Teaching practices

0
424

INTRODUCTION

Computer science has advanced rapidly in the last several decades, and this advance has necessitated the continual revision of the curriculum for an evolving discipline. One of the fundamental changes in computer science in the last decade is the realization that the context in which technology is used must be taken into account in its design, partly because of the ethical implications of its use, end partly because understanding the consequences of use helps to inform and improve the design. Thus, as a part of the natural evolution of a maturing discipline, the charge to include the social, ethical and professional context of the discipline has been added in the core undergraduate curriculum. The importance of grappling with these questions was underscored by Computing Curricula 1991 which called the “Social, Ethical, and Professional Issues” one of the subject areas in its common requirements for the undergraduate computer science curriculum. However, there is little guidance in that report for those who would teach this subject area. To this end Project ImpactCS was initiated with the goal to define the core content and pedagogical objectives for integrating social impact and ethics into the computer science curriculum. Over the course of three years the project will address three major problems that hamper the implementation of across-the-beard curricular change: the lack of a well-specified definition of what the core content and learning objectives should include, the lack of a strategy for adapting and adopting existing materials that address the core topics into the existing CS curriculum, and the lack of awareness and expertise on the part of most CS faculty regarding the need and methodology for presenting such material in their courses. The first report from Project ImpaetCS represents the culmination of effort over the past year to address the first problem, the development of a weU-specified core of content and pedagogical objectives for integrating social impact and ethics into the required computer science curriculum. The work began at a two ..day meeting held in August, 1994, with the convening ofa Stee~g Committee comprised of 25 experts all of whom are well-known in computer ethics and social impact from a number of different perspectives: philosophers, social scientists, ethicists, and computer science professors with expertise in CS curriculum accreditation. From that meeting emerged the conceptual framework, the pedagogical objectives, and a database of topics and teaching methodologies that became the basis for this report.