:

What's right?

Competing Products | Motivational Issues | Design Process | References

Overview

In a recent study, 74% of American high school students said, “When it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.” Interestingly, when the same group was polled,

82% admit they lied to parent within the past 12 months about something significant– 57% said they lied two or more times.
62% admit they lied to teacher within the past 12 months about something significant --
35% said they lied two or more times.
33% copied an internet document within the past 12 months – 18% did so two or more times.
60% cheated during a test at school within the past 12 months– 35% did so two or more times.
23% stole something from a parent or other relative within the past 12 months – 11% did so two or more times.

In 2002, 28% admitted stealing from a parent or other relative.

19% stole something from a friend within the past 12 months – 7% did so two or more times.
28% stole something from a store within the past 12 months – 14% did so two or more times.

On a whole, today's youth is constantly faced with ethical decisions. Most students consider themselves more ethical than their peers, when in reality the majority of youth is making poor decisions as a whole. The problem is not the fact that they are faced with the decisions, but that they are too often not making the best choices. Many of the lessons in ethics come from hip-hop music, peers, and preachy parents. Our e-game will give youths a chance to make the right decisions in scenarios that mirror their everyday life.

Instructional Objective

The students will understand what is a "good" ethical choices and how their choices affect others negatively or positively. The game will be used in a "better student" club that is a voluntary after school club for students to help them become better citizens of their school and the community.

Learners

This game is designed for a voluntary after school "better student" club in a high school. The club consists of students in grades 9-12, roughly 14-17 years of age. The club mentors students on how to be good citizens of their school, community, and the world at large. The club also focuses on community service projects to give back to the community. The club is voluntary to any student in the school. However, the club is also required for students who have received more than 2 in school suspensions or 1 out of school suspension during the school year. The voluntary members are paired with students who are required to be in the club to serve as peer mentors. The learners have all completed basic technology classes that are required by their high school.

Context of Use

The game is used in a classroom in a school with enough computers for every student. The game is designed to be played online (to allow for multiple platforms), more than once, since the students can come across different scenarios with every game. Prior to the game, the students are coached with in class lessons on the importance of making wise decisions and how your decisions affect others. The students will also have the opportunity to debate/discuss with each other what the best decision would be for different scenarios. After the game, the students will write a reflection about the choices they made in the game and why they made each choice. The game would be played individually, since in real life decisions often have to be made individually. The game allows each computer to be a user and played by one person at a time. A single play takes about 15 minutes.

Scope

Our idea on how to "win" in the game is based on an existing idea that is found in many magazine quizzes, specifically YM (Young Miss) magazine. As the players make decisions about how they would react in each situation, they are awarded a number of points. Similarly, in a YM quiz, you are given 1-3 points per quiz question. Just as in a YM quiz, you are categorized in a range at the end based on the total number of points you earned with each decision. The "better" decisions are awarded more points. The students see the category they fall into at the end of the game and read a brief description about how ethical the decisions they made are.

Naturally, students want to be the best people they can be so "winning" would mean that they place in the top range of points. However, our game also allows for role-play so a student could take on the persona/decisions of a someone who just wants to live life on the edge. The student could see how those types of decisions can affect others and his or herself. On the same note, a student could also take on an angelic persona and see how those types of decisions can affect others as well.

Object of the Game

The object of the game is to try to make the "good" decision when faced with a dilemma. After players are posed with a problem, a three minute timer pops up and the time starts. The student only has until the end of the time to make the decision. They are given a multiple choice of three possible decisions.If the decision is not made in the alloted 3 minutes, it is game over. The player can earn 1, 2, or 3 points per decision. At the end of the game, the player is placed into a point range that describes their ethical decision making skills. There are five possible point ranges for every scenario. The ranges descriptions are the same for each scenario. In essence, the object of the game is to see how ethical you are and a "winner" would be someone who chose the most ethical actions in each dilemma. For example, if a player earns 15 points in five dilemmas (3 point per choice) his or her ranking may read:

12-15 points

Congratulations! You are a contributing member of society. You understand that your actions affect others around you and think before you act. You are someone others look up to as a role model and make responsible choices. You are honest, loyal and understanding of others. You tend to think of yourself as being able to see the bigger picture, even when others around you may not. Friends often ask you for advice since you tend to make "good" choices. Adults respect you and teachers admire your tendency to help others. Good work.

Design Details

Universal Elements:

The game will be web based using a standard internet browser. The students will click on their choice in the web browser and will be linked to the next section based on their choice.

Specific Elements:

This game is a branching story to create simulation environments for students to face real life choices in a safe atmosphere. Ethics is a significant concern for society as indicated in the American Youth Ethics Survey conducted by Josephson Institute of Ethics. This simulation is web based using a standard web browser. The students will guide themselves through the scenarios and their selections will take them to the next appropriate chapter.

The image below shows one branch of the story developed. Click to open a seperate web (htm) page where the flow chart can be viewed in more detail.

The blue ovals are where the new scenario is described based on the previous decision made. The green rectangles are player choice options. In this particular scenario the story starts with:

"You are invited to go to a party. You know that parents will not be at the party house, and they are going to allow/encourage drinking. You want to go. What do you do?"

The choices are as follows:

You tell your parents everything, then ask to go;
You ask your parents permission to go to the party, but omit the details about missing parents and the drinking potential;
Instead of asking your parents to go to the party, ask them if you can stay at your friend's house- their parents are ok with you going to the party, as long as there is a designated driver; and
You do not want your parents to worry about you so you decide to wait until they are asleep and get a ride from your friend who has already agreed to be your designated driver for the evening to and from the party.

The students are faced with an ethical decision to make- not unlike real situations they face often in their lives. Based on the decision the students make, the story takes different turns. For this example the student chooses option 2, and are given the new scenario:

"Your parents think that you have been working hard, and deserve some fun time out with your friends. They ask that you are home before 1 AM.

You are thinking "All Right!"

Your friend picks you up and you drive to the party. While at the party, everyone is drinking. As you walk in a guy walks by with a tray of beers. Your friend takes one and grabs another for you. A drink sounds good, what do you do?"

and they are once again presented with four options. The options are:

You both take a drink and know that one of you will be sober by the time you have to get home in four hours;
You both take a drink and agree that one of you will stop drinking by 11pm so you have time to sober up;
You don't take a drink since you will now have to be the designated driver; and
You take a drink but don't drink it. You just don't want to feel left out.

For the purposes of demonstration we have selected the second option again, and now the new scenario is:

"It is now 11 PM you and your friend meet and need to decide about who is going to stop drinking."

The students need to decide between the following options:

Sample Screen shot:

The game web page is divided into three sections. There is the video section playing out the scenario with audio narration- this video is created in Second Life. The video has a animation view with life like characters interacting. The second section is to the right of the video section and contains a written script for the video. Having the script written out allows players to see the action and read the dialog, it also allows one to go back and re-read a section without needing to view the entire video again. The written script also makes it possible for people with hearing difficulties (or missing speakers) to know what is happening. The third section is at the bottom of the screen, this contains the choices for the player to select.

Sample Screenshot:

game screenshot

Characters:

The characters are the students and their lives and relationships. Based on their own experiences the students will respond differently to the prompts and scenarios. Because of this it is not possible to give a description of the characters, motivations, and background information.

Technical Elements

The teacher and students will need a computer with internet access. As a web based simulation, it is not important if the student is working on a Mac or a PC. There may be slight differences in the screen view depending on the browser used to run the simulation, but these differences should not be significant, nor should they effect the goals of the simulation. If needed the students and or the teacher can adjust the font size to accommodate students with vision issues. For an enhances experience students can listen to the narrative as it plays with the words also on the screen.

Competing Products

There are board games that question judgment, and question values in what an individual does or says he or she will do, but there is not a product to explicitly teach or instruct in morals and ethics. Traditionally, ethics are taught "at" students in lecture-style. Our game will teach ethics "to" students and give them the power to think critically about making a "good" choice that could negatively or positively affect others around them and their future. There is a good quiz game at www.youdontknowjack.com that asked seemingly obvious questions in a way in which the answer isn't completely obvious. You earn more points the quicker you answer, so the pressure adds more motivation and competition to question. After each question a playful yet condescending voice tells you if you got the question right or wrong and why and how many points you earned, if any.

Motivational Issues

Keller’s ARCS Model for Motivation can be applied to look at the student motivation to continue with “Ethics: What is Right?” simulation.

Attention is the first and most important element in motivation. Since ethics are introduced and learned about through a MUVE (Multi User Virtual Environment) this is unique and interesting to students- it will gather their initial attention, and since the environment is dynamic and interactive, it has the potential to continue to retain student involvement after the novelty has worn off.

Relevance is the second element of motivation. This simulation is relevant to the students in that the questions asked of the students are real to what they see in their lives. Students are faced with simular situations daily.

Confidence is built for the students in that they get to work on teams and can see the outcomes of the situations in a short period of time. Confidence gained in that the studetns get to see and realize the ramifications of their actions and choices quickly. Also students can go back and reevaluate their decisions to see greater success in future situations.

Satisfaction is another key element in this project. The students feel satisfaction is seeing the outcomes of their decisions. No longer are the concepts “far away” and inconceivable, but “tangible” in a virtual environment.

The student confidence is also high in that the students can revisit the simulation many times over and take the simulation a step farther. Instead of just going through and making the same poor decisions, the students will be able to learn from past mistakes and go forward and apply this knowledge to new scenarios.

Our game has five mini objectives posed to the students. Based on the students' choice on how to react, the student will recieve a description of their character based on their decisions. The five mini objectives are to react responsibly in each of the following contexts: a friend's house, school, home, community, and vacation. In each of these mini-objectives the students are forced into action as a situation is acted out by others in the location. The player will have choices on how to respond.

Design Process

At first, we were tempted to to a quiz-type game to quiz the students on how they should act in certain scenarios. Then we thought about what type of context our information would be used in real life. In real life, is it more important that the students can read about a situation on a piece of paper and answer the correct question, or is it more important that they can be in the situation and act accordingly? Since the answer is obviously the later, this brought us to our idea that we need to put the situation in context. We gathered background information using the results from the national survey of over 20,000 high school students (link below) from the Josephson Institute of Ethics. Many of the situations they are faced with in our game are based off choices the high school students stated they were faced with in the survey.

References

Electronic

2006 Josephson Institute report card on the ethics of American youth: Part one – Integrity. (2006, October 15). Youth ethics survey- The Johnson Institute's report card. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://www.josephsoninstitute.org/reportcard/
Keller, J. M. (1999, March 1). Applying the ARCS model of motivational design in distance learning. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from Florida State University Web site: http://mailer.fsu.edu/~jkeller/john/index.htm
Kidder, R. M. (2005). Chapter 1. In Institute for global ethics- How good people make tough choices. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://www.globalethics.org/pub/toughchoices.html
ym.com- "Take this quiz". (2007, November 27). Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://www.ym.com/quiz/index.jsp

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Last updated December 10, 2007