Casey Fiesler
Natalie Garrett
ABSTRACT
As issues of technology ethics become more pervasive in the media and public discussions, there is increasing interest in what role ethics should play in computing education. Not only are there more standalone ethics classes being offered at universities, but calls for greater integration of ethics across computer science curriculum mean that a growing number of CS instructors may be including ethics as part of their courses. To both describe current trends in computing ethics coursework and to provide guidance for further ethics inclusion in computing, we present an in-depth qualitative analysis of 115 syllabi from university technology ethics courses. Our analysis contributes a snapshot of the content and goals of tech ethics classes, and recommendations for how these might be integrated across a computing curriculum.
- Brett A. Becker and Thomas Fitzpatrick. 2019. What Do CS1 Syllabi Reveal About Our Expectations of Introductory Programming Students?. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Minneapolis, MN, 1011--1017. https://doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287485Google Scholar
- Angela R Bielefeldt, Madeline Polmear, Daniel Knight, Christopher Swan, and Nathan Canney. 2017. Ethics Across the Curriculum? Integrating Ethics and Societal Impact Topics into Core Engineering Courses. In Proceedings of the ASEE American Society for Engineering Education Rocky Mountain Section Conference . 1--15.Google Scholar
- Judith A. Boss. 1994. The effect of community service work on the moral development of college ethics students . Journal of Moral Education , Vol. 23, 2 (1994), 183--198. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305724940230206Google ScholarCross Ref
- Bo Brinkman and Keith W. Miller. 2017. The Code of Ethics Quiz Show. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Seattle, WA, 679--680. https://doi.org/10.1145/3017680.3017803Google Scholar
- Emanuelle Burton, Judy Goldsmith, and Nicholas Mattei. 2018. How to Teach Computer Ethics through Science Fiction . Commun. ACM , Vol. 61, 8 (2018), 54--64. https://doi.org/10.1145/3154485Google ScholarDigital Library
- Roxanne L. Canosa and Joan M. Lucas. 2008. Mock Trials and Role-playing in Cmputer Ethics Courses. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education . 148--152. https://doi.org/10.1145/1352322.1352187Google Scholar
- Cory Doctorow. 2017. More than 50 tech ethics courses, with links to syllabi . Boing Boing (November 20 2017). https://boingboing.net/2017/11/20/robo-socrates-what-is-virtue.htmlGoogle Scholar
- James M. DuBois and Jill Burkemper. 2002. Ethics Education in U.S. Medical Schools: A Study of Syllabi . Academic Medicine , Vol. 77, 5 (2002), 432--437.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Editors. 2018. Cambridge Analytica Controversy Must Spur Researchers to Update Data Ethics . Nature , Vol. 555 (2018), 559--560.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Felicia Chong. 2016. The Pedagogy of Usability: An Analysis of Technical Communication Textbooks, Anthologies, and Course Syllabi and Descriptions . Technical Communication Quarterly , Vol. 25, 1 (2016), 12--28. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2016.1113073Google ScholarCross Ref
- Casey Fiesler. 2018a. Tech Ethics Curricula: A Collection of Syllabi . Medium (July 5, 2018). https://medium.com/@cfiesler/tech-ethics-curricula-a-collection-of-syllabi-3eedfb76be18Google Scholar
- Casey Fiesler. 2018b. What Our Tech Ethics Crisis Says About the State of Computer Science Education . How We Get to Next (December 5, 2018). https://howwegettonext.com/what-our-tech-ethics-crisis-says-about-the-state-of-computer-science-education-a6a5544e1da6Google Scholar
- Howard Gardner. 1991. The Tensions Between Education and Development . Journal of Moral Education , Vol. 20, 2 (1991), 113--125. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305724910200201Google ScholarCross Ref
- Frederick H. Gautschi and Thomas M. Jones. 1998. Enhancing the ability of business students to recognize ethical issues: An empirical assessment of the effectiveness of a course in business ethics . Journal of Business Ethics , Vol. 17, 2 (1998), 205--216.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Daniel Greene, Anna Lauren Hoffmann, and Luke Stark. 2019. Better, Nicer, Clearer, Fairer: A Critical Assessment of the Movement for Ethical Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) . 2122--2131. https://doi.org/10.24251/hicss.2019.258Google ScholarCross Ref
- Barbara J. Grosz, David Gray Grant, Kate Vredenburgh, Jeff Behrends, Lily Hu, Alison Simmons, and Jim Waldo. 2019. Embedded EthiCS: Integrating Ethics Broadly Across Computer Science Education . Commun. ACM , Vol. 62, 8 (2019), 54--61. arxiv: 1808.05686 http://arxiv.org/abs/1808.05686Google ScholarDigital Library
- R. M. Harden. 2002. Learning outcomes and instructional objectives: Is there a difference? Medical Teacher , Vol. 24, 2 (2002), 151--155. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159022020687Google ScholarCross Ref
- Ali Haskins Lisle , Coleman Merenda, and Joseph Gabbard. 2019. Using affinity diagramming to generate a codebook: a case study on young military veterans and community reintegration . Qualitative Research (2019), 1--18. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794119851324Google Scholar
- Deborah Johnson. 1994. Who Should Teach Computer Ethics and Computers & Society? Computers and Society , Vol. 14, 5 (1994), 6--13. https://doi.org/10.1016/0268--4012(94)90078--7Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kristie J Loescher, Regina W Hughes, Frank Cavico, Jim Mirabella, and Pedro F Pellet. 2005. The Impact of an "Ethics Across the Curriculum" Initiative on the Cognitive Moral Development of Business School Undergraduates . Teaching Ethics (2005), 31--72.Google Scholar
- Kathleen M. MacQueen, Eleanor McLellan, Kelly Kay, and Bobby Milstein. 1998. Codebook Development for Team-Based Qualitative Analysis . Field Methods , Vol. 10, 2 (1998), 31--36. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X980100020301Google Scholar
- C Dianne Martin. 1997. The Case for Integrating Ethical and Social Impact into the Computer Science Curriculum . ITCSE Working Group Reports and Supplemental Proceedings (1997), 114--120.Google ScholarDigital Library
- C. Dianne Martin, Chuck Huff, Donald Gotterbarn, and Keith Miller. 1996. Implementing a Tenth Strand in the CS Curriculum . Commun. ACM , Vol. 39, 12 (1996), 75--84. https://doi.org/10.1145/240483.240499Google ScholarDigital Library
- David Meyer. 2018. Amazon Reportedly Killed an AI Recruitment System Because It Couldn't Stop the Tool from Discriminating Against Women . https://fortune.com/2018/10/10/amazon-ai-recruitment-bias-women-sexist/Google Scholar
- Barbara Moskal, Keith Miller, and L. A. Smith King. 2004. Grading Essays in Computer Ethics. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. 101--105. https://doi.org/10.1145/563517.563380Google Scholar
- Norman R. Nielsen. 1972. Social Responsibility and Computer Education . Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (1972), 90--96. https://doi.org/10.1145/873684.873708Google ScholarDigital Library
- Cathy O'Neil. 2017. The Ivory Tower Can't Keep Ignoring Tech . The New York Times (November 14, 2017). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/opinion/academia-tech-algorithms.htmlGoogle Scholar
- Evan Peck. 2017. The Ethical Engine: Integrating Ethical Design into Intro Computer Science . Medium (July 5, 2017). https://medium.com/bucknell-hci/the-ethical-engine-integrating-ethical-design-into-intro-to-computer-science-4f9874e756afGoogle Scholar
- Deborah L. Rhode. 1992. Ethics by the Pervasive Method . Journal of Legal Education , Vol. 42, 1 (1992), 31--56.Google Scholar
- Jeffrey Saltz, Michael Skirpan, Casey Fiesler, Micha Gorelick, Tom Yeh, Robert Heckman, Neil Dewar, and Nathan Beard. 2019. Integrating Ethics within Machine-learning Courses . ACM Transactions on Computing Education , Vol. 19, 4 (2019), 1--26. https://doi.org/10.1145/3341164Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jeffrey S. Saltz, Neil I. Dewar, and Robert Heckman. 2018. Key Concepts for a Data Science Ethics Curriculum. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education . Baltimore, MD, 952--957. https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159483Google ScholarDigital Library
- Scott Shane and Daisuke Wakabayashi. 2018. 'The Business of War': Google Employees Protest Work for the Pentagon . The New York Times (April 4, 2018). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-ceo-pentagon-project.htmlGoogle Scholar
- Earl E. Shelp, Michael L. Russell, and Nellie P. Grose. 1981. Students' Attitudes to Ethics in the Medical School Curriculum. Journal of Medical Ethics , Vol. 7, 2 (1981), 70--73. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.7.2.70Google ScholarCross Ref
- Katie Shilton. 2018. Values and Ethics in Human-Computer Interaction . Foundations and Trends® in Human--Computer Interaction , Vol. 12, 2 (2018), 107--171. https://doi.org/10.1561/1100000073Google ScholarDigital Library
- Natasha Singer. 2018. Tech's ethical 'dark side': Harvard, Stanford, and others want to address it . The New York Times (2018). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/business/computer-science-ethics-courses.htmlGoogle Scholar
- Michael Skirpan, Nathan Beard, Srinjita Bhaduri, Casey Fiesler, and Tom Yeh. 2018a. Ethics Education in Context: A Case Study of Novel Ethics Activities for the CS Classroom. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Baltimore, MD, 940--945. https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159573Google ScholarDigital Library
- Michael Skirpan, Jacqueline Cameron, and Tom Yeh. 2018b. Quantified Self: An Interdisciplinary Immersive Theater Project Supporting a Collaborative Learning Environment for CS Ethics . Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (2018), 946--951. https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159574Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bernd Carsten Stahl, Job Timmermans, and Brent Daniel Mittelstadt. 2016. The Ethics of Computing: A Survey of the Computing-Oriented Literature . Comput. Surveys , Vol. 48, 4 (2016), 1--38. https://doi.org/10.1145/2871196Google ScholarDigital Library
- Luke Stark and Anna Lauren Hoffmann. 2019. Data Is the New What? Popular Metaphors & Professional Ethics in Emerging Data Culture . Journal of Cultural Analytics , Vol. 127, 127 (2019), 1--22. https://doi.org/10.22148/16.036Google Scholar
- Manas Tungare, Xiaoyan Yu, William Cameron, Guofang Teng, A P Manuel, Lillian Cassel, Weiguo Fan, and Edward A Fox. 2007. Towards a Syllabus Repository for Computer Science Courses Categories and Subject Descriptors. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Covington, KY, 55--59.Google Scholar
- Marty J Wolf, Don Gotterbarn, and Michael S Kirkpatrick. 2019. ACM Code of Ethics: Looking Back and Forging Ahead. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education. Minneapolis, MN, 801--802.Google ScholarDigital Library
- Yonatan Zunger. 2018. Computer science faces an ethics crisis; the Cambridge Analytica scandal proves it . The Boston Globe (March 22, 2018). https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/03/22/computer-science-faces-ethics-crisis-the-cambridge-analytica-scandal-proves/IzaXxl2BsYBtwM4nxezgcP/story.htmlGoogle Scholar
Index Terms
- What Do We Teach When We Teach Tech Ethics?: A Syllabi Analysis
Recommendations
Ethics Education in Context: A Case Study of Novel Ethics Activities for the CS Classroom
SIGCSE '18: Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationOur paper offers several novel activities for teaching ethics in the context of a computer science (CS) class. Rather than approaches that teach ethics as an isolated course, we outline and discuss multiple ethics education interventions meant to work ...
Entering the Techlash: Student Perspectives on Ethics in Tech Job Searches
CSCW'22 Companion: Companion Publication of the 2022 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social ComputingPublic coverage of ethical scandals in tech companies often portrays tech workers as uncaring or short-sighted in their ethical consideration. But how do tech students regard the connection between ethics and their future jobs? To explore ethics in the ...
Promoting professional responsibility and ethics: the pledge of the computing professional (abstract only)
SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science educationThe Pledge of the Computing Professional (http://computing-professional.org), endorsed by SIGCAS and the ACM Committee on Professional Ethics, was developed to both support professional responsibility in computing and to raise awareness of one's ethical ...
Comments