Proposal

• Test software that can present a layered ethical case on either a serial or adaptive-multidimensional basis.

• A collaborative layered case building environment.

• An orientation, in the software, to open ended responses, with computer-based content analysis against an pre-built inventory of possible answers.

• A collaborative answer assessment environment that enables enrichment of pattern recogntion and of the answer inventory based on student answers.

Things that might be measured:

• ability to abstract the underlying forces (principles, harms, and/or competing interests) that are at play in the case.

• ability to recognize the conflicts or competitions that are set up in the intersection of these forces.

• ability to recognize the range of possible decisions that might be made in the intersection of these competing forces.

• the quality of a decision based on interrater judgments of the reasonableness of the various decision possibilities.

• as new forces come into play, ability to abstract the new forces, recognize how they interact with existing forces, and understand how these forces change the decision landscape.

• ability to modify a decision in the face of new complexities.