Implementing the Tenth Strand - Page 13 of 18
In many programs these requirement can best be accomplished in a separate course
required for all CS majors. A weakness of such a course is that it requires that only one
faculty member be familiar with the thrust and content of the material. In other programs,
however, teaching the new subject area can be accomplished by developing a set of modules to
be included in other CS core courses. This approach will work if there are enough faculty
members committed to including the material as a significant part of their CS courses. Both
strategies are recommended and will be described in this report. If only one strategy is
possible, the integration of social and ethical issues into existing courses is the
preferable option.
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.
A Course Dedicated to Computer Ethics and Social Impact: Some schools have a course
for either computer science majors or for the general student population dedicated to
computer ethics or computers and society, or technology issues [4]. Such a course could
comfortably include the lectures and labs described in the five knowledge units. More hours
could also be added that include in-depth study of several case studies or emerging
technologies and their ethical significance.
Integrating Ethics and Social Impact into Existing Courses: A faculty member can
advance students' learning about computer ethics by including topics and activities from the
knowledge units into more traditionally technical classes[5]. A lecture about testing can
be enlivened by a discussion about human costs that should be considered while deciding how
long to continue testing. These costs are often ignored by developers. Ethical issues can
be described in conjunction with a programming assignment. For example, students could be
asked to prioritize a list of organ transplant candidates. The students would have to
program and justify a priority scheme of their own choosing.
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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