Implementation Strategies for the New Requirements

The strategy chosen by a particular program to implement this new subject area should be pedagogically driven. It should fit into the rest of the program in an integrated fashion so that the relationship between the knowledge units in this area and the rest of the curriculum is apparent to students. The five knowledge units above can become part of a computer science curriculum in many different ways. In this section we describe three ways:1) including all five knowledge units into a course dedicated to computer ethics and professional issues [4]; 2) including individual topics and activities from the knowledge units in existing courses, integrating the computer ethics by focusing on examples and motivation from the subject areas important to the course[5]; and 3) including several of the knowledge units into a "capstone course," a senior level project course that emphasizes skills and knowledge required for becoming a responsible computer professional[2]. This list of three strategies is neither exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive. However, it does reflect three strategies described in computer science education literature.