Unstructured educational activities are not rigidly fixed or systematic;
rather they represent informal efforts to promote and support opportunities
for student engagement. Five such activities follow. Likely enough, computer
science faculty and departments already engage in some of these unstructured
activities to support their technical education. I want to sketch how these
same unstructured activities can be used to integrate the technical with the
social and ethical.
- Electronic mail and bulletin boards. The
information we bring to students’ attention through electronic media
carries an implicit message about what students need to know and be concerned
about as members of a computing community. Most of our electronic mail and
bulletin boards for students communicate technical or pragmatic information:
tips for homework, notice of new machines and software on campus, when and
where a particular user’s group will meet, how to obtain new shareware,
and the like. However, more can be done. For example, we can involve students
in bulletin boards, like RISKS, that do discuss the social aspects of computing.
And we can challenge students intellectually based on current issues. For
example, consider the recent controversy over Lotus’ proposed software
to provide marketing information about millions of Americans. Electronic mail
to students could not only inform them of the situation but engage them in
substantive discussion of, say, the implications of a software design for
potential privacy violations. Through such broader use of electronic media
we draw students into the larger societal controversies and discussions.
- Informal classroom discussion. In our technical
courses, we can respond to current social issues relevant to the course material.
For example, on a course on algorithms it could be appropriate to discuss
recent court decisions on the patentability of algorithms and the implications
for algorithms as intellectual property. This is not to say that such discussions
should be lengthy or occur all that often. It is to say that the discussions
should be genuine in the sense that they draw on our own interest, and convey
the immediacy and importance of the issues. Indeed, an absence of such informal
classroom discussion can communicate to students that the technical can and
should be separated from the affairs of computing in the larger society.
- Departmental colloquia. In the span of a
year at Mills we typically intersperse in our computer science colloquia series
two or three social topics among the technical ones. In general, such colloquia
can provide both faculty and students with common ground on social topics
that then serves as a basis for on-going discussions. Moreover, since colloquia
tend to be highly visible forums, they can help validate the value of such
discussions.
- Student involvement in school computing policy.
Students directly encounter the social aspects of computing through the policies
that govern their own school computer use. Such encounters provide rich educational
opportunities. For example, at Mills, computer science undergraduates and
graduate students participated in discussions about student access to specialized
computer equipment. Through the discussions, students became keenly aware
of how different policy decisions could affect their peers and their sense
of community. While bounded by certain faculty parameters, students with faculty
helped determine policy. Other policy areas that are amenable to student participation
include, for example, allocation of computer time, welcoming novices into
the computer center, promoting access to information, and establishing security
for systems. (For more detail, see Friedman, 1986, 1991). By examining and
defining social policy, students learn to navigate through some of the very
issues they will encounter in their later lives as computer professionals.
- Faculty advising. How do we advise students?
For example, what is our response when a student comes to us with a social
or ethical concern? Do we say, perhaps, “Yes, uh huh, but shouldn’t
you be spending your time on your technical work?” Or in some other way
do we dismiss or change the topic? Or, instead, do we say something like,
“Yes, that’s interesting, and how does that social or ethical concern
inform on your technical work?” That is, we can help students to see
that their social concerns need not be in opposition or in competition with
their technical education. The same holds true for career advising. For example,
are we prepared to advise a student who tells us she wishes to pursue robotics
but does not want to contribute to the development of “smart” bombs?
Or are we left silent (as I was) because we are unaware of non-military
options? Perhaps I am overstating the case based on my own experiences and
those of close colleagues. I do think, however, that students construct understandings
of themselves in relation to the field based partly on what we as faculty
bring to the advising table.
Go to: Conclusion
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