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What Do We Teach When We Teach Tech Ethics?: A Syllabi Analysis
... Scholars agree that the historically isolated ethics ecosystem of engineering and tech-related disciplines, combined with ongoing social injustices exacerbated by irresponsible tech design in industry, points to a need for ethics to have a more rigorous presence in the engineering curriculum (Raji, Scheuerman, and Amironesei 2021;Nasir et al. 2021;Antoniou 2021). Many institutions have introduced AI ethics courses in recent years; since 2019, educators and researchers have crowd-sourced and catalogued upwards of 400 AI and/or tech ethics (including content on machine learning and AI algorithms) syllabi from North American institutions (Raji, Scheuerman, and Amironesei 2021;Fiesler, Garrett, and Beard 2020;Nasir et al. 2021). Educators have proposed and implemented individual modules, workshops, and heuristics for teaching AI ethics in tandem with their standard coursework (Cohen et al. 2021;Saltz et al. 2019; Copyright © 2023, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). ...
... implications of FRT for mass surveillance), or downstream developments and consequences of future technology (e.g. artificial general intelligence) (Tuovinen and Rohunen 2021;Fiesler, Garrett, and Beard 2020). Themes found in AI ethics courses include data ethics, privacy, AI literacy, legislation, and accountability and transparency, among others; these concepts are often disseminated through articles, stories, film, and discussionbased exercises and assignments (Tuovinen and Rohunen 2021). ...
... Our results, in combination with evidence from our literature review on ethics education, suggest that sociotechnical pedagogical models would complement students' existing technical skills and enhance their ability to ask critical questions in mitigating complex ethical issues. Ideally, as noted by (Grosz et al. 2019;Tuovinen and Rohunen 2021;Fiesler, Garrett, and Beard 2020), a sociotechnical approach would be emphasized across the curriculum and not discussed in isolation from technical coursework. ...
In light of significant issues in the technology industry, such as algorithms that worsen racial biases, the spread of online misinformation, and the expansion of mass surveillance, it is increasingly important to teach the ethics and sociotechnical implications of developing and using artificial intelligence (AI). Using 53 survey responses from engineering undergraduates, this paper measures students' abilities to identify, mitigate, and reflect on a hypothetical AI ethics scenario. We engage with prior research on pedagogical approaches to and considerations for teaching AI ethics and highlight some of the obstacles that engineering undergraduate students experience in learning and applying AI ethics concepts.
... Regarding the question of how best to teach computing ethics, several strategies for ethics pedagogy have been outlined within the computing education research community, e.g., gamification [21], immersive theater [22], and incorporation of science fiction [23]. However, the manner in which different universities and programs teach ethics remains far from homogeneous in both extensiveness and content [24]. Studies have also shown that ethics instruction oen does not translate into experiences outside the classroom [25]. ...
... The topics covered in computing ethics modules must have relevance to contemporary ethical challenges in industry, public policy, and research. In a broad qualitative analysis of 115 technology ethics courses across universities, [24] identified high level topics that were covered across the syllabi. The most common topics that occurred in at least a quarter of the courses and their frequency across courses are shown in Table 1. ...
... Number of technology ethics courses across universities that had content for each topic listed, out of 115 total courses[24] ...
The next generation of computer engineers and scientists must be proficient in not just the technical knowledge required to analyze, optimize, and create emerging microelectronics systems, but also with the skills required to make ethical decisions during design. Teaching computer ethics in computing curricula is therefore becoming an important requirement with significant ramifications for our increasingly connected and computing-reliant society. In this paper, we reflect on the many challenges and questions with effectively integrating ethics into modern computing curricula. We describe a case study of integrating ethics modules into the computer engineering curricula at Colorado State University.
... Many professional bodies and funding agencies related to computing have developed regulatory ethics guidelines and Codes, which have been used in teaching university students [36,78,90]. The ACM adopted its first Guidelines for Professional Conduct in Information Processing in 1966 [71], which were expanded into the ACM Code of Professional Conduct in 1972, revised in 1992 and again in 2018 into the current Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct [4]. ...
... Nonetheless, computing graduates in some Global Souths countries may not be expected to have knowledge about ethics [49] and the most influential literature about computing ethics education focuses on the Global North (e.g. [36]). ...
Despite the increase in university courses and curricula on the ethics of computing there are few studies about how CS programs should account for the diverse ways ethical dilemmas and approaches to ethics are situated in cultural, philosophical and governance systems, religions and languages. We draw on the experiences and insights of 46 university educators and practitioners in Latin America, South-Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australian First Nations who participated in surveys and interviews. Our modest study seeks to prompt conversation about ethics and computing in the Global Souths and inform revisions to the ACM's curricular guidelines for the Society, Ethics and Professionalism knowledge area in undergraduate CS programs. Participants describe frictions between static and anticipatory approaches to ethics in globalised regulations and formal Codes of ethics and professional conduct, and local practices, values and impacts of technologies in the Global Souths. Codes and regulations are instruments for international control and their gap with local realities can cause harm, despite local efforts to compensate. However, our insights also illustrate opportunities for university teaching to link more closely to priorities, actions and experiences in the Global Souths and enrich students’ education in the Global North.
... Strategic information gathering ML based on DARPA RATS data with severe noise [79], [111] Information processing Reception, conversion, or transfer of information within the organization security architecture for mil. HQ [94], [101] Supply chain management Management of military material Prediction of supplies based on wargame system and data mining [110] Review Ad-hoc assessment of actions After-Action Review of AI [29], [64], [69] Broad (Undefined) Focus on design approaches and theory technology use embedded into socio-political context [6], [13], [36], [51], [52], [55], [77], [91], [96] development of autonomous weapon systems [44,58]. Literature on usable safety [68] has considered contexts of use in which situation awareness is important due to high-stake decision-making and complements other HCI studies in their agnostic approach of implementing technology and optimizing human-machine teaming in such critical settings. ...
Safety-critical human-computer interaction has focused on technology use in life-critical situations, including military operations. Due to the practical relevance of HCI and disciplinary debates about human-centered design, this literature review studies HCI scholarships' visions of military human-computer interaction. Through text analysis and categorization of publications, it is found that interaction is envisioned to take place in the context of both mission-oriented operational (e.g., target detection) as well as organizational tasks (e.g., military training). While artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented reality, and robots are most frequently defined as technological environments, goals, such as situation awareness, enjoyment, and trust are predominantly associated with them. Considering scholarly references to application contexts and different factors of the context of use allows to systematically approach how military human-computer interaction is imagined. Offering insight into research trends in HCI, this first overview of research endeavors also contributes to interdisciplinary debates, such as Security Studies and technology assessment.
... There are always multiple imaginaries in circulation that are more or less powerful, that are "contested, changeable, flexible and loose around the edges" (Sismondo, 2020). Given the growing attention to ethics in TPC (Fiesler et al., 2020), technical communicators need to keep a critical eye on how future imaginaries concerning the false promises of immersion influence their audiences, especially within higher education, improving their awareness of how those with power and special interests shape public discourse. Indeed, TPC scholars have advocated for stronger academic-industry relationships in technical communication, much like other disciplines where professionals depend on academic research to improve their practice; however, academics have arguably learned more from the industry than the other way around (Bridgeford & Amant, 2017). ...
As immersive technology grows in popularity, universities are developing academic innovation labs (AIL) that often introduce students to virtual reality (VR) and other emerging cross reality applications. Although these labs help educate students on emerging technology, a more critical eye is needed to examine user experience (UX). This article reports on a qualitative, multimethod study that employed a talk-aloud UX protocol to gather data on VR users’ experience at the University of Connecticut’s OPIM Research Lab. To fully define and contrast this data, we juxtapose these individual narratives with rhetorical analysis of marketing discourse, as presented by VR platform HTC Vive, Google’s VR application Tilt Brush, and the Research Lab’s promotional material. Based on our findings, we assert that sociotechnical imaginaries as constructed by promotional material often reduce the complexities of immersion in user experience. Such marketing rhetoric creates “top-down” imaginaries that contrast with “bottom-up” imaginaries generated in user experience, reinforcing the complex and fluid definitions of immersion. The resulting study has practical implications for stakeholders across higher education, especially in the context of innovation labs, as well as for technical and professional communication educators and practitioners.
... Incorporating ethics in computer science education is a well-known issue. In their work, Petelka et al. [49] identified two different approaches to ethics education in computer science: stand-alone courses [19] and embedded courses [13,20,56]. As they further highlight, embedded courses benefit from interrelating ethical challenges with practices of the respective profession and fostering a corresponding mindset throughout system design [49]. ...
Foreseeing the impact of augmented and virtual reality applications on users and society is challenging. Thus, efforts to establish an ethical mindset and include technology assessment techniques in HCI education are increasing. However, XR educational courses fostering students’ reasoning and perceived responsibility in designing ethical applications are lacking. We, therefore, developed the explorative design method Reality Composer to investigate and foster the students' assessment of the ethical impact of and responsibilities in XR application design. We conducted a workshop with 40 international HCI master students applying this method and analyzed the resulting application concepts regarding the students' ethical assessment. Our findings show that they critically discussed their concepts’ impact and identified potential countermeasures for negative social implications. However, they overestimated the users’ responsibility to securely use XR applications as well as a positive design intention. We contribute with our findings and developed method to understand students' potential and derive future course design implications.
... The distance function, if any, must be necessarily specific of the application domain (e.g., by appropriately weighting skills for job candidates, capacity to repay for credit applicants, etc.). Finally, on the educational side, bias and fairness have become common topics of university courses on technology ethics (Fiesler, Garrett, and Beard 2020), albeit they are not sufficiently included in core technical courses (Saltz et al. 2019) nor sufficiently transversal and interdisciplinary (Raji, Scheuerman, and Amironesei 2021). ...
There is a fast-growing literature in addressing the fairness of AI models (fair-AI), with a continuous stream of new conceptual frameworks, methods, and tools. How much can we trust them? How much do they actually impact society? We take a critical focus on fair-AI and survey issues, simplifications, and mistakes that researchers and practitioners often underestimate, which in turn can undermine the trust on fair-AI and limit its contribution to society. In particular, we discuss the hyper-focus on fairness metrics and on optimizing their average performances. We instantiate this observation by discussing the Yule's effect of fair-AI tools: being fair on average does not imply being fair in contexts that matter. We conclude that the use of fair-AI methods should be complemented with the design, development, and verification practices that are commonly summarized under the umbrella of trustworthy AI.
... Globally, there is an increasing awareness of the problems that arise with automating social affairs, illustrated by ongoing attempts to integrate ethics into computer science programmes within academia (Fiesler, Garrett, and Beard, 2020), various 'ethics boards' within industry, as well as various proposed policy guidelines. These approaches to develop, implement, and teach responsible and ethical AI take multiple forms, perspectives, and directions, and present a plurality of views. ...
AI is now a global phenomenon. Yet Hollywood narratives dominate perceptions of AI in the English-speaking West and beyond, and much of the technology itself is shaped by a disproportionately white, male, US-based elite. However, different cultures have been imagining intelligent machines since long before we could build them, in visions that vary greatly across religious, philosophical, literary, and cinematic traditions. This book aims to spotlight these alternative visions. Drawing on the expertise of a diverse group of leading experts from academia and the arts, the book explores how the encounters between local narratives, digital technologies, and mainstream Western narratives create new imaginaries and insights in different contexts across the globe. The text sheds new light on some of the most important themes in AI ethics, from the differences between Chinese and American visions of AI, to digital neo-colonialism. It is an essential work for anyone wishing to understand how different cultural contexts interplay with the most significant technology of our time.
... Supporting ethically-focused design practices has long been a goal in the HCI community, with various attention over the past three decades towards the development of a meaningful code of ethics [43,44,93], the identification of accreditation or programmatic requirements in technology education that address ethical responsibility [9,27,32], and an increasing body of methods, toolkits, and other resources that are intended to encourage ethically-focused or ethically-sensitive design practices [14,31,81]. Ethical dimensions of practice are known to be complex, contingent, and situated in relation to a wide range of factors, which include the ethical knowledge and judgments of individual practitioners [13,19,22,91]; the existence of standards, resources, and processes that support ethicsfocused inquiry [21,30,40,90]; and the mediation of organizational and practitioner forces to encourage action [13,15,22,50,71,79,94]. ...
Numerous methods and tools have been proposed to motivate or support ethical awareness in design practice. However, many existing resources are not easily discoverable by practitioners, and are often framed using language that is not accessible or resonant with everyday practice. In this paper, we present three complementary strands of work with the goal of increasing the ability of design and technology practitioners to locate and activate methods to support ethically-focused work practices. We first constructed a set of empirically-supported "intentions" to frame practitioners' selection of relevant ethics-focused methods based on interviews with practitioners from a range of technology and design professions. We then leveraged these intentions in the design and iterative evaluation of a website that supports practitioners in identifying opportunities for ethics-focused action. Building on these findings, we propose a set of design considerations to evaluate the practice resonance of resources in supporting ethics-focused practice, laying the groundwork for increased ecological resonance of ethics-focused methods and method selection tools.
... This is not the case for most other professions, especially CS/ML, for which ethics courses are often not made mandatory in the curriculum (Fiesler et al., 2020). Only recently has there been a surge of CS/ML studies that consider bias, ethics, and equity (e.g., racism in technology) (Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al., 2020). ...
Child welfare agencies increasingly use machine learning models to predict outcomes and inform decisions. These tools are intended to increase accuracy and fairness but can also amplify bias. This systematic review explores how researchers addressed ethics, equity, bias, and model performance in their design and evaluation of predictive and prescriptive algorithms in child welfare. We searched EBSCO databases, Google Scholar, and reference lists for journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, and book chapters published between January 2010 and March 2020. Sources must have reported on the use of algorithms to predict child welfare-related outcomes and either suggested prescriptive responses, or applied their models to decision-making contexts. We calculated descriptive statistics and conducted Mann-Whitney U tests, and Spearman’s rank correlations to summarize and synthesize findings. Of 15 articles, fewer than half considered ethics, equity, or bias or engaged participatory design principles as part of model development/evaluation. Only one-third involved cross-disciplinary teams. Model performance was positively associated with number of algorithms tested and sample size. No other statistical tests were significant. Interest in algorithmic decision-making in child welfare is growing, yet there remains no gold standard for ameliorating bias, inequity, and other ethics concerns. Our review demonstrates that these efforts are not being reported consistently in the literature and that a uniform reporting protocol may be needed to guide research. In the meantime, computer scientists might collaborate with content experts and stakeholders to ensure they account for the practical implications of using algorithms in child welfare settings.
... Yet, there has also been a rise in ethical awareness about tech, particularly in design/engineering education. A broad movement for social justice in engineering has been taking shape in the past decades (Leydens and Lucena 2018;Riley et al. 2009; Karwat 2020) and many tech/ engineering courses are laying more emphasis on ethics (Fiesler, Garrett, and Beard 2020). ...
IJRP 13: Full Issue Table of Contents Sarah Lynne Bowman, William J. White, and Evan Torner, "Editorial: Transformative Play Seminar 2022: Education,Personal Development, and Meaning Making” This special issue is the first of a two-part series collecting the short articles presented during the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar, held at Uppsala University Campus Gotland in Visby, Sweden on October 20-21, 2022. Maryanne Cullinanand Jennifer Genova, “Gaming the Systems: A Component Analysis Frameworkfor the Classroom Use of RPGs” This article presents guidelines for constructing educational experiences with learning role-playing games (LRPGs) based on specific learning objectives, including academic skills, social emotional skills, and executive functioning skills. Josefin Westborg, “The Educational Role-Playing Game Design Matrix:Mapping Design Components onto Types of Education” This article offers categories for understanding different facets of learning and role-playing games, including setting, purpose, framing, type of processing, and learning objectives. Types of games categorized include leisure, stand-alone educational RPGs, RPGs in education, and Educational RPGs. Aditya Anupam, "Playing the Belly of the Beast: Games for Learning Strategic Thinking in Tech Ethics" This article discusses the design of an interactive digital narrative the author is developing called Lights Out Warehouse, which is geared toward engineering students in universities. The game explores ethical issues around automated labor and organizing. Xiong Shuo,Ruoyu Wen, andHuijuan Zheng, “The Player Category Research of Murder Mystery Games” This article introduces the development process of Jubensha in China. Inspired by Bartle’s (1996) Player Taxonomy the authors build a model of a player typology for MMG, including the professor, braggart, conqueror, detective, actor, politician, socializer, and viewer. Miguel Angel BastarracheaMagnani, “A Coin with Two Sides:Role-Playing Games as Symbolic Devices” This article explores RPGs through the lens of philosophy and depth psychology. He discusses their ritual and mythic nature and how these elements converge as symbols. Ayça Durmus andSedef Topcuoglu, “Self Arcana: A Self-Reflective, Story-Based Tarot Game” This article discusses the development of Self Arcana, a role-playing game involving drawing one’s own tarot cards and engaging in storytelling in order to achieve greater self-insight. The authors offer a duoethnography featuring their experiences designing and playing the game. Giuseppe Femia, “A Reparative Play in Dungeons & Dragons” This article highlights RPGs’ potential for reparative play in which participants can express queer identities. The author includes an autoethnographic account of his experiences in Dungeons & Dragons, which allowed him to express his assexuality in meaningful ways. Albert R. Spencer, “The Vampire Foucault:Erotic Horror Role-Playing Games as a Technologies of the Self” This article describes the potential of erotic horror role-playing games such as in the World of Darkness to provide opportunities for transformative bleed.
... Yet, there has also been a rise in ethical awareness about tech, particularly in design/engineering education. A broad movement for social justice in engineering has been taking shape in the past decades (Leydens and Lucena 2018;Riley et al. 2009; Karwat 2020) and many tech/ engineering courses are laying more emphasis on ethics (Fiesler, Garrett, and Beard 2020). ...
Editorial - Transformative Play Seminar 2022: Education, Meaning Making, and Personal Development
... Fictional tales and products create "provisional realities" to enable us to navigate "possible pasts, possible presents, possible futures" (Durfee, 2018) through the generation of "prototypes of other worlds, other experiences, other contexts" (Bleecker, 2022). For example, the creation or the critical analysis of sci-fi narratives are increasingly leveraged in the education of computer science students and early career researchers (Fiesler, et al., 2020;Burton, et al., 2018) with the objective of going beyond the mere imparting of notions, methods and rules and embracing a more experiential, compelling learning experience. Conducting thought experiments and foreshadowing hypothetical scenarios (i.e., "what ifs") presented through fictional stories are among the innovative approaches that can expand imagination (Fiesler, 2021) to enable a more meaningful acquisition, testing and application of ethical decision-making to dilemmas raised by technological developments, within the safety net of the mind (Botes and Rossi, in press). ...
This paper concerns the future — a scenario that is not so distant in time, as the future starts today. With the increasing datafication of our society and the approval of the European Union Data Governance Act that establishes conditions and safeguards to encourage the free flow and reuse of data for scientific, economic and societal progress, we are left wondering whether the existing challenges surrounding personal data management will be solved by then — or whether they will only be exacerbated. This sci-fi short story depicts a future where individuals, since a young age, question whether they still retain agency over their lives and their destinies, given that data-hungry personalized services surveil them extensively and steer their personal development. Returning to science fiction narratives to explore a societal issue at the edge of technology and law has a threefold purpose, in: (1) developing critical skills and exploring future consequences safely through the imagination; (2) fostering foresight and proactivity in policy-making; and (3) democratizing the debate about technological developments that concern us all. If this story depicts a desirable or undesirable future is left to the readers to assess.
... The tension between benefits and harms should be presented in an age-appropriate way to all students learning about ML. However, recent work shows that computer science educators typically withhold or exclude ethical issues in their courses, to the detriment of their students (Fiesler, Garrett, & Beard, 2020). ...
Understanding how youth make sense of machine learning and how learning about machine learning can be supported in and out of school is more relevant than ever before as young people interact with machine learning powered applications everyday; while connecting with friends, listening to music, playing games, or attending school. In this symposium, we present different perspectives on understanding how learners make sense of machine learning in their everyday lives, how sensemaking of machine learning can be supported in and out of school through the construction of applications, and how youth critically evaluate machine learning powered systems. We discuss how sensemaking of machine learning applications involves the development and integration of conceptual, creative, and critical understandings that are increasingly important to prepare youth to participate in the world.
... 4). Other related discussions have been building, e.g., around the need to increase training in AI ethics education, as massive populations of people are living among and being influenced by machine learning systems [13,33]. ...
A combined body of reviews, meta-research and other analyses demonstrates the evolution of computing education research (CER) through the decades with experience reports evolving to empirical research, increased attention paid to educational research, methods and reporting rigor. Previous analyses of CER publications show the sustained focus of CER on programming education, which has, by far, been the all-time most popular topic in CER. In the recent decade, other top researched areas include K-12 computing education and computational thinking. In this chapter, we add new insights to the top research areas of CER. We followed the PRISMA-S (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) literature search extension to capture the relevant literature on CER. The process of data retrieval, screening, and pre-processing resulted in a total of 16,863 articles included in the dataset. We use a combination of keyword analysis and structural topic modeling, and introduce a model of 29 topics. We also introduce emerging topics in recent years through an analysis of emerging common words in abstracts and titles during recent years. The results paint a unique picture about the dominating and trending research areas of CER, and of how common research topics are connected with each other. The analysis also reveals under-researched areas of CER.
... In fact, many participants cited their limited experience as a barrier to thinking about potential ethics pitfalls. This may be slowly changing as more universities now offer ethics classes as part of their computer science curriculum [36], which, as several senior faculty interviewees noted, is how their students gain experience with considering these consequences. With an increase in ethics education and a generally heightened mindfulness of these issues due to media attention and public outcries, we may look back and be surprised that computer science researchers do not regularly consider ethical consequences in the research process. ...
Computer science research has led to many breakthrough innovations but has also been scrutinized for enabling technology that has negative, unintended consequences for society. Given the increasing discussions of ethics in the news and among researchers, we interviewed 20 researchers in various CS sub-disciplines to identify whether and how they consider potential unintended consequences of their research innovations. We show that considering unintended consequences is generally seen as important but rarely practiced. Principal barriers are a lack of formal process and strategy as well as the academic practice that prioritizes fast progress and publications. Drawing on these findings, we discuss approaches to support researchers in routinely considering unintended consequences, from bringing diverse perspectives through community participation to increasing incentives to investigate potential consequences. We intend for our work to pave the way for routine explorations of the societal implications of technological innovations before, during, and after the research process.
... Naidoo and Sweeney (2015) suggest that intentional integration of critical theories in instruction can help students identify social inequities and begin to develop solutions for them. Fiesler et al. (2020) calls for an increase in computer ethics pedagogy as more teachers teach computer science principles in their K-12 classrooms. They explain that learning to use technology should involve learning how to avoid biased or harmful practices. ...
This overview demonstrates the need for school librarians to consider supplementing coding instruction with ethical discussions. School librarians are increasingly incorporating coding into library instruction through play, tutorials, collaboration in content areas, and design thinking projects. To enhance students’ ethical decision making and empathy for others, school librarians can also incorporate ethical decision-making into coding activities. In this article, the authors explain why this is important, and present an ethical discussion model. These strategies may help school librarians work towards teaching social justice issues as part of coding programming.
The benefits of service learning in computer and information science (CIS) are believed to be significant, ranging from providing students with real-world experiences, to retaining students, to positively impacting community partners. While there are many benefits of service learning, the CIS domain does impose unique costs for integrating service learning into the curriculum. Yet there is little systematic research to help the CIS community understand best practices for maximizing benefits while minimizing costs. Experience reports about service learning courses in CIS have appeared in the literature annually since 2000 and so we address this gap in knowledge by conducting a systematic review and content analysis of 84 experience reports from the The ACM Guide to Computing Literature. We synthesize the current state of service learning in CIS as well as derive recommendations for best practices and future research directions.
The use of persuasion has become ubiquitous in design. It has been argued that persuasive design may coerce or manipulate users into acting in certain ways, which raises ethical concerns. However, designers are not being sufficiently educated about ethics within educational or professional institutions. On the other hand, design education is scaling up to enter school curriculums as well. We argue that there is a need to integrate ethics within design education in schools, to sensitize children toward ethics in design and to inculcate a critical perspective at an early age. To this end, we conducted a 4-h session on the topic of ‘persuasive design ethics’ with 66 school children in Delhi as part of an introductory digital design course. In this session, we conducted a pre/post in-classroom design activity to observe the impact of ethics education on students’ design outcomes. Through the analysis of pre/post activity sheets, we investigated how the effect of ethics education reflected in the design outcomes. Based on the findings, we argue for the importance of integrating ethics into design education as early as possible.KeywordsDesign ethicsSchool educationPersuasive designEthics education
We propose a 'Moral Imagination' methodology to facilitate a culture of responsible innovation for engineering and product teams in technology companies. Our approach has been operationalized over the past two years at Google, where we have conducted over 40 workshops with teams from across the organization. We argue that our approach is a crucial complement to existing formal and informal initiatives for fostering a culture of ethical awareness, deliberation, and decision-making in technology design such as company principles, ethics and privacy review procedures, and compliance controls. We characterize some distinctive benefits of our methodology for the technology sector in particular.
What if “regular” CS faculty each taught elements of inclusive design in “regular” CS courses across an undergraduate curriculum? Would it affect the CS program's climate and inclusiveness to diverse students? Would it improve retention? Would students learn less CS? Would they actually learn any inclusive design? To answer these questions, we conducted a year-long Action Research investigation, in which 13 CS faculty integrated elements of inclusive design into 44 CS/IT offerings across a 4-year curriculum. The 613 affected students’ educational work products, grades, and/or climate questionnaire responses revealed significant improvements in students’ course outcomes (higher course grades and fewer course fails/incompletes/withdrawals), especially for marginalized groups; revealed that most students did learn and apply inclusive design concepts to their CS activities; and revealed that inclusion and teamwork in the courses significantly improved. These results suggest a new pathway for significantly improving students’ retention, their knowledge and usage of inclusive design, and their experiences across CS education—for marginalized groups and for all students.
Many of the decisions we make are increasingly entrusted to algorithms, although there is evidence that many of them are biased, which aggravate the inequalities of the affected groups. Gender bias is considered the biggest contributor to gender stereotypes and social inequalities. To avoid this type of bias, it is necessary that future developers of algorithms be aware of its existence. This work describes an experience carried out to make Computer Science undergraduates aware of the gender biases of algorithms and the consequences they can have. The results reveal that the main objective has been raised. From the gender segregation of the data collected, previous findings are also confirmed: the need for gender analysis in science, and the greater awareness of girls of the need to address the gender gap in Computer Science studies.Keywordsbiased algorithmsgenderComputer Science students
Computer science education has been researched in Israel for a few decades, both at the K-12 and the undergraduate levels. The rich variety of the investigated topics addressed from the very beginning issues beyond the introductory course and programming, including the nature of the discipline and its fundamental ideas and concepts, which are stable, unlike the more technological aspects. Understanding the nature of the discipline and mapping its fundamental ideas and concepts constitute the basis on which curricula stand. Therefore, we chose to organize this chapter around ideas and concepts of CS. In line with this perspective, we will discuss research of all age levels: K-12, undergraduate, and even the graduate level, as well as research relating to teachers. We will present design-based research, which accompanied the design of new curricula, as well as studies aiming at identifying phenomena, or investigating educational hypotheses. We will also point out current challenges and possible future directions.
Los cursos programación (CS1) tienen la tasa de mortalidad académica más alta, esto se refleja en las bajas calificaciones de los estudiantes, lo que indica que no alcancen las competencias académicas. Buscando nuevas formas de mejorar el aprendizaje de los estudiantes del curso CS1, este artículo propone una rúbrica analítica basada en competencias académicas para actividades de programación colaborativa respaldada por una herramienta de evaluación automática de código fuente que permita mejorar las calificaciones y alcanzar las competencias propuestas en el curso. Se diseñó una rúbrica con 16 criterios de evaluación que se dividieron en tres actividades que fueron presentadas por un grupo experimental (GE) de 18 estudiantes y un grupo de control (GC) de 24 estudiantes. En el GE se usó la colaboración entre estudiantes, mientras que en el GC los estudiantes trabajan de manera individual. Luego de finalizar las actividades, usando una rúbrica, se evaluaron las entregas de cada estudiante para identificar si logra los resultados de aprendizaje esperados por el curso. Los resultados demuestran que el uso de la colaboración mejora la adquisición de las competencias de aprendizaje en un 17 % más que si lo hacen de manera individual. Además, se destacan otras habilidades sociales asociadas a la colaboración, como amistad, motivación y entendimiento grupal. El desarrollo de estrategias que permita evaluar las competencias, no solo indica que el estudiante logra adquirir una habilidad, sino que también permite al estudiante identificar sus falencias en las tareas de programación.
This article presents two principal "rules" that instructors should use professional ethical practice standards, not issues, to guide instruction/learning objectives, and use instructional and/or curriculum development guidelines to ensure that changes to courses are systematic and yield actionable student outputs. It presents resources to serve learners because they offer tools and techniques that equip future practitioners to practice ethically - whenever they practice. The article describes how learning outcomes of integrated ethics within a mathematics, statistics, or data science course featuring the ASA Ethical Guidelines and the ACM Code of Ethics, will result in individuals trained in how to practice ethically, rather than individuals who completed a required ethics course or mastered “ethics content”.
Can achieve an ethical engineering mindset without detracting from the core technical topics of CS subjects? Some doubt that this is possible. Lately we have been involved in too many discussions where participants were worried about how to teach ethics to SE/CS students. The problem, we heard, was too hard and too complex. In this short note, we beg to differ. Ethics is a well-studied issue. Philosophers have studied and taught ethics and civics for generations. Similarly, computer scientists and software engineers have assembled an extensive set of skills and resources which are relevant to an ethical education. Using those resources, this paper offers a proof-by-example of a CS class syllabus that (a) enables an ethical engineering mindset while (b) not detracting from core technical topics.
We are currently witnessing an ever-growing entanglement of intelligent technology with people in their everyday lives, creating intersections with ethics, trust, and responsibility. Understanding, implementing, and designing human interactions with these technologies is central to many advanced uses of intelligent and distributed systems and is related to contested concepts, such as various forms of agency, shared decision-making, and situational awareness. Numerous guidelines have been proposed to outline points of concern when building ethically acceptable artificial intelligence (AI) systems. However, these guidelines are usually presented as general policies, and how we can teach computer science students the needed critical and reflective thinking on the social implications of future intelligent technologies is not obvious. This chapter presents how we used adversarial chatbots to expose computer science students to the importance of ethics and responsible design of AI technologies. We focus on the pedagogical goals, strategy, and course layout and reflect how this can serve as a blueprint for other educators in broader responsible innovation contexts, e.g., nonchat AI technologies, robotics, and other human-computer interaction (HCI) themes.
We present a programmatic approach to incorporating ethics into an undergraduate major in statistical and data sciences. We discuss departmental-level initiatives designed to meet the National Academy of Sciences recommendation for integrating ethics into the curriculum from top-to-bottom as our majors progress from our introductory courses to our senior capstone course, as well as from side-to-side through co-curricular programming. We also provide six examples of data science ethics modules used in five different courses at our liberal arts college, each focusing on a different ethical consideration. The modules are designed to be portable such that they can be flexibly incorporated into existing courses at different levels of instruction with minimal disruption to syllabi. We connect our efforts to a growing body of literature on the teaching of data science ethics, present assessments of our effectiveness, and conclude with next steps and final thoughts.
Gamification with various designs is becoming a mainstay of interactive marketing, used to pervasively and holistically to in value-creating marketing practices. Beyond marketing, gamification is commonly seen as a technology, the effects of which are benevolent and which is often employed for sustainable ends such as the improvement of wellbeing, health, and sustainable work. However, as gamification commonly, either more or less directly, is related to attempts at affecting customers’ psychological states and continued engagement, a critical reflection of the ethical ramifications of gamification is crucial. Hazards such as manipulation, exploitation, psychological distress, and conflicts with cultural norms are considered as potential challenges that should be observed. Nevertheless, there is a current lack of examination of gamification’s ethical implications in the marketing context. In this chapter, the authors explore the ethical concerns related to using gamification as an interactive marketing tool, and examine how consumers shape their ethical judgement towards gamification. The authors also suggest various ways to help marketers, designers, and policymakers to minimize the unethical consequences of gamification, and ensure that companies will use gamification to compete both ethically and responsibly.KeywordsGamificationGameEthicsManipulationSustainableService
Science fiction in particular offers students a way to cultivate their capacity for moral imagination.
Computing technologies and artifacts are increasingly integrated into most aspects of our professional, social, and private lives. One consequence of this growing ubiquity of computing is that it can have significant ethical implications that computing professionals need to be aware of. The relationship between ethics and computing has long been discussed. However, this is the first comprehensive survey of the mainstream academic literature of the topic. Based on a detailed qualitative analysis of the literature, the article discusses ethical issues, technologies that they are related to, and ethical theories, as well as the methodologies that the literature employs, its academic contribution, and resulting recommendations. The article discusses general trends and argues that the time has come for a transition to responsible research and innovation to ensure that ethical reflection of computing has practical and manifest consequences.
The second report from Project ImpactCS is given here, and a new required area of study - ethics and social impact - is proposed.
Learning outcomes are broad statements of what is achieved and assessed at the end of a course of study. The concept of learning outcomes and outcome-based education is high on today's education agenda. The idea has features in common with the move to instructional objectives which became fashionable in the 1960s, but which never had the impact on education practice that it merited. Five important differences between learning outcomes and instructional objectives can be recognized: (1) Learning outcomes, if set out appropriately, are intuitive and user friendly. They can be used easily in curriculum planning, in teaching and learning and in assessment. (2) Learning outcomes are broad statements and are usually designed round a framework of 8-12 higher order outcomes. (3) The outcomes recognize the authentic interaction and integration in clinical practice of knowledge, skills and attitudes and the artificiality of separating these. (4) Learning outcomes represent what is achieved and assessed at the end of a course of study and not only the aspirations or what is intended to be achieved. (5) A design-down approach encourages ownership of the outcomes by teachers and students.
This article establishes and addresses opportunities for ethics integration into Machine-learning (ML) courses. Following a survey of the history of computing ethics and the current need for ethical consideration within ML, we consider the current state of ML ethics education via an exploratory analysis of course syllabi in computing programs. The results reveal that though ethics is part of the overall educational landscape in these programs, it is not frequently a part of core technical ML courses. To help address this gap, we offer a preliminary framework, developed via a systematic literature review, of relevant ethics questions that should be addressed within an ML project. A pilot study with 85 students confirms that this framework helped them identify and articulate key ethical considerations within their ML projects. Building from this work, we also provide three example ML course modules that bring ethical thinking directly into learning core ML content. Collectively, this research demonstrates: (1) the need for ethics to be taught as integrated within ML coursework, (2) a structured set of questions useful for identifying and addressing potential issues within an ML project, and (3) novel course models that provide examples for how to practically teach ML ethics without sacrificing core course content. An additional by-product of this research is the collection and integration of recent publications in the emerging field of ML ethics education.
A Harvard-based pilot program integrates class sessions on ethical reasoning into courses throughout its computer science curriculum.
Use of a codebook to categorize meaning units is a well-known research strategy in qualitative inquiry. However, methodology for the creation of a codebook in practice is not standardized, and specific guidance for codebook ideation is sometimes unclear, especially to novice qualitative researchers. This article describes the procedure that was utilized to create a codebook, which adapted an affinity diagram methodology (Scupin, 1997), an approach used in user-centered design. For this research, affinity diagramming was applied to a method outlined by Kurasaki (2000) for codebook ideation. Annotations of a subset of military veterans’ transcripts were utilized in congruence with affinity diagramming to create a codebook to categorize the phenomenon of reintegration into the civilian community after service (Haskins Lisle, 2017). This method could be useful in exploratory research that utilizes a codebook generated in vivo from annotations, especially for novice researchers who are overwhelmed by the codebook creation phase.
A well-received ITiCSE 2016 paper challenged the orthodox view that programming is hard to learn. It contended that CS1 educators' expectations are too high, which can result in poor teaching and learning, and could impact negatively on diversity and equity. The author posed a challenge to the community to collect research-based evidence of what novice programmers can achieve, and use evidence to derive realistic expectations for achievement. We argue that before rising to this challenge we must determine: What exactly do educators expect of introductory programming students? This paper presents our efforts toward answering this question. We manually curated hundreds of CS1 syllabi, providing a fresh perspective of expectation in CS1 courses. We analyzed learning outcomes and their concepts, in addition to languages utilized and other useful CS1 design and delivery information. This work contributes to a current picture of what is expected of introductory programming students, and provides an interactive online tool linked to all collected syllabi and containing all learning outcomes and other associated information. We hope this will aid the community in deciding whether or not we have unrealistic expectations of our CS1 students and if so, our contributions provide a starting point for the community to adjust them.
This special session will involve three related components. It will begin with a history of the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (the Code), its evolving presence in the computing curriculum guidelines over time, and its documented use outside of academe. This will lead into an overview of the major changes to the Code that occurred in the most recent update. The third component and primary focus of the session will be to work with participants to identify ways that ACM and the ACM Committee on Professional Ethics (COPE) can help Computer Science educators integrate the Code as broadly as possible into diverse programs, ranging from Kindergarten to PhD-level. The outcome of the session would be a preliminary set of guidelines for programs and departments to adopt the Code, potential challenges to be addressed when formalizing those guidelines, and suggested approaches to resolve these difficulties. If attendance is sufficiently large, we would adopt a jigsaw model, breaking into smaller focus groups that are tasked with distinct portions of the Code. Each group reports back at the end, and members of COPE will collate the results into a document for future distribution and work.
An important public discussion is underway on the values and ethics of digital technologies as designers work to prevent misinformation campaigns, online harassment, exclusionary tools, and biased algorithms. This monograph reviews 30 years of research on theories and methods for surfacing values and ethics in technology design. It maps the history of values research, beginning with critique of design from related disciplines and responses in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. The review then explores ongoing controversies in values-oriented design, including disagreements around terms, expressions and indicators of values and ethics, and whose values to consider. Next, the monograph describes frameworks that attempt to move values-oriented design into everyday design settings. These frameworks suggest open challenges and opportunities for the next 30 years of values in HCI research.
This paper presents Quantified Self: Immersive Data and Theater Experience (QSelf) as a case study in collaborative and interdisciplinary learning and toward a project-based education model that promotes technical art projects. 22 students from several departments engaged in a semester-long effort to produce an immersive theater show centered on ethical uses of personal data, a show that drew more than 240 people over 6 performances. The project was housed out of the computer science department and involved multiple computer science undergraduate and graduate students who had the chance to work with students from the department of theater and dance. By analyzing the technical artifacts students created and post-interviews, we found this project created a novel and productive space for computer science students to gain applied experience and learn about the social impacts of their work while the arts students gained a fluency and understanding around the technical issues presented.
Our paper offers several novel activities for teaching ethics in the context of a computer science (CS) class. Rather than approaches that teach ethics as an isolated course, we outline and discuss multiple ethics education interventions meant to work in the context of an existing technical course. We piloted these activities in an Human Centered Computing course and found strong engagement and interest from our students in ethics topics without sacrificing core course material. Using a pre/post survey and examples from student assignments, we evaluate the impact of these interventions and discuss their relevance to other CS courses. We further make suggestions for embedding ethics in other CS education contexts.
Data science is a new field that integrates aspects of computer science, statistics and information management. As a new field, ethical issues a data scientist may encounter have received little attention to date, and ethics training within a data science curriculum has received even less attention. To address this gap, this article explores the different codes of conduct and ethics frameworks related to data science. We compare this analysis with the results of a systematic literature review focusing on ethics in data science. Our analysis identified twelve key ethics areas that should be included within a data science ethics curriculum. Our research notes that none of the existing codes or frameworks covers all of the identified themes. Data science educators and program coordinators can use our results as a way to identify key ethical concepts that can be introduced within a data science program.
This session is intended as a fun and highly interactive way for college and high school teachers to increase their familiarity with the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Using a quiz show format, participants will be asked to provide solutions to knotty (and sometimes humorous) ethical challenges. This will be followed by think-pair-share (so that everyone gets involved), and then a presentation of the relevant sections of the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Members of the ACM's Committee on Professional Ethics will be on hand to collect feedback and questions about the Code, for use by the Code 2018 task force, and for the "Ask an Ethicist" feature at http://ethics.acm.org.
Mock trials are an effective and fun way of eliciting thoughtful dialogue from students, and encouraging them to produce incisive analyses of current ethical dilemmas related to computers and society. This paper describes our experience using mock trials in two computer ethics courses. Each trial was centered on a specific
controversial and ethically or legally ambiguous topic related to current computer usage in society. Students participated in a series of mock trials during the term, alternating their role in each trial between jury, proponent, and opponent. Class participation was nearly 100% for every trial, with many students electing to
define their own sub-role within their assigned major role. The logistics of the trials were initially difficult to administer and monitor; however, they quickly became manageable as we gained more experience with the opportunities and pitfalls associated with the mock-trial system, and as students volunteered suggestions for improvements.
A syllabus defines the contents of a course, as well as other information such as resources and assignments. In this paper, we report on our work towards creating a syllabus repository of Computer Science courses across universities in the USA. We present some statistics from our initial collection of 8000+ syllabi. We show a syllabus creator that is integrated with Moodle [5] moodle_2006_moodle, an open-source course management system, which allows for the creation of a syllabus for a particular course. Among other information, it includes knowledge units from the Computing Curricula 2001 body of knowledge. The goal of the syllabus repository is to provide added value to the Computer Science Education community, and we present some such offerings. We conclude by presenting our future plans for the syllabus repository. These include using automated techniques to collect and classify syllabi, providing recommendations to instructors when creating a syllabus, and allowing the community to share their syllabi automatically. The syllabus collection will be part of the Computing and Information Technology Interactive Digital Educational Library (CITIDEL), a collection of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL).
Usability has been widely implemented in technical communication curricula and workplace practices, but little attention has focused specifically on how usability and its pedagogy are addressed in our literature. This study reviews selected technical communication textbooks, pedagogical and landmark texts, and online course syllabi and descriptions, and argues that meager attention is given to usability, thus suggesting the need for more in-depth and productive discussions on usability practices, strategies, and challenges.
Computer ethics courses differ from technical courses in the manner in which they are taught and assessed. A common assignment in a computer ethics course is to write an essay that addresses a technical dilemma. Computer science faculty typically do not have training or experience in grading essays. The purpose of this paper is to present a scoring rubric that has been successfully used to grade and track students' knowledge development as they progress through a computer ethics course. Although this paper focuses upon a specific rubric, general principles will be emphasized to show how scoring rubrics can be used across different courses.
This paper presents the results of a study of the effect of a business ethics course in enhancing the ability of students to recognize ethical issues. The findings show that compared to students who do not complete such a course, students enrolled in a business ethics course experience substantial improvement in that ability.
Most scholars, including Lawrence Kohlberg, have maintained that the principles of human development can mesh readily with the goals of the educational system. However, children's intuitive theories and conceptions turn out to be so powerful that they often undermine the overt goals of education. Indeed, there is typically a disjunction between early forms of understanding, the forms that school attempts to inculcate, and the kinds of knowledge required for expert performance in a domain. Though the issue has not been investigated, such disjunctions may obtain in the moral domain as well. It should be possible to bridge the gap between developmental and educational concerns; but such connection can only take place if the robustness of early conceptions is fully acknowledged and appropriate interventions are designed.
The issue of responsibility on the part of the computer professional is one that has blossomed very recently. Members of the computing field have become very much aware of some of the issues, even if there isn't any consensus on how to handle them. The ACM debates on standards of professional conduct and on the desirability of a professional society such as the ACM taking formal positions on social issues are illustrative. It is the position of this paper that the faculty member should try to prepare the student to make better decisions for himself rather than try to persuade him to take particular stands on particular issues.
An abstract is not available.
‘the duty of the law schools is to help its students to understand the ultimate significance of the lifework they have undertaken: to see the ultimate purpose of a lawyer's work… .’ [Brainard Currie]
The Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct (ACLEC) has recently called upon academic law teachers of the undergraduate degree in law to take more of an interest in professional ethics. This means that academic law teachers can no longer set the subject aside as something to be dealt with during vocational legal education. Professional ethics must be taught pervasively, ie at each stage of legal education. This paper argues, however, that professional ethics must be taught pervasively in a further sense: even within the undergraduate curriculum, the task of educating tomorrow's lawyers in professional ethics cannot be left to one or more specialists in the subject.
Reports on a study of the effect of community service on 71 undergraduate students. Finds that community service work combined with discussion of relevant moral issues is an effective way of moving students into the postconventional stage of principled moral reasoning. Discusses other benefits of community service work. (CFR)
A survey of 106 medical students assessing their interest in and attitudes to medical ethics in the curriculum is reported by the authors. Results indicate that 64 per cent of the students rated the importance of medical ethics to good medical care as high or critical and 66 per cent desired to learn more about the topic. However, in reports of patient encounters identifying ethical issues, less than six per cent of the students reported a frequency of more than one such patient encounter per week. The students also demonstrated a greater awareness of more obvious ethical issues than of more subtle, less publicised issues. When asked how medical ethics should be taught, the students clearly affirmed a desire for an integrated exposure to the subject throughout the medical curriculum. Possible implications of these findings for medical education are discussed.
Despite attempts to describe the "ideal" medical ethics curriculum, few data exist describing current practices in medical ethics education to guide curriculum directors. This study aimed to determine the scope and content of required, formal ethics components in the curricula of U.S. medical schools.
A questionnaire sent to all curriculum directors of four-year medical schools in the U.S. (n = 121) requested course syllabi for all required, formal ethics components in the four-year curriculum. Syllabi were coded and analyzed to produce a profile of course objectives, teaching methods, course contents, and methods for assessing students.
Questionnaires were returned by 87 representatives of the schools (72%). A total of 69 (79%) required a formal ethics course, and 58 (84%) provided their ethics course syllabi. Analysis and codification of all syllabi identified ten course objectives, eight teaching methods, 39 content areas, and six methods of assessing students. The means for individual schools were three objectives, four teaching methods, 13 content areas, and two methods of assessment. The 58 syllabi either required or recommended 1,191 distinct readings, only eight of which were used by more than six schools.
Ethics education is far from homogeneous among U.S. medical schools, in both content and extensiveness. While the study of syllabi demonstrates significant areas of overlap with recent efforts to identify an "ideal" ethics curriculum for medical students, several areas of weakness emerged that require attention from medical educators.
The Ethical Engine: Integrating Ethical Design into
- Evan Peck
- Peck Evan
More than 50 tech ethics courses, with links to syllabi
- Cory Doctorow
- Doctorow Cory
What Our Tech Ethics Crisis Says About the State of Computer Science Education . How We Get to Next
- Casey Fiesler
- Fiesler Casey
Tech's ethical 'dark side': Harvard, Stanford, and others want to address it
- Natasha Singer
- Singer Natasha
Yonatan Zunger Computer science faces an ethics crisis; the Cambridge Analytica scandal proves it
- The Boston Globe
Amazon Reportedly Killed an AI Recruitment System Because It Couldn't Stop the Tool from Discriminating Against Women
- David Meyer
The Business of War': Google Employees Protest Work for the Pentagon
- Scott Shane
- Daisuke Wakabayashi
- Shane Scott
Ethics Across the Curriculum? Integrating Ethics and Societal Impact Topics into Core Engineering Courses
- Madeline Angela R Bielefeldt
- Daniel Polmear
- Christopher Knight
- Nathan Swan
- Canney
- Bielefeldt Angela R
The Ivory Tower Can't Keep Ignoring Tech . The New York Times
- O' Cathy
- Neil
- O'Neil Cathy
Computer science faces an ethics crisis; the Cambridge Analytica scandal proves it
- Yonatan Zunger
- Zunger Yonatan