Consequences of Computing:
A Framework for Teaching

Principles and Skills Underlying the Social and Ethical Dimensions - Page 18 of 36

PRINCIPLES AND SKILLS UNDERLYING THE SOCIAL AND ETHICAL DIMENSIONS

The specific topics addressed in courses or modules (e.g. privacy of electronic mail in organizations) may change based on currency of the topic or technology, the interest of the instructor, the nature of the undergraduate program, or the location of the course in the undergraduate curriculum. Some items on the dimensions are currently more fundamental than others (e.g. property, risk, privacy), but all are important, and the emphasis within each dimension may change over time.

The goal of a curriculum should be to prepare students of computer science to deal with new issues as they arise in practice, later in their careers. Given the changing nature of the technological universe, different issues than were addressed in school are likely to arise. Thus, an emphasis on the principles and skills that allow one to understand a wide variety of issues will enable students to be more flexible in their approach and will help instructors to avoid simply doing the social and ethical topic du jour as they teach the subject.

This section provides some guidance in terms of the important principles and skills a student of computer science should be exposed to in the course of an undergraduate curriculum. The principles and skills associated with each dimension are what we consider to be the fundamental and important content of this area and are represented in Figure 3. The particular topics from the table in Figure 1, important though they are, can simply be viewed as vehicles through which to teach these principles and skills.

The important principles and skills from the technology dimension of our 3 dimensional table are well covered in Curricula 1991. They can be found under the "recurring concepts" and the specific skills associated with the knowledge units. We provide here an analysis of the important principles and skills from the ethical and social analysis dimensions. Our presentation of each principle or skill includes: a statement of its character and importance, an explanation of its fundamental or elementary character, and preliminary suggestions about how it could be taught. An in-depth presentation of methods, resources, cases, lab exercises, syllabi, and curricula for teaching these principles and skills will be the result of the ImpactCS project's later stages.