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Ethical engineering practice is a global issue. However, cultural norms and social realities may result in differences in ethical behavior. A basic instructional challenge is developing the ability of students to understand ethical practice and to facilitate discussion of ethical issues across regional and cultural boundaries. The present project seeks to facilitate discussion and analysis of ethical practices of undergraduate engineering students at our university, Texas Tech, and peers at universities in Ukraine and India, our partnering countries. An undergraduate ethics course for engineering majors and the website https://EthicalEngineer.ttu.edu are currently the primary channels through which this project is being developed and implemented. The paper describes (1) steps in developing the website, which is currently operational, (2) progress developing partnerships and recruiting participants, and (3) results from preliminary tests of machine-assisted methods for analyzing students' submissions to the website. The Ethical Engineer is an emerging web-based innovation for facilitating cross-cultural discourse in engineering ethics.

Smartphones have provided many benefits for society, but these benefits have come at some cost. Researchers have identified a number of problematic smartphone usage (PSU) behaviors associated with greater impulsiveness and excessive reassurance seeking, particularly among younger people, women, and minoritized groups. In the present study, we extended this research by (1) examining whether these findings replicate in slightly older demographic groups, (2) determining whether perceived social norms are a substantial predictor of PSU, and (3) confirm that using smartphones specifically for social media is associated with PSU. We conducted an online survey on 183 participants recruited through Prolific. The participants in the present study were significantly older (approximately 9 years) compared to a previous study. Previous findings were replicated on our older sample. Perceived social norms regarding smartphone use had a large association with PSU. We found that using one's smartphone primarily for social media (rather than other popular applications) was associated with greater PSU. We found no evidence that PSU is linked with depression. Nor did we find evidence that the relationship between age and PSU is mediated by age-related decreases in impulsivity, as previous researchers had speculated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]