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A Critical Review of Current Approaches and Practices in Computing Ethics Education Michigan Technological University Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports 2019 A CRITICAL REVIEW OF CURRENT APPROACHES AND PRACTICES IN COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION Sophia Farquhar Michigan Technological University, [email protected] Copyright 2019 Sophia Farquhar Recommended Citation Farquhar, Sophia, "A CRITICAL REVIEW OF CURRENT APPROACHES AND PRACTICES IN COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION", Open Access Master's Report, Michigan Technological University, 2019. https://doi.org/10.37099/mtu.dc.etdr/793 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etdr Part of the Applied Ethics Commons, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces Commons, Other Computer Sciences Commons, and the Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons A CRITICAL REVIEW OF CURRENT APPROACHES AND PRACTICES IN COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION By Sophia Farquhar A REPORT Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE In Computer Science MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2019 2019 Sophia G. Farquhar A REVIEW OF COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION 2 This report has been approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE in Computer Science. Department of Computer Science Report Advisor: Charles Wallace Committee Member: Alexandra Morrison Committee Member: Linda Ott Department Chair: Zhenlin Wang A REVIEW OF COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION 3 To My Family. Thanks for Everything. A REVIEW OF COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION 4 Abstract Recent scandals caused by the results of negligent, malicious, or shortsighted software development practices highlight the need for software developers to consider the ethical implications of their work. Computing ethics has historically been a marginalized area within computing disciplines, so educators in these disciplines do not have a common background for teaching the topic. Computing ethics education, although often a required part of coursework, can vary widely in the method of implementation from university to university. In this report I summarize the insights I gained from interviewing four educators from three different institutions on their pedagogical approaches to computing ethics. I found there to be a few terms that had very different contextual meanings for the different educators. "Case study" and "group discussion" in particular are two terms with a diversity of purposes, methods of use, and literal meanings among the interviewees. I summarize three different methods of extending engineering ethics education beyond one ethics course. I review software tools designed to assist with ethical reflection or to encourage thoughtful discussion, and I make an argument for which elements of those tools seemed to assist in thoughtful consideration and discussion. Finally, I propose a sketch of an "ethically sensitive" software design, and consider the implications of applying software to ethical reflection. I conclude with some areas for future study that could benefit the development of a software intervention for ethics, as well as the field of ethics education in general. A REVIEW OF COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION 5 Table of Contents Introduction 7 Engineering Ethics Education 12 Ethics Education At MTU 12 My Interactions with Students in an Ethics Course. 17 Interviews with Educators. 19 Interview With Dr. Ott. 21 Interview with Dr. Morrison. 22 Interview with Dr. Wolf. 27 Interview with Dr. Kirkpatrick. 29 Analysis of the Interviews. 30 Class Discussion. 32 Case Study. 39 Suggestions for Future Research. 47 Distributed Ethics Education 48 Harvard-Embedded EthiCS. 50 JMU-Ethical Reasoning in Action. 54 MTU-Proposed Project. 60 Curent Software Solutions. 62 Introducing Agora. 63 Learning From Agora. 66 Introducing ConsiderIt. 72 A REVIEW OF COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION 6 Learning From ConsiderIt. 73 Future Considerations. 76 Future Research. 76 References. 80 Appendices. Philosophy Background. 88 Traditional Ethical Theories. 88 Philosophy of Technology. 91 The Ethical Cycle 95 Interview with Mike Kirkpatrick. 98 Interview with Alexandra Morrison I. 106 Interview with Alexandra Morrison II. 113 Interview with Linda Ott. 122 Interview with Marty Wolf. 135 A REVIEW OF COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION 7 A Critical Review Of Current Approaches And Practices In Computing Ethics Education Software is used in everything from phone games to medical devices, and from social media to flight control software. As software uses expand, so too does the need for ethical consideration of the design and use of this software. The recent negative news coverage of Facebook, Google and Twitter, among many other large tech companies has made obvious to the public, and consequently to the companies themselves, that the need to take ethics into consideration is urgent [42, 23]. Some companies are founding ethics councils and boards, or pushing for government regulation, but many companies are realizing that the change can’t only come from an outside body. Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe, a DNA testing service, recognized this need “I think it has to be our management and leaders who have to add this to our skill set, rather than just hire one person to determine this” [41]. This idea by some of the tech companies, that the people who have the technical and business skills that an organization needs are now the people who should also have the ethical skills an organization needs did no go unnoticed by the universities that are educating the next generation of these technical leaders. The public and the companies’ recent understanding of the importance of ethics is also helping to highlight to those same groups the importance of ethics education. The universities are motivated extrinsically by this increasing sense societally that ethics is important for students, especially technical students. This is reflected in many university-wide goals which often include some form of ethical consideration in the list of student learning goals1 1 Michigan Technological University has 8 University Learning Goals for students. Goal 8 is the Social Responsibility and Ethical Reasoning Goal stating that “Students will be able to identify and address conflicting ethical values and develop a sense of responsibility for the broad impacts of individual actions and social institutions. They will understand their role as citizens and their responsibility to work with others in promoting quality of life and a sustainable society.” A REVIEW OF COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION 8 [26]. Universities, and specific colleges within universities, are also motivated intrinsically by accreditation standards from accreditation bodies like the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), or from curriculum recommendations from professional organizations like the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). Although ethics has been a required topic in the computing curriculum of most computing programs for many years, there is still a concern that graduates may be under equipped to apply the ethical skills they learn to a complex reality. There are some fundamental challenges to ethics education, especially in a computing ethics contexts. The first challenges is that ethics is complex, and often times very challenging, and some philosophers spend their entire careers studying ethics. So being able to teach ethics in a way students can understand more easily is a challenge. Additionally computing ethics has to be by nature interdisciplinary. Combining ethics pedagogy expertise with technical expertise of engineering faculty would help make computing ethics education current and continually improving. But interdisciplinary work is challenging. The nature of academic work is to spend years to build expertise in a particular field. The expectation is then to stay current in that particular field, and for many it includes conducting research. This specialization, along with teaching, is a full time job, literally, for university faculty members. Interdisciplinary work would then involve one expert taking time to learn about another academic area, which takes time away from their specialization. For computing ethics to become an interdisciplinary project it would mean that either the computer science faculty would have to take time to learn ethics and philosophy, or the philosophers would have to take time to learn computer science. Both of these options are challenging, and in the current university system there is not a lot of incentive A REVIEW OF COMPUTING ETHICS EDUCATION 9 to do this.2 Additionally, if this interdisciplinary work were to then be taught to students, it can come across as a confusing context switch for students who might not understand why information from another academic area applies. On top of the challenges all interdisciplinary work faces, interdisciplinary work between humanities and STEM departments, especially at a STEM specific institution faces additional barriers. The silo-ed department structure, requiring courses and faculty expertise to be classified as either humanities or computer science, and additional student resistance make this work even more challenging. Seeking to better understand the challenges surrounding computing ethics education, and understand the context in which it is currently taught, I conducted four interviews with professors from 3 different universities. I analyze the transcripts of these interviews using qualitative methods, and use the results of the analysis to compare the instructors different
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