Toward a Pedagogy of Principles: Teaching Ethics In Computer Science

Abstract

Executive Summary: -Princeton, like many other universities around the world, could benefit from more education about ethics in computer science. Students notice this lack and want the University to address it. -We did a study of 131 Princeton students and surveyed them about their current attitudes, thoughts, and skills with regard to ethics in computer science, and assessed how different teaching methods affected these students' attitudes, thoughts, and skills. We also examined past syllabi that have addressed this topic and interviewed professors in both philosophy and computer science departments at various universities. -We argue that it is preferable to embed ethics into existing computer science courses rather than to establish a standalone computer science ethics course. -There is a disconnect between the teaching methods that students prefer and those which have the biggest impact on them. In particular, students prefer to learn from computer scientists rather than ethicists, and prefer lectures and discussions over readings; however, these preferences did not always correlate with which workshops were the most effective. -Students are strongly influenced by the particular content with which they are presented, and may not extrapolate connections between ethical theory and particular situations if these are not made explicit. -Philosophy-focused teaching methods decreased students' confidence in their own ability to reason about ethical dilemmas in computer science; however, decreased confidence did not necessarily correlate with a decrease in skills and may be a useful first step in showing students how difficult ethical reasoning can be. -Students were most likely to pay attention to material about ethics when they thought it was interesting or important. Students' attention decreased the most when they did not expect ethics to be on an exam or assignment. Thus, regardless of particular teaching style, professors should make material about ethics engaging and include it on assignments and exams. -We provide 8 examples of ethics-related computer science assignments that professors can implement in their own courses. -We briefly discuss institutional challenges to incorporating ethics into a computer science curriculum and present ways to address politically sensitive material about ethics. -We suggest methods for iteratively gathering and incorporating student feedback, both throughout the semester and at the end of a course.