Peer Review

Classroom Materials for "Starting with Ethics"

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Feb 9, 2015 by Business

Bookmark

Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: As mentioned on this site, 'In business as in other arenas of life, it is important for us to develop moral wisdom and moral courage: wisdom to recognize when an ethical problem arises, as well as to make sound decisions in situations of moral conflict; and courage to do what we know is right even when there are strong pressures or incentives to do otherwise.' This site discusses ethics in the business world and the importance of following ethical guidelines. There is a series of ethical questions that help the readers reflect on examples of ethical issues that may arise in a start-up company. This could be used in a classroom to stimulate discussions about ethics.
Type of Material:: Reference material
Recommended Uses:: • In class • Homework • Business entrepreneurs • Online discussions
Technical Requirements:: Viewable in the browsers of Chrome, Firefox and IE
Identify Major Learning Goals:: • Contextualizes “ethics” into a business/entrepreneurial application. • Explains the importance of ethics especially in start-up companies • Gives examples of ethical situations that can arise • Give articles that discuss steps that startup companies can take to be sure ethical standards are a part of their initial setup • Gives links to examples of how other companies set up their ethical standards
Target Student Population:: • Undergraduate/graduate business students • Those looking to get into a startup company or start their own company
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Instructors would need to provide or users should have a foundation of what ethics are, how they are “applied”, the theories behind ethics

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: • The way the material is written it is easy to understand • Gives multiple examples and tools on ethics in a company • Gives multiple additional readings on the topic • Could be used both inside and outside a classroom
Concerns:: • Unsure of when this was written. The additional reading were over 10 years old which could be outdated when it comes to ethical guidelines in the long run but still could be useful when it comes getting a basic understanding of ethics to get someone started • The instructor or user would have to use other content, Start-Up Ethics section, from the Santa Clara University site to teach the content before the discussions could be completed, and that content/link is not available

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: • Within the first few paragraphs it is clear what the website will be discussion and why • Would be easy to implement into a curriculum design • There is not an overwhelming amount of information and the information that is given is easy to understand
Concerns:: • Does not clearly state what you must know before reading the material • There are questions that could be used in a classroom but there may be better ways to measure how much a student may have learned. • Concern that an instructor would have to create the materials for participant contained in the Start-Up Ethics module without knowing what that module contained. • Material cannot stand on its own, without other content delivering key concepts.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:: • The website itself is easy to navigate • Explains to click on the extra links for materials • Writes in such a way to try and keep the audience to continue reading • The content is easily incorporated into an existing business ethics course • It is well organized with appropriate links where needed
Concerns:: • There is not much to the page as far as visual aspects • The layout of the website is pretty basic • The interactive parts to the website are just clicking on the links to get to additional resources • Some broken links create a gap in the ability to fully use the content, such as the link to http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/dialogue/candc/cases/jumpstart.html

Other Issues and Comments:: • Might include some visual aspects to the website, may be helpful for those students who are visual learners • Could make questions interactive and have students solve an ethical issue for the kinesthetic learners • Lack of ability to access the Start-Up Ethics material limits the off-the-shelf use of the discussions.
Creative Commons: