Reframing “Ethics Education” to Encourage Participation by CS Faculty
Abstract: Standalone courses have been the dominant model for exposing CS majors to computing ethics. Current thinking calls for embedding this content across courses, helping students see such concerns in context. Pedagogically, this makes sense. But how do we do this with mainstream CS faculty who view ethics as out of scope for both their course content and their own expertise? Some universities outsource the heavy-lifting to colleagues in philosophy or social sciences, but this has several downsides.
This talk argues that framing our goals differently might make teaching socially-responsible computing accessible to mainstream CS faculty. We'll discuss concrete implementation ideas and evidence from Brown University's three-years-on effort to embed this content across the CS curriculum.
Bio: Kathi Fisler is Research Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Computer Science at Brown University. For the past several years, she and collaborator Shriram Krishnamurthi have been developing a course, textbook, and research program around data-centric computing. This modern take on introductory CS combines data science, data structures, and socially-responsible computing in a single curriculum accessible to majors and non-majors alike. She has also been a faculty lead in Brown's department-wide effort to weave social-responsibility across their CS curriculum. Both efforts draw on inspirations from her prior research in formal methods, software security, and computing education.