The computing education research community now has at least 40 years of published research on teaching ethics in higher education. To examine the state of our field, we present a systematic literature review of papers in the Association for Computing Machinery computing education venues that describe teaching ethics in higher-education computing courses. Our review spans all papers published to SIGCSE, ICER, ITiCSE, CompEd, Koli Calling, and TOCE venues through 2022, with 100 papers fulfilling our inclusion criteria. Overall, we found a wide variety in content, teaching strategies, challenges, and recommendations. The majority of the papers did not articulate a conception of “ethics,” and those that did used many different conceptions, from broadly applicable ethical theories to social impact to specific computing application areas (e.g., data privacy and hacking). Instructors used many different pedagogical strategies (e.g., discussions, lectures, assignments) and formats (e.g., stand-alone courses, incorporated within a technical course). Many papers identified measuring student knowledge as a particular challenge, and 59% of papers included mention of assessments or grading. Of the 69% of papers that evaluated their ethics instruction, most used student self-report surveys, course evaluations, and instructor reflections. While many papers included calls for more ethics content in computing, specific recommendations were rarely broadly applicable, preventing a synthesis of guidelines. To continue building on the last 40 years of research and move toward a set of best practices for teaching ethics in computing, our community should delineate our varied conceptions of ethics, examine which teaching strategies are best suited for each, and explore how to measure student learning.
more »
« less
Designing Ethically-Integrated Assignments: It’s Harder Than it Looks
While the CS education community has successfully incorporated tech-ethics assignments and modules into computing courses, we lack a defined process for instructional design to create these materials from scratch across the curriculum. To enable the development of such a process, we explore two research questions: (1) What specific instructional design challenges emerge when creating ethically-integrated assignments for CS courses? And (2) what strategies might overcome them? We address these questions using Research through Design, a method for critically examining design processes. Applying this method to our own process of creating ethics-integrated CS assignments yielded four key challenges: identifying an ethical context, maintaining a technical focus, eliciting both ethical and technical thinking from students, and making the assignment practical for the classroom. Further, the Research through Design approach revealed process-level insights for addressing these challenges, which can apply across the computing curriculum. This paper also serves as a case study of Research through Design for CS education, highlighting the importance of the instructional design process and the behind-the-scenes challenges and design decisions that go into tech-ethics materials.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2041960
- PAR ID:
- 10486344
- Publisher / Repository:
- ACM
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research V.1
- ISBN:
- 9781450399760
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 177 to 190
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- ethics, responsible computing, instructional design, research through design
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Chicago IL USA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Computer science (CS) and information technology (IT) curricula are grounded in theoretical and technical skills. Topics like equity and inclusive design are rarely found in mainstream student studies. This results in graduates with outdated practices and limitations in software development. A research project was conducted to educate the faculty to integrate inclusive software design into the CS undergraduate curriculum. The objective is to produce graduates with the ability to develop inclusive software. This experience report presents the results of teaching inclusive design throughout the four-year CS and IT curriculum, focusing on the impact on faculty. This easy-to-adopt, high-impact approach improved student retention and classroom climate, broadening participation. Research questions address faculty understanding of inclusive software design, the approach's feasibility, improvement in students’ ability to design equitable software, and assessment of the inclusiveness culture for students in computing programs. Faculty attended a summer workshop to learn about inclusive design and update their teaching materials to include the GenderMag method. Beginning in CS0 and CS1 and continuing through Senior Capstone, faculty used updated course assignments to include inclusive design in 10 courses for 44 sections taught. Faculty outcomes are positive, with the planning to include inclusive design and working with other department faculty most engaging. Faculty were impressed by student ownership and adoption of inclusive design methods, particularly in the culminating capstone senior project.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Opportunities for training CS K-12 pre-service and in-service teachers, research in CS Education, and career pathways for PhDs/EdDs in CS education are happening, but often in an uncoordinated way. We advocate that now is the right time for CS and Education to collaborate on developing new joint degree programs in Computer Science Education and to explore joint faculty appointments. High undergraduate enrollment in computing programs and the increasing interest in CS courses from non-majors represent a unique opportunity for starting successful programs. As more of CS undergraduates are undergraduate TAs and see teaching and learning from a non-learner perspective, their interest in education has also increased. The growing interest in CS education, including the need for effecting CS teaching at both K-12 and the undergraduate level, provide interesting job opportunities for CS education researchers. As CS departments develop new undergraduate degree programs and scale class sizes, research on questions like How do we teach effectively computing to different audiences? How can we assess CS learning? What are culturally responsive pedagogies? is important. To answer many of these and related questions, CS departments should be actively engaged in CS Education research, from training graduate students in interdisciplinary programs to research programs. This BOF will provide a platform for the discussion on what such graduate programs – from certificate to a PhD – can and should look like, what challenges exist to creating them, and how students with different backgrounds should get trained in the relevant foundations of CS and Education.more » « less
-
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.more » « less
-
This paper reports completed empirical studies of a larger, STEAM-driven endeavor that bridges two continents and several disciplines, highlighting the role of the technical communicator. The research questions revolve around whether, and to what degree, scenario-based ethics training is effective in helping chemists understand the expectations for responsible publication practice in chemistry, as defined by prestigious universities, professional organizations, and reputable journals. We build on previous studies of scenario-based ethics training. We identify possible next steps for research and training in global science ethics. Ultimately, by building empirical and theoretical knowledge about challenges to ethical behavior, we will be able to identify effective instructional methods for culturally-inclusive, validated ethics training.more » « less
