Consequences of Computing:
A Framework for Teaching

Teaching Topics, Principles, and Skills in the Conceptual Framework - Page 30 of 36

Each example exercise is located in a particular cell but is not isolated from other levels of analysis or ethical issues. Even in this truncated example, private national databases show up in two cells. The entire set of cells that this topic covers may be called its "area of concern" (see Figure 2 for other examples of areas of concern). In addition, each example listed here is keyed to the principles and skills. In the second phase of ImpactCS, we will be providing a large selection of examples, exercises, and topics based on the table and the principles and skills. But faculty who design their own exercises or modify others' exercises for their own use, can keep in mind the area of concern and the principles and skills as they design their exercises and fit them into a coherent curriculum. The list of principles and skills and the context provided by the table provide guidance for understanding what a coherent curriculum in the area might look like.

Note that the exercises are flexible in their implementation. They could be done in short format as a very small part of another course or in more detail as even a week's work in a class devoted to ethical and social issues in computing. Reference to the area of concern and the principles and skills will make expanding a topic an easy task. A course constructed with these criteria in mind is much less likely to succumb to the unconnected and ungrounded topic du jour malady. It is also clearly a course in applied ethics and not simply a theoretical introduction to ethical analysis. But neither will it lose sight of the important grounding that ethical and social analysis can provide. Thus, the power of the conceptual framework we provide does not stem from its restrictiveness (it is remarkably flexible), but from the grounding that it provides to a variety of implementations.