Applied Ethics

Although ethics classes are common around the world, scientists are unsure if their lessons can actually change behavior; evidence either way is weak, relying on contrived laboratory tests or sometimes unreliable self-reports. But a new study published in Cognition found that, in at least one real-world situation, a single ethics lesson may have had lasting effects.

The researchers investigated one class session’s impact on eating meat. According to study co-author Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosopher at the University of California, Riverside: students’ attitudes on the topic are variable and unstable, behavior is easily measurable, and ethics literature largely agrees that eating less meat is good because it reduces environmental harm and animal suffering. Half of the students in four large philosophy classes read an article on the ethics of factory-farmed meat, optionally watched an 11-minute video on the topic and joined a 50-minute discussion. The other half focused on charitable giving instead. Then, unbeknownst to the students, the researchers studied their anonymized meal-card purchases for that semester — nearly 14,000 receipts for almost 500 students. “It’s an awesome data set,” says Nina Strohminger, a psychologist who teaches business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and was not involved in the study.

Schwitzgebel predicted the intervention would have no effect; he had previously found that ethics professors do not differ from other professors on a range of behaviors, including voting rates, blood donation and returning library books. But among student subjects who discussed meat ethics, meal purchases containing meat decreased from 52 to 45 percent — and this effect held steady for the study’s duration of several weeks. Purchases from the other group remained at 52 percent.

“That’s actually a pretty large effect for a pretty small intervention.” Schwitzgebel says. Strohminger agrees: “The thing that still blows my mind is that the only thing that’s different between these two cases is just that one day in class.” She says she wants the effect to be real but cannot rule out some unknown confounding variable. And if real, Strohminger notes, it might be reversible by another nudge: “Easy come, easy go.”

Schwitzgebel suspects the greatest impact came from social influence — classmates or teaching assistants leading the discussions may have shared their own vegetarianism, showing it as achievable or more common. Second, the video may have had an emotional impact. Least rousing, he thinks, was rational argument, although his co-authors say reason might play a bigger role. Now the researchers are probing the specific effects of teaching style, teaching assistants’ eating habits and students’ video exposure. Meanwhile Schwitzgebel who had predicted no effect — will be eating his words.

A year after graduation, I was offered a position teaching a writing class. Teaching was a profession I had never seriously considered, though several of my stories had been published. I accepted the job without hesitation, as it would allow me to wear a tie and go by the name of Mr. Davis. My father went by the same name, and I liked to imagine people getting the two of us confused. “Wait a minute” someone might say, “are you talking about Mr. Davis the retired man, or Mr. Davis the respectable scholar?”

The position was offered at the last minute, and I was given two weeks to prepare, a period I spent searching for briefcase(公文包) and standing before my full-length mirror, repeating the words, “Hello, class. I’m Mr. Davis.” Sometimes I would give myself an aggressive voice. Sometimes I would sound experienced. But when the day eventually came, my nerves kicked in and the true Mr. Davis was there. I sounded not like a thoughtful professor, but rather a 12-year-old boy.

I arrived in the classroom with paper cards designed in the shape of maple leaves. I had cut them myself out of orange construction paper. I saw nine students along a long table. I handed out the cards, and the students wrote down their names and fastened them to their breast pockets as I required.

“All right then,” I said. “Okay, here we go.” Then I opened my briefcase and realized that I had never thought beyond this moment. I had been thinking that the students would be the first to talk, offering their thoughts and opinions on the events of the day. I had imagined that I would sit at the edge of the desk, overlooking a forest of hands. Every student would yell. “Calm down, you’ll all get your turn. One at a time, one at a time!”

A terrible silence ruled the room, and seeing no other opinions, I inspected the students to pull out their notebooks and write a brief essay related to the topic of deep disappointment.

You won't have any excuse to skip class anymore. French startup Open Classrooms is offering the first state-recognized bachelor degree in France that uses only MOOCs(massive open online courses). The startup partnered with IESA Multimedia to create this program.

There are three learning paths in engineering, design and marketing. Students will have to complete all the courses and required projects in order to get their degree.【小题1】IESA is already working on 40 different MOOCS for this program.

On average, it will take a year of hard work in order to complete all the classes. As always, it's hard to keep going when you sign up for a MOOC.【小题2】

This kind of degree has many key advantages. For IESA, it gives the school more students. IESA is a private school, and its end goal is to make as much money as possible. So with these new Mooc students, IESA will be able to get more money per teacher on average.

【小题3】The startup already offers a course for e20 per month, but you need to pay E300 per month for the Premium Plus offering to use the state-recognized program. it's unclear how much Open Classrooms will keep, but it should be more than €20 per month.

For students, it's a cheaper way to get a degree. Maybe you can't afford to study for three years at IESA and pay €6,950 per year.【小题4】Sure, it's probably a less enjoyable experience than going to your school and spending time with other students and teachers, but it makes sense for some students.

It's an interesting new direction for Open Classrooms, and I can't wait to see whether other schools will start working with the startup to provide online courses. It will be interesting to see whether the first students are satisfied with this kind of degree as well.