Values and Technology

Religion and Public Life

James Burk, Gabriel R. Ricci

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351300148
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Philosophie
• Categoría: Histoire et théorie de la philosophie

In 1749 Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, surprised leading Enlightenment thinkers who had enthusiastically upheld the positive benefits of humanity's technological advance. Voltaire, who celebrated the ends of civilization, mocked Rousseau's praise for an original creative state of nature in which man enjoyed an optimum level of freedom.

Given the unprecedented intrusion of technology into our lives, the question raised by Rousseau's critique may be even more pertinent. In this volume of Religion and Public Life contributors address some of the challenges to conventional morality brought on by the technological augmentation of the social structure. John Barker's essay explores how Luciano Floridi's philosophy of technology has complicated the conventional way of determining what ought to receive moral consideration. Fani Zlatarova provides a practical guide for incorporating ethical components into teaching computer technology.

Grant Havers explores the controversies surrounding the biogenetic explosion through an examination of the competing philosophical perspectives and Christopher Vassilopolos examines the science-based justification for taking life. Gabriel R. Ricci looks at recent political history in the United States in order to highlight the sometimes uneasy relationship between science and social policy. Volume 37 is a welcome addition to the acclaimed Religion and Public Life series.

Teaching Values in Computing Courses through Theory and Practice

Fani Zlatarova

Introduction

Focusing on the ethical aspects of cyberspace, while teaching students majoring in computing disciplines has become increasingly important as their professional relationships affect large groups of users and have significant influence on those users’ activities. There are two different approaches to introducing ethics to these students:

• as a part of the required teaching material in computing courses, and

• through various forms of out-of-class activities.

The latter approach is discussed in this chapter by focusing on variety of student-led projects, which blend ethical and specific computing topics. Other methods which also follow the second approach, such as online surveys, seminar organization, quiz bowls, information bulletin board design, and field trips are also presented. In addition, several academic forums and committees that have been used as arenas to present and discuss cyberethics, the moral aspects of information systems (ISs), and the development of appropriate projects and the organization of related events are described.

In most cases, curricula developed for computing majors do not offer special courses in ethics [2, 3, 8, 9]. That is why some students graduate with limited or no knowledge about the ethical principles relevant to the numerous aspects of computing. A significant number of instructors try to include ethics topics in their classes by introducing some basic principles through different teaching tools [15, 33, 34]. Among various academic institutions, it is possible to distinguish a very specific group of institutions that considers as an academic priority not only the teaching and research activities, but also service learning which can be described as “the educational practice and philosophy of integrating classroom concepts with a related community service experience” [25]. Primarily, these are liberal arts colleges. Strict requirements are imposed on their students and faculty to participate in service-oriented activities and events and to generate appropriate ideas and solutions. Such an atmosphere creates an excellent environment that fosters various out-of-class activities which introduce knowledge relevant to cyberethics issues. The main objective of this paper is to share the author's experience in implementing different forms of teaching ethics to students majoring in computing disciplines at a liberal arts college.

Computer Ethics as a Class Experience

According to Laudon [15], ethics consists of “principles of right and wrong that can be used by individuals acting as free moral agents to make choices to guide their behavior.” Life is controlled by a variety of rules and imposing additional rules of behavior meets serious resistance [16]. Teaching ethics in computing classes raises problems for the instructor because sometimes the breaking of commonly accepted principles of ethical behavior relevant to cyberspace is perceived as a demonstration of professionalism and advanced understanding and use of hardware and software [5, 12, 27, 28, 31]. For example, how should students be led to believe that they are doing wrong by downloading copyrighted music? So many others are doing it and it is so easy and appealing to do. How can they be stopped from copying ideas and even texts from online sources for their assignment preparation? How should they be taught to surf safely through networks while keeping their privacy?

One possible answer to the above questions lies in interjecting various ethical topics into traditional lectures and into non-traditional forms of teaching, for example, development of research projects, quiz bowls, student electronic presentations, websites, and concrete case studies reflecting students’ experiences [17, 19]. Ethical behavior could be considered when creating a program that is used by others, when developing an IS or when designing a website and uploading it on servers accessible through the Internet, when buying books online or researching resources from the WWW for assignment purposes, when downloading texts, pictures, or music files, and so on. These daily routines impose high responsibilities for students as computing professionals and as members of society. Finding different ways of teaching and educating according to the cyberethics principles adds precious knowledge to their academic background. Exploring the service-learning opportunities at liberal arts colleges represents another effective and efficient way for involving students in out-ofclass activities related to ethical issues.

A variety of methods have been used to provoke students’ interest and to get them involved in related activities such as:

• teaching specific topics;

• discussing case studies;

• writing essays and research papers;

• offering electronic presentations that also include ethical issues;

• creating codes of ethical conduct for virtual companies as a part of corresponding websites and ISs developed by students;

• organizing surveys and quiz bowl sessions;

• participating in group class projects or individual senior projects.

Practical solutions for introducing ethical and moral aspects in different computing courses are described below.

The Information Technology and Society Course

According to Spinello [28], “the information age has created a more open society where piracy seems to grow ... with each technological innovation.” The Internet has become a mirror of individual behavior. A significant portion of cyberspace users are young people who enthusiastically use all possible opportunities to access and process information.

The Information Technology and Society course is offered as a freshman seminar primarily for students who intend to select a major, a minor, or a concentration related to computing. Such students are usually interested in learning more about computer applications. The main goals of the course are to prepare the students to use information technology (IT) in their academic work during their college years and to show them the respective recommended ethical principles that should guide them as members of society when using IT methods and tools.

Students’ attention is focused on seven factors [13] that challenge the moral codes of the computerized society: speed, privacy and anonymity, the nature of the medium, aesthetic attraction, increase of potential victims, international scope, and the power to destroy.

Teaching students how to write papers as a part of their academic assignments is an important objective of the instructor's class work. In the case of this course, individual and team papers are oriented towards discussions of basic ethical issues such as intellectual property and rights, privacy and security, and human factors—all relevant to the usage of computers and software development. Special attention is paid to the concept of copyright and corresponding international and U.S. laws. While researching a particular area, students must evaluate a moral dilemma in an unbiased manner, relying on logic and evidence. All students are required to write essays on the following two topics: “Pirated Software. Do I know it?” and “Is My Computer a Health Hazard?” by including quantitative and qualitative estimations of research elements on related ethical issues.

From the very beginning of the semester, students begin to develop an individual progressive paper by choosing a favorite topic that reflects a moral dilemma relevant to computers. Listed below are several topics chosen by students in the past:

• Computers based on biodigital technologies: How will they change our society?

• Computers and IT—forces of evil.

• Computers and the human interaction of tomorrow.

• The future intelligent machine society: Do human beings belong to it?

• Computers own my life—should I agree with this?

• Interactive multimedia: eye, ear, hand, and mind. Does it kill children's imagination and creativity?

• The controversy about the first contemporary computer. Who was the father?

• Human beings—slaves or leading force in the machines' world of tomorrow?

• My unlimited virtual life versus my lonely real life: what is my choice?

• Giving up privacy in exchange for safety: Reasons and limitations.

• Identity theft: Surreal or real?

• Open source software: pros and cons.

The development of the progressive paper is useful not only for students but also for the instructor. By evaluating them throughout the semester, the lecturer develops an understanding of students’ individual perceptions and reasoning and thus leads them into more targeted and focused discussions.

Other forms of teaching and assessment are also used in this course. Some of them are considered below.

Case Studies and Electronic Presentations. Using case studies to analyze and judge real and imaginary situations is helpful because they leave a strong impression and they use concrete examples to illustrate human behavior and its associated consequences. Internet news sources, together with other types of media, offer interesting opportunities for this. After such classes, students are able to consider ethical issues related to personal information uploaded to the Web while searching for online products or services. Usually, the respective case studies involve individual or group electronic presentations.

Team Projects. Another way of teaching ethical behavior is explored by assigning team projects consisting of creating a website for a virtual company and writing a corresponding code of ethics and professional conduct for the employees of this company. The text adopted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) available through the organization's website [36] is a good example for such a code and can be used as a prototype. Another good example is the Code of Ethics for Computing Professionals that was developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) [38].

Quiz Bowls. Quiz Bowl questions that raise ethical problems and provide relevant knowledge are exciting for students. They often prefer such non-traditional classes because of the competitive atmosphere, the opportunity to learn unusual entertaining facts, and the overall contribution to the class activity portion of their final grade.

Class Lectures. Traditional class lectures on selected ethics topics are also presented by the instructor to complete the introduction of ethical concepts and principles in the course content.

The knowledge gained from the Information Technology and Society course allows for better understanding of social context while using IT in everyday academic activities and while preparing assignments, regardless of the specific discipline. Students are expected to develop a strong background that becomes useful when considering issues related to:

• decision-making involving concepts such as intellectual property;

• open-source software;

• copyright and corresponding plagiarism problems;

• on-line communication;

• privacy protection and privacy-enhancing technologies;

• information security;

• computer crimes;

• on-line identification;

• biometric identification;

• legal issues; and

• societal implications.

Other Computing Courses

Limited course time and content of different computing courses impose significant restrictions in introducing ethics in the material taught. However, it is always possible to find the right moment to attract students’ attention in the desired direction. Students should become familiar with the concept of computer ethics defined as “the analysis of the nature and social impact of computer technology and the corresponding formulation and justification” [20]. Computing courses which incorporate ethical issues and have been thought by the author are as follows: Introduction to Computer Applications, Computer Science I and II, Information Systems, Systems Analysis and Design, Database Systems, Database Systems Development and Applications, and Readings and Projects in Computing.

Over the last few years, there has been a wonderful trend in publishing—an increase in the offering of computing of textbooks that contain ethics-related chapters in addition to specific computing topics. The courses mentioned above offer limited opportunities to teach ethical concepts and principles because of the wide range of topics that have to be covered in the given period of time. Today, most publishing companies offer a variety of textbooks which are appropriate for use in different disciplines, which include chapters discussing social and ethical issues, and which are related to multilateral computer aspects [1, 7, 11, 14-15, 23-24, 26].

Very often, the nature of the material taught in computing courses allows the instructor to shift the focus to ethical and moral issues related to software development. When students start designing and running their own computer programs, they are advised to consider whether the source code is understandable to other users. Students also need to think about the social impact of their software products. Initiating discussions about copyright concepts is also appropriate. In addition, students should acquire skills to protect their programs by implementing security techniques related to the respective hardware and software environments they are using.

Considering ethical issues is also appropriate in the Information Systems course. The textbook adopted for this course [15] off...