Broadening Participation in Computing Ethics Curriculum Development
Our research team is taking part in a three year project funded by the National Science Foundation that is exploring the impact of ethics education on student engagement and retention in computing programs. Computing professionals must be trained to take seriously the broader societal impacts of the technologies they create and deploy, rather than relying upon claims of technological neutrality or an inability to foresee downstream implications. While valuable efforts are underway to embed ethics across the computing curriculum, a critical, often-overlooked concern is whether historically underrepresented voices have an opportunity to influence the creation of content. This project seeks to understand and address this influence gap. During the project, the research team will aim to:
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- Identify current practices in ethics and research ethics education in the computing curriculum by determining which topics are being the included, prioritized, or excluded
- Assess expressed forward-looking preferences for topics that ought to be included in the computing ethics curriculum, primarily from faculty who are historically underrepresented in computing
- Develop sample computing ethics syllabi and associated course materials, based on survey participant feedback and discussions during a project workshop
- Determine whether the topics included in a more inclusive computing ethics curricula might alter student attitudes related to the pursuit of a computing degree.
This project is supported by the National Science Foundation Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) Program under Grant No. 2124745. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the researchers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.