Debating E-commerce: Engaging Students in Current Events

A fundamental task for information technology educators is to help students understand the basic ethical, social, and legal issues inherent in the discipline. We present a method for achieving this goal using in-class debates. Debates allow for a high-level of participation, demand that students conduct significant research, and provide an interactive environment. This encourages the development of communication skills and exposes students to alternative points of view. The debates were conducted in two courses that provide a survey of some aspect of e-commerce technology, one at the undergraduate level and the other at the Masters level

Challenges and Success in Teaching Legal, Ethical, Social and Professional Issues to Computing Undergraduates

This paper discusses issues around the teaching of legal, ethical, social and professional issues (LESPI) to computing undergraduates. The inclusion of the above topics is mandatory for courses which seek accreditation from professional bodies in the UK such as the BCS and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Coverage of these issues is important to create a generation of engineers who see how their profession impacts society and the responsibilities that society places on them. In the UK and abroad the rise of e-crime and the invasion of privacy have attracted the attention of the media which has brought these issues to the forefront. These issues in the past have been sidelined in core computing curricula. The challenge lies in delivering these topics to students on computing programmes who may not immediately see the relevance despite their higher profile. We will discuss the role professional bodies can play in highlighting these issues and raising the profile of the professional engineer

THE GIS PROFESSIONAL ETHICS PROJECT: PRACTICAL ETHICS EDUCATION FOR GIS PROS

Abstract GIS professors and GIS professionals are separate but overlapping populations, in the U.S. at least. Both communities care about the moral and ethical implications of geospatial technologies and practices. They tend to express their concerns in different ways, however. Over the past 20 years scholars (particularly those affiliated with the discipline of Geography) have contributed critiques of the instrumental nature of GIS as well as reflective case studies that seek to demonstrate how the technology can be used to promote social justice. During the same period a profession of GIS coalesced; by mid-2009 over 4,500 individuals had earned certification as GIS Professionals. Requirements for professional certification in the U.S. include practitioners' commitment to comply with a formal Code of Ethics and Rules of Conduct. Meanwhile, U.S. higher education institutions have rushed to develop practice-oriented certificate and degree programs in response to the increasing demand for qualified GIS professionals in industry and government. Professional programs differ from academic degree programs in that most are designed to produce practitioners rather than scholars. In general, the rich literature in GIS and Society and Critical GIS is more useful to students and instructors in academic programs than those in professional programs. The objective of the National Science Foundation-funded GIS Professional Ethics Project is to produce open educational resources (especially formal case studies with explicit linkages to the Code and Rules) that help professional programs prepare current and future practitioners to recognize ethical problems and to act with integrity. The project (http://gisprofessionalethics.org) combines the perspectives and experience of GIS educators and applied ethicists. The goal of this ICA paper is to promote widespread use of GIS-specific case studies and to invite international perspectives on applied ethics in the GIS profession

The GIS Professional Ethics Project: Practical Ethics Education for GIS Professionals

Teaching GIS involves teaching ethical and moral thinking as a distinct engagement with the use, applications, and responsibilities of GIS professionals. Over the past 20 years scholars (particularly those affiliated with the discipline of Geography) have contributed critiques of the instrumental nature of GIS as well as reflective case studies that seek to demonstrate how the technology can be used to promote social justice. During the same period a profession of GIS developed as governmental and private use of GIS burgeoned; a marker for the professionalization of GIS in the United States can be found in the observation that by mid-2009 over 4,500 individuals had earned certification as GIS professionals. Requirements for professional certification in the U.S. include practitioners’ commitment to adhere with a formal Code of Ethics and Rules of Conduct. Meanwhile, U.S. higher education institutions have rushed to develop practice-oriented certificate and degree programs in response to the increasing demand for qualified GIS professionals in industry and government. Professional programs differ from academic degree programs in that most are designed to produce practitioners rather than scholars. In general, the rich literature in GIS and Society and Critical GIS is more useful to students and instructors in academic programs than those in professional programs. The objective of the National Science Foundation-funded GIS Professional Ethics Project (http://gisprofessionalethics.org) we describe in this chapter is to provide pedagogical practice and resources for American students and academics. The project combines the perspectives and experience of GIS educators and applied ethicists. The project has produced open educational resources (especially formal case studies with explicit linkages to the Code and Rules) to help professional GIS higher education programs prepare current and future practitioners to recognize and engage ethical problems.This is an author's manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published chapter [14] is copyrighted by John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Teaching Ethics in the Information Systems Curriculum

This dissertation evaluates the importance of teaching ethics in the Information Systems curriculum. It begins with a review of the expectations and recommendations of three distinct academic and professional organizations (AACSB, IS2002 Model Curriculum, and ABET) specifically related to ethics teaching. This case study is centered on a set of ethics instruction that was used to teach ethics to senior level Information Systems students, which included a discussion of professional codes of ethics, mini-case studies, contemporary news events, a historical novel called IBM and the Holocaust (Black, 2001a), a Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) ethics grid created by the instructor, and online discussions in WebCT. The students were surveyed at the end of the semester as to the effectiveness of the ethics instruction, and the quantitative results along with a qualitative data analysis of their online discussions and SDLC-Ethics grid is presented. An analysis of the data leads the researcher to believe that overall the students found the curriculum useful, with the reading of the IBM book and the SDLC-Ethics grid providing the most benefit

Towards a Pedagogy for Teaching Computer Ethics in Universities in Bahrain

This study presents a critical investigation into the teaching of computer ethics. A qualitative pluralistic approach (a mixture of qualitative approaches) was used to investigate case studies of teaching computer ethics to university-level students from Bahrain. The main issue was that ethics to Arabs and Muslims is a matter of religion than a matter of philosophy whereas the dominant perception in the academic literature which discussed computer ethics teaching is that computer ethics is a form of practical philosophy and hence separate from religion. In order to shed light on this, the study investigated computer ethic’s perceptions and teaching practices which were occurring in universities in Bahrain. The study found that the issue was not a matter of perception but rather a matter of confusion and a misconception. Computer ethics was being confused with morality, religion, basic computer skills to name just a few. And such confusion was causing computer ethics to gradually disappear from the curriculum and become substituted with concepts which were not necessarily capable of building students’ ethical thinking. The study recommends that computer ethics teachers and policy makers from Bahrain distinguish computer ethics from religion, morality and from any other concept and identify it as an independent field of study, also teachers need to involve their students in social and ethical analysis of various kinds so that students understand that ethics is not a set of rules on what is forbidden and allowed aimed at providing straightforward answers to a given problem but rather ethics is a ‘cognitive tool’; a mechanism through which different competing ethical theories and standards are used to reflect on a given problem.The University of Bahrai