Consequences of Computing:
A Framework for Teaching

Teaching Topics, Principles, and Skills in the Conceptual Framework - Page 29 of 36

Teaching Topics, Principles, and Skills in the Conceptual Framework

The list of principles and skills we have just covered is an imposing set with enough content for even several courses, if the requirement is that all of these things be done in detail and separately. This is particularly true when there are important topics like privacy, risks, and property to cover. But consider that in an introduction to programming class, students learn one (if not two) particular programming languages, elementary principles of program design, some database structures, and are introduced to many of the "recurring principles" listed in Curricula 1991. This is not done by teaching each of these separately and in detail, but by having students design, implement, and exercise programs that incorporate these principles.

In the same way, students can cover the topic of privacy by investigating electronic monitoring of workers. The framework we present, however, allows this investigation to be grounded in the basics of utilitarian and deontological ethical arguments about privacy, while recognizing the importance of the varying contexts in even the most monolithic organizations. Similarly, students can analyze a case history of whistle blowing to help understand the topic of individual responsibility. But the whistleblowing case can be considered in the light of what we know about power in organizations, and can help students identify abstract ethical principles from ethics codes in concrete situations. Thus, with the proper perspective, the topics, principles, and skills can be covered in a reasonable amount of time. To the extent that these issues can be covered more than once, or in more than one place in the curriculum, they will be better apprehended by students. But they can be covered within the constraints of a standard computer science undergraduate program.

Figure 4 shows several examples of how this can be done in two representative cells from the conceptual framework. The exercises for each topic allow the instructor and student to explore that topic while being aware of the ethical principles involved, of the level of social analysis, and of the particular principles and skills the discussion of the topics should invoke. Each of the two cells we have blown up here provide several exercises that might be used to teach the ethical issues that are relevant to it. The particular exercises are merely suggestions, but their curricular coherence stems from the fact that they are related to context provided by the table and to the principles and skills we have outlined above.