Ethics Training and Decision-Making: Do Computer Science Programs Need Help?

1. Ethics Training and Decision-Making: Do Computer Science Programs Need Help? Carol Spradling Computer Science/Information Systems Northwest Missouri State University c_sprad@nwmissouri.edu Leen-Kiat Soh National Center for Information Technology in Education (NCITE) University of Nebraska lksoh@cse.unl.edu Charles J. Ansorge Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska cansorge@unl.edu

2. Do Computer Science Programs Need Help Integrating Computer Ethics? • Wanted to explore how social and professional issues are integrated into undergraduate computer science programs in the United States

3. Ethics Study • Online faculty survey undergraduate computer science programs in the United States (Fall 2005) • Approximately 41 questions focused on nine major ethics topics of which five are covered in paper • Ethics coverage • Who teaches • Special training • Decisions made • Not teaching reasons

4. Research Methodology and Design • Large sample size (700 programs) was chosen using a stratified random sample based upon university or college enrollment • Family-wise alpha of .05 with a Bonferroni adjusted alpha of .001 • 251 surveys returned (36% response rate)

5. Demographic Analysis

6. Demographic Analysis

7. Demographic Analysis

8. Question 1 – Ethics Coverage • Does your department’s undergraduate computer science curriculum include any social and professional ethics issues content? • 220 (88%) Include ethics • 31 (12%) Do not include ethics

9. Question 1 –Ethics Coverage -By # Major & Accredited

10. Question 1 – Ethics Required? • Of the 220 programs that include ethics • 173 (79%) Require ethics coverage

11. Question 2 – Who Teaches • Who teaches the social and professional issues incorporated into your computer science curriculum? • 186 (85%) Computer Science (CS) • 9 (4%) Philosophy • 10 (5%) CS and other disciplines • 14 (6%) Other

12. Question 3 - Training • Did your department (or school or college) provide faculty that teach the social and professional ethics content with opportunities for training? • 168 (77%) No special training • 50 (23%) Special training

13. Question 3 – Training Required?

14. Question 3 – How Trained?

15. Question 4 – Decision Made? • Who makes the decisions concerning how to incorporate the social and professional issues components into the undergraduate computer science curriculum? • Of the 220 schools that include ethics • 87 (39%) Committee of faculty • 73 (33%) Committee and individual • 51 (23%) Individual decisions • 9 (4%) Other

16. Questions 5 – Not Teaching Ethics • What are the reasons schools (programs) are not teaching social and professional issues in the undergraduate computer science curricula?

17. Question 5 – No Ethics By School Enrollment

18. Question 5 – Not Teaching Ethics By Majors

19. Question 5 – Reasons For Not Teaching

20. Conclusions • Pleased by large survey responses from programs (251 or 36%) shows that some programs are interested in computer ethics • Undergraduate computer science programs are embracing teaching computer ethics (88% include ethics) • Computer science faculty (85%) are teaching computer ethics in some form

21. Conclusions - Training? • Need for ethics training exists • 168 (77%) of the 251 computer science programs do not provide training • 26 (52%) of the 50 that provide training are responsible for their own training • Means a small number of schools 24 actually provide training for faculty • Faculty do take advantage of training when provided with training opportunities

22. Conclusions - Training • Programs that require ethics are more willing to provide support for ethics training of faculty • Therefore, one way to move toward training faculty at a school is to require an ethics course

23. Conclusions – Decisions Made • Most programs use committee of faculty to determine how to integrate computer ethics into curriculum • Involves more faculty in the process which is a good thing • More faculty may ensures better supervision of the implementation • Better chance that ethics will be incorporated into other topics such as programming, database systems, software engineering, etc

24. Conclusions – Not Teaching Ethics • All programs that are not teaching ethics need help • 77% of programs not teaching ethics have under 100 majors • Programs need help integrating computer ethics into their curriculum

25. Conclusions – Not Teaching Ethics • Training is a real need also • Reach out to small college programs through NSF, SIGCSE, and local conferences to offer more ethics workshops • Provide financial support for training

26. Overall Conclusions • Faculty are influenced by ACM, therefore Special Interest Groups should exert their influence and include social and professional topics of interest at conferences • Need for ethics training exists • Textbooks should integrate ethics topic discussion, not as separate ethics sections • Schools should be encouraged to form committees to integrate ethics into curricula

27. Ethics Training and Decision-Making: Do Computer Science Programs Need Help? Carol Spradling Computer Science/Information Systems Northwest Missouri State University c_sprad@nwmissouri.edu Leen-Kiat Soh National Center for Information Technology in Education (NCITE) University of Nebraska lksoh@cse.unl.edu Charles J. Ansorge Department of Educational Psychology University of Nebraska cansorge@unl.edu

28. Presentation and Survey at: http://catpages.nwmissouri.edu/m/c_sprad/sigcse2008ethics.html Ethics Training and Decision-Making: Do Computer Science Programs Need Help?