Ethics and Social Impact in a Capstone Course:
A project driven course is an ideal
place to include professional and ethical issues[2]. The course can be a senior practicum,
software engineering project course, or an ethics course directed at seniors. The ethical
issues arise from two source in these courses: either within the various responsibilities at
each stage of the software development life cycle or from more general professional
obligations. The general structure of such a course is to have the class form project teams
to work on large projects.
One useful technique in this course is to ask students what they think of taking a
particular approach to a project. They are asked to write a one page paper and bring it to
the next class. The sense of professional obligation to quality products and to fellow
software developers can be emphasized. These issues are important to industry. Another
strategy is to have students develop a Social Impact Statement, similar to an Environmental
Impact Statement, in which students think and write about the social context in which the
project is (or might be) embedded and to evaluate how that context effects the performance
of the product.
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