The Ethics of Evaluating Instructional Computing - Introduction - The Research Center on Computing & Society

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Marvin J. Croy

Introduction

Leslie Burkholder’s address demonstrates the wide scope of problems, questions, and issues that characterize the realm of academic computing. In the following pages, the focus will be upon issues related to one of the questions he cites. “May a researcher, for example, look at files recording a student’s revisions of his essays, without that student’s permission, in order to complete a study of how a writing tool is used?”(1) My interest in this sort of question derives from the direction in which it leads and the points that it makes explicit about academic computing. It reminds us that instructional computing is a growing part of the academic use of computers. Moreover, the use of computers in academia supports not only the teaching effort but also, in a great variety of ways, the conduct of empirical research. In order to address the ethical questions that arise when computers are at the center of both instructional and research efforts, a case analysis approach will be used. The case to be analyzed is a hypothetical one concerning evaluative research on the use of computer-assisted instruction programs. This hypothetical case involves an instructor carrying out a controlled experiment in which students in a large class were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: traditional classroom instruction versus that same instruction supplemented by CAI. One group of students thus had access to instructional computer programs while the other (the control group) did not. Students in the control group discovered that the grades of students using the CAI were higher than theirs.

By the middle of the term the instructor realized that students in the experimental group who had access to CAI were doing much better than students in the control group. Some students in the control group sensed this difference and complained that they were being denied an educational opportunity which others who had paid the same tuition were getting. These students insisted that the instructor discontinue the experiment and allow them to use the CAI package for the remainder of the term. As one student emphatically put it, “I’m not a guinea pig!”(2)

The ethical difficulties bound up in this attempt to evaluate CAI programs are nicely illustrated in previously published comments on this case given by Jim Moor and Christine Overall. After presenting their commentary and my response to it, some remarks will be made about the ethical considerations which are significant here.

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