A “Capstone” Course in Computer Ethics

Donald Gotterbarn

A Brief Overview of a Capstone Course

Course Goals:

• Teach that computing is a service industry, and so students must consider the impact on users
• Sensitize students by providing background information on issues about which they may not have thought
• Examine social issues in several computer applications
• Examine the professional aspects of building computer artifacts
• Teach about ethics, plus legal requirements and responsibilities
• Provide practice reasoning about professional ethics issues

General Assumptions:

It is a mistake to approach a course like this from the theory side. It must be connected to practice. This requires active student participation. The student has to be engaged and challenged by the issues.

Particular approach:

To make it more than theory about practice, the class was handled on two levels. On one level we were an ordinary academic class discussing issues, but on the other level we were all employees of a consulting company which had to face day-to-day issues. The students were asked to make decisions and write papers responding to issues that arose in the company. The major term project was tied to this mock company.

On the second day of class the students were each assigned a module of a large computing project. The point of the project was not to develop programming skills, but to have the students see and experience several ethical issues; so the modules did not involve a high degree of programming difficulty. When students met with me to discuss their modules, each was asked to add some functions to the module without telling the others. What students were asked to do varied from being merely an additional module function to being clearly immoral and illegal. The programming side of the project was completed at midterm. At this point each student was given the object code for all the modules, and was asked to conduct a complete system test to determine the systems “correctness” and whether it could and should be given to the customer. Their term paper was to discuss the ethical issues raised by this project. The last class session was spent discussing the project and the kinds of things the students were asked to do during the project.

Discussion Direction:

I used the concept of responsibility as the primary key to the course. The directions taken were: individual responsibility for design, testing, and bugs, and how these relate to rights over the product as an individual and as a member of a programming team. Do the rights of ownership give rights to insert logic bombs and worms to protect the property? What are the legal and moral responsibilities to the user and to society? Concepts of warranties and liability were examined. As a computer scientist, does one have the responsibility for the misuse of the product by the end user, e.g., selling a computer to Hitler? What are the legal and moral responsibilities for your actions when working for a company, e.g., whistleblowing. What do “codes of ethics” have to say about this? What is the responsibility to the public at large? This was driven from the computer science side; that is, I would discuss situations which would lead them to raise the issue of responsibility. The details of the situation required them to make precise plans for action, rather than merely repeat general timeworn aphorisms.

Primary text:

D. G. Johnson & John W. Snapper, eds., Ethical Issues in the Use of Computers, Belmont, CA, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1985.

Assignments:

Thought papers:

These were brief papers (3 – 5 typewritten pages) on topics that were discussed in the readings, or on topics I wanted them to think about before the next class meeting.

Readings:

Many were from the Johnson and Snapper text, but I also required students to read several short, current articles on each subject. These were kept on reserve in the library. I found this policy necessary in order to keep the course more current than it would be with just the textbook.

Programs:

Each student had to do one module of a large program.

Term papers:

10 – 15 pages on some of the major issues involved in the class’s term project.

East Tennessee State University

Go to: Non-Apologetic Computer Ethics Education – Martin and Holz

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