Non-Apologetic Computer Ethics Education:
A Strategy for Integrating Social Impact and Ethics into the Computer Science Curriculum

C. Dianne Martin and Hilary J. Holz

• 1. Introduction
• 1.1 New CS Curriculum Standards
• 1.2 Teaching the Ethics Component
• 2. Creating a Social and Ethical Context
• 2.1 The Freshman Computers and Society Course
• 2.1.1 Format
• 2.1.2 Teaching Analysis Skills
• 2.1.3 Teaching Social Impact Awareness
• 2.2 Social Impact Modules
• 2.3 Senior Software Engineering Project
• 3. Discussion
• 3.1 Beyond the Computer Science Curriculum
• 4. References
• 5. Sample Primary Source List of Readings

2.1.3 Teaching Social Impact Awareness

The second half of the course covers a broad spectrum of topics from the computer field. The content is not static and depends, in part, on the availability of films and guest lecturers. Examples include the role of computers in medicine, computers in the workplace, legal issues in computing, privacy and databases, computer crime, and the history of scientific methodology. Within each topic, ethical and societal issues are identified and discussed in lecture and discussion groups. Students must pick a topic for a term paper, in which they will explore the ethical and societal issues in more depth. Frequently, but not necessarily, they select one of those discussed in class.

In addition, sometime during the semester each student must read a science fiction short story and present an ethical analysis of the technological content of the story as related to the topic of the day in their discussion group. The student then gives a written report of his or her analysis and the discussion group’s reaction. The use of science fiction serves several purposes. In general, it is a genre which liberates the reader to explore extrapolated ethical questions without feeling silly. It also reminds the student that non-technical people have been considering the same issues the course addresses for quite some time, in a way that helps to legitimize the undertaking to the student. One student was inspired enough to write an original science fiction short story as his term paper.

Previously, the course has used a secondary source ethics textbook. However, the textbooks, although quite good in their own right, did not seem to be of much help in a course of this format. Due to the wide variety of materials presented in class, the textbooks were found to be too restricting. Currently, the course uses weekly readings, taken from primary sources. In addition, a primary source list of major works by experts from various fields is provided (see section 5 below). Students are required to read and report on at least one book from the primary source list.

Go to: 2.2 Social Impact Modules

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