With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility - Integrating Data Ethics into Computing Education

  • Most computing students enter the industry once they graduate. As future software engineers, they will be in powerful positions, making decisions that impact their personal lives, others, and society. Thus, preparing graduates for their careers is crucial by addressing ethical considerations, decision problems, and other concepts related to morals, values, and legal aspects (e.g., data protection, privacy, security, etc.) as part of computing curricula. In this paper, we propose the integration of data ethics into computing programs and provide a framework for an ethics module, including relevant competency-based learning objectives. The proposed module is based on a curricular analysis of all 71 German data science degree programs focusing on ethics courses. The course contents and competency goals were analyzed and classified based on their cognitive complexity. As the results proved the lack of competency- based learning outcomes, we designed observable competency goals, meaning knowledge, skills, and dispositions taken in theMost computing students enter the industry once they graduate. As future software engineers, they will be in powerful positions, making decisions that impact their personal lives, others, and society. Thus, preparing graduates for their careers is crucial by addressing ethical considerations, decision problems, and other concepts related to morals, values, and legal aspects (e.g., data protection, privacy, security, etc.) as part of computing curricula. In this paper, we propose the integration of data ethics into computing programs and provide a framework for an ethics module, including relevant competency-based learning objectives. The proposed module is based on a curricular analysis of all 71 German data science degree programs focusing on ethics courses. The course contents and competency goals were analyzed and classified based on their cognitive complexity. As the results proved the lack of competency- based learning outcomes, we designed observable competency goals, meaning knowledge, skills, and dispositions taken in the context of a task. In addition, we provide suggestions for contents, pedagogical instructions, and assessments in such a course. The proposed module serves as a first draft and resource to support other educators aiming to design such a course and who are willing to integrate it into computing curricula.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author:Natalie KieslerORCiD, Simone OpelORCiD, Carsten ThorbrüggeORCiD
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3649217.3653637
Parent Title (English):Proceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1
Publisher:ACM
Place of publication:New York, NY, USA
Document Type:conference proceeding (article)
Language:English
Date of first Publication:2024/07/03
Reviewed:Begutachtet/Reviewed
Release Date:2024/12/18
Tag:ethics, moral, values, data science, computing, curricula, competencies, higher education
Pagenumber:7
First Page:471
Last Page:477
institutes:Fakultät Informatik
Research Themes:Digitalisierung & Künstliche Intelligenz
Licence (German):Creative Commons - CC BY-NC-SA - Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 4.0 International
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