On the Integration of Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues into a Computer Science Senior Design Capstone Program

摘要

Topics in professional ethics play an important role in ABET accreditation of computer science programs, where ethical issues are mentioned within three of the eleven ABET computer-science student outcomes. To help address these outcomes and to further develop topics in professional ethics within our program, we have developed a set of modules covering ethical, legal, and societal issues in computer science that we have integrated into our year-long senior capstone program. According to other studies, a lack of technical knowledge and sophistication are often seen as barriers to student engagement in ethics courses taught in lower-level courses. Thus, one of our reasons for covering ethical considerations at the senior level is to help make ethics more concrete and tangible for students by leveraging their experience and maturity in software development (gained through coursework, internships, and in thinking about their own careers). Further, the approach of integrating ethics modules into a senior capstone program is relatively unique compared with the teaching of ethics in other computer-science programs, where fewer than 6% integrate their ethics content into senior capstone projects. However, by integrating ethical considerations into the senior capstone, students can use their own senior projects as (concrete) cases for exploring ethical issues. Our experience suggests that the students' own projects form a well-understood and personal context that allows them to quickly understand and apply ethical, legal, and societal considerations in computing.