“This Applies to the Real World”: Student Perspectives on Integrating Ethics into a Computer Science Assignment

In this episode I unpack Jarzemsky, Paup, and Fiesler’s (2023) publication titled “‘This Applies to the Real World’: Student Perspectives on Integrating Ethics into a Computer Science Assignment,” which explores student perspectives on an undergraduate ethics assignment in a CS class.

Recently there's been a lot of
discussion about ethics in relation to
computer science and technology in
general so we look at a lot of companies
and what they're doing in terms of
practices we see a lot of them engaging
in practices that might harm their users
or might sell their information as data
in ways that are not known to the users
or maybe engage in practices that might
harm groups or individuals through
censorship or whatever this has raised a
lot of questions within the field of
Computer Science Education about well
when and where should we discuss ethics
or should we at all so for example in
episode 177 titled racial Justice amidst
the dangers of computing creep colon a
dialogue the authors talk about how
although there might be some ethics put
into place or encouraged through
computer science programs so it doesn't
necessarily mean that the people who
take those classes are going to follow
them so for example speed limits are
required by law for you to adhere to
them but it does not mean that people
are going severely over the speed limits
and getting arrested for it or getting
tickets same thing applies for ethics in
computer science education just because
we teach an ethics class it does not
mean that people are are going to follow
them and are not going to instead follow
what is best for the shareholders at
their corporations or companies but if
you think that ethics should be taught
when should it be taught how should it
be taught and what other perspectives of
the students who take those classes we
actually explore this question in
today's paper that I'm going to unpack
which is titled this applies to the real
world colon student perspectives on
integrating ethics into a computer
science assignment this is written by
Julie jarzaminski Joshua palp and Casey
feissler apologies if I mispronounced
any names here's the abstract for this
paper quote there is a growing movement
in undergraduate computer science CS
programs to embed ethics across CS
classes rather than relying solely on
Standalone ethics courses one strategy
is creating assignments that encourage
students to reflect on ethical issues
inherent to the code they write building
off prior work that has surveyed
students after doing such assignments in
class we conducted focus groups with
students who reviewed a new introductory
ethics-based CS assignment in this
experience report we present a case
study describing a process of describing
an ethics-based assignment and posing
the assignment to students for feedback
participants in our focus groups not
only shared feedback on the assignment
but also on the integration of Ethics
into coding assignments in general
revealing the benefits and challenges of
this work from a student perspective we
also generated novel ethics oriented
assignment Concepts alongside students
driving from Tech controversies that
participants felt most affected by we
created a bank of ideas as a starting
point for further curriculum development
end quote so this study was with
undergraduate computer science Majors
we're going to talk about this in
relation to K-12 Computer Science
Education but this is applicable in
higher education as well how do I know
that well I've taught every single grade
kindergarten through doctoral student in
a variety of contexts like music
education and computer science education
context so I have a wide range of
experience over a couple of decades now
all right and the introduction for the
paper the authors talk about how there
are many different approaches to
satisfying ethics requirements for
degrees in computer science some degrees
might have a standalone ethics computer
science course other degree programs
will have a broader ethics course that
might be specific to technology as a
domain or just ethics in general and
then some will take an approach of
embedding ethics like throughout
different assignments and different
courses throughout the entire degree
program the same thing can apply through
K-12 education you might have a
standalone unit that is specific to
ethics in computer science and computer
science education or you might have like
a class that is just related to Ethics
in general or maybe digital citizenship
as well or maybe even embed these ideas
like throughout the course or semester
or units Etc now a lot of these ethics
classes kind of have a top-down approach
where it is like the instructor who is
instilling some form of Ethics onto the
students but what are the student
perspectives on these classes and the
assignments and whatnot so the authors
unpack this a little bit in this paper
the second section of this paper is
titled creating the assignment the
authors note that many undergraduate
classes will have students work on an
assignment like detecting hate speech
and so while the author is like admit
that this is a worthy assignment to go
through it can cause harm for some
people who are directly impacted by that
speech think of this from like a SEL or
social emotional learning perspective
which I'll include a link to that in the
show notes for some other podcast
episodes that specifically unpack what
is sel in relation to Computer Science
Education and you can find those at
jaredelary.com and just click on the
podcast tab you'll also find a bunch of
gaming and drumming and more Computer
Science Education content on there
there's literally thousands of hours
worth of content on my website available
for free so check it out and if you
enjoy that content maybe share it with
somebody else helps more people out
anyways back to the assignment so
instead of doing a hate speech
assignment where it's like a minoritized
group who's being attacked by another
group the authors decided to create an
assignment that kind of remove some of
that potential for harm so here's the
assignment prompt quote catter is a
social media platform built by and for
cats the cats platform has recently been
getting spammed by dogs so they have
decided to remove all mentions of dogs
from their platform entirely however
cats are not great at programming they
need your help in removing all of the
dog content from their platform end
quote now this reminds me of episode 7 D
which is titled eliminating gender bias
and computer science education materials
which kind of talks about how you might
be able to eliminate some of the biases
that are in instructional materials by
not using gendered objects so if you
want to learn more about this particular
idea check out that episode again that's
episode 70 and you can find it at
jiridolary.com and you can find that in
the show notes for this episode so at
the start of this assignment begins with
the students kind of exploring how to
find whether or not the word dog is
found within text and then removing
posts that have that kind of reference
but the next part of the assignment is
to explore different Lima so like to
think of dogs and dog and
d-o-g-g-o.o or d-a-w-g dog Etc which are
like different variations of the word
dog so that dives a little bit deeper
but then they actually explore well what
about other references like negative
comments about cats or even references
to dogs without actually using the word
dog so in this portion of the assignment
they use the nltk sentiment analyzer
which would look at like intent rather
than just specific keywords so that's
kind of like the a basic structure of
the assignment itself and there's some
reflection afterwards and things like
that now the next section of this paper
is titled the evaluation methods so in
this section they talk about how they
had 90-minute focus groups for three to
five participants each and they would
kind of talk about this assignment and
so from page two of the PDF this is what
the tasks were that they had to complete
quote one pre-questionire about content
moderation two review of coding portion
of assignment three group discussion and
individual surveys on coding portion 3A
reactions to the assignment 3B how they
would complete it and 3C any changes
they would suggest Four review of
reflection portion five group discussion
and individual surveys on reflection
portion six brainstorm new assignment
ideas centered around ethical dilemmas
and 6B discuss how these controversies
tie in with cs topics and quote in the
end they end up with 16 individual
participants and the group sizes were
two to five for this portion of the
study after the group interviews they
went into the Thematic analysis so the
transcribe the discussions and then we
go through it and kind of assign a code
that kind of like was an abstraction or
a summary of what was stated in each one
of the sentences and when you do that
kind of code you might have multiple
codes and it's created a list of themes
that they explored and then they kind of
explored well how does this compare
across like the different participants
for each one of these themes Etc all
right so section four is on the findings
so the first subsection is the strengths
of the assignment one of the key
findings in this particular section it
talks about how the students appreciated
the pretend scenario with the cats and
the dogs and how this eased them into a
discussion on content moderation with
humans the participants thought this
brought in real world application of
computer science Concepts practices Etc
that were relevant to the students
taking this class which is really
important I mean if we think about it a
lot of the assignments that we might
engage in in computer science class
might be relevant to the domain of
computer science but if it's not
relevant to the students taking it it
might go in one year and then out the
other year I mean I had so many projects
in other classes where when I engaged in
them it was like relevant to that domain
and interesting in a way but like I
wasn't going to use it in the real world
so down the road I've completely
forgotten what I learned which if you
want to get a deeper dive into that
understanding which is often described
as situated language or situated
learning check out the podcast episode
titled situated language and learning
with Brian Brown this is episode 53.
it's a fantastic episode that unpacks
this concept of situated learning and
how you might use it in classroom
context alright so section 4.2 is on
suggestions for improving the assignment
now I'm really glad that the authors
actually did this where they were asking
people hey how could we improve this
assignment it's fantastic there's
something that you can actually do with
students and you might even design this
assignment with students in advance
rather than coming into it with here's
exactly what we're going to do you might
have some options or like a menu to be
able to choose from thank you John
Stapleton from that idea and the student
might come in and go I want to be able
to do this this and this and what about
if we added this other thing that's not
on the menu or a selection of the
different options that are available to
us this is something I've done with like
undergraduate classes graduate classes
and even elementary students were kind
of like help them come up with
assignment for themselves that related
to something that they needed to learn
for a class or for a degree or whatever
or it was just interesting to them but
here's what the participants said about
how they might be able to improve the
assignment so some thought the
assignment may have been too difficult
so being able to reduce the difficulty
level might help some students so for
example using some code examples to kind
of build off of rather than having to
like code something without any examples
to build off of they also felt that the
assignment could be shortened by
removing the sentiment analysis and just
engaging in a discussion on that topic
or reflecting on it rather than actually
doing it another suggestion from the
cyber security world was using the build
it break it fix it approach which was
basically you would have it so that one
person would build something another
person in the group might like go and
try and break it and then try and fix it
so it kind of creates this cycle of
creating something and then trying to
break that thing and then trying to fix
the thing that was broken with it so
trying to find vulnerabilities with like
the algorithm or whatever what was
interesting about these discussions is
the author's note on page three that
quote we observed from our analysis of
the discussion was heavily biased toward
the negative effects of content
moderation with little discussion of
cases where it could be beneficial end
quote that's a really interesting
finding for this particular study for
myself on assignments like these
Whenever there was like many different
perspectives or angles that we could
look at it I would treat it as like a
gym with many facets and you could look
at it from different angles and go well
what would the perspective be from this
perspective what would it be from this
other perspective and another
perspective and I try and like pose some
questions that would get students to
think of these different perspectives
even if I like wholeheartedly disagreed
with a question that I was asking it was
beneficial to kind of go through those
questions and think of how you might
respond to somebody who has an
alternative understanding of an idea or
whether or not something is or is not
considered ethical Etc so I'd recommend
if you are going to engage in like these
kind of assignments make sure that
there's not like a right and wrong way
to think of this but think of like the
gray area in between with some of these
like well while we might consider this
to be unethical in terms of How It's
impacting users it's also benefiting the
shareholders of this organization so
let's talk about how there is some give
and take and that we need to acknowledge
both of them and understand both of them
because if people are going to go into
CS like if they're going to create an
app or something or a game they're going
to have pressures from both sides of
things and they need to make like
different stakeholders happy with this
not just the users and not just the
board of directors or the shareholders
Etc in other words there's just many
more nuances to consider when it comes
to Ethics in relation to technology and
computer science Etc but the next
section 4.3 kind of talks about this a
bit more so this is on the opinions of
integrating ethics most people had a
positive reflection on this assignment
they like that this is situated within
the real world that it allowed them to
kind of like dive into some interests on
Advanced topics quote however
participants did raise concerns about
the integration of these topics into
technical assignments some expressed
that they would rather study ethics
outside of Cs curriculum and prefer it
be a Standalone course if I am expecting
and wanting a class to be technical in
nature I would likely be unhappy writing
a paper since it is not what I signed up
for end quote it's from page four now
this brings up a really interesting idea
I've talked about this in other episodes
on curricula like in episode 125 images
of curriculum in episode 126
contemporary venues of curriculum
inquiry I talk about how there are many
different ways of thinking of a
curriculum or a degree in terms of what
is the purpose or the vision for that
which Speaking of check out episode 20
CS for what diverse visions of Computer
Science Education and practice for a
more nuanced discussion on that idea but
if I were to like really take a
reductionist approach and like kind of
create two categories some people might
go into a computer science class and
they might think of just the technical
I'm going to learn how to code and
that's it other people might go to it
and from a more broader understanding
like I'm willing to learn about not only
just how to program but the impacts of
computing we're going to talk about the
ethics the history of it etc etc now
obviously in that hypothetical there's a
lot of gray area in between many other
different ways of thinking of this but
for the sake of the argument think of it
as these two separate camps basically to
make this a little bit easier to
understand now to make this a little
less personal in terms of like it's tied
to computer science let's talk about
this in relation to music which again my
background's in music education studied
percussion Etc so if I went into a
percussion lesson and I wanted to learn
how to play the marimba which is like a
large xylophone you play it with like
two to four mallets and you can make
some really interesting beautiful spooky
whatever kind of music that you'd like
if I went into those marimba lessons I
personally would be expecting to learn
the technicalities some ways that I can
improve my musicianship and learn some
specific pieces that I can perform in
like a recital or something like that
that is the first category where you're
going into it expecting to learn
essentially the algorithms you're going
to learn how to create music or create
with code but if instead I went into
those lessons and they talked about how
there's a Rosewood shortage which is a
type of wood and how that is impacting
like whether or not there are marimbas
available or other instruments that use
that Rosewood and how this is creating
some D4 station issues that are
problematically impacting different
climates and different environments or
different locales and I had to write an
essay about how that impact relates to
myself wanting to get better at marimba
but we also learned like a piece or two
and learned some technical related
things within that particular set of
lessons that might be more of the
broader conceptualizing of computer
science so again on one hand we have the
technical I'm learning how to play the
instrument on the other hand I might
learn somewhat how to play the
instrument but also focus on other areas
like some of the ethics related to
playing that instrument so same thing
with the computer science we might learn
just the algorithms or we might learn
algorithms and the ethics or impacts of
what we do with those algorithms again
there's a lot of like gray area in
between those two different like camps
that I've created but the point is
students come into these classes with an
expectation of where it's going to lean
towards one of these camps or another
one of these camps as computer science
Educators we also might lean more
towards one or the other you might have
just heard that and go well duh Jared
we're supposed to focus on this camp and
not this other camp but another computer
science educator might have a completely
flipped or somebody might have a
completely different perspective from a
third camp that I didn't even mention
all of these are things that we could
think about when we are teaching
students or designing a class and that
might be something that you discuss the
first class that you have with students
here's what the expectations are so you
can manage them from the beginning do
they expect to 100 only focus on
learning how to write algorithms and not
talking about the impacts of computing
or is it mainly going to focus on
impacts of computing and not necessarily
even talk about the algorithms again
where you align there's no right or
wrong way of doing this I think it in a
healthy way it should probably be
somewhere towards the middle but it
depends on what you're signing up for
are you signing up for a computer
science degree are you signing up for a
boot camp to learn how to use a very
specific programming language in a very
specific context just so you can get a
job if that is your only goal and you
want to do it in a compressed period of
time then you might only learn the
algorithms the technical side of things
but if you want to learn broadly
speaking then maybe you'll get a full
degree so in other words there's just
many things to consider when kind of
creating these different options and
thankfully there are many different
options for people to take again I'm a
huge fan of multi-perspectable education
so I think there's a lot of value in
that but that's just my opinion and
that's something that I value which
Speaking of some of the students in this
study had mentioned that this approach
or this kind of assignment might end up
pushing a particular set of values that
may or may not align with the students
like what if some students are in favor
of content moderation other students or
not depending on how you design the
assignment it might make it so that it
says there is a right or wrong way to
approach this which might be received
differently depending on the camp that
the student is in if they align with the
design of the assignment cool they might
like it but if they don't align with it
then they might feel like they are being
attacked so that's yet another thing to
consider whenever designing any kind of
assignment what are the values that are
embedded within the assignment or what
kind of questions might be raised and
different perspectives might be explored
through the assignment if there are many
questions in many perspectives then it
might come across less of as a form of
colonization and more of an exploration
of different understandings on a
particular topic now the last subsection
of the findings is 4.4 so this talks
about new assignment ideas so the
authors describe how they collaborate
with students to come up with some
different ideas for different variations
or extensions that they could add on
this particular topic so for example on
page five they have a table and it has
some different contexts that they might
explore like they might be able to
explore algorithms for organ donor
matching or addiction to social media or
context of dark patterns on the web
influence of search engines on what news
stories users see misuse of user data
and right to be forgotten user data and
privacy usability and inclusivity in web
forms and mental health impacts of
social media apps all of these are
really interesting ethics discussions or
assignments that could be explored and
if you want to see what the assignment
ideas are for each one of those because
you might want to use them in your
classroom make sure you check out page
five of this paper now one of the things
that I really appreciate is the authors
talk about how they tried to improve the
assignment based off of feedbacks that
they received so in section five which
is titled improvements to the assignment
they talk about how instead of using
paragraph text they created a basically
a list of steps that students could
follow to go through the assignment have
very clear understanding of what they're
supposed to do for each one of those
steps that is a very simple little
change that you can make an assignment
that might help some students so another
thing to improve the assignment is they
realize they need to balance out the
scenario so it doesn't just explore the
harms of content moderation but can also
talk about the benefits of it and kind
of explore some of the potential false
negatives and false positives that might
occur with content moderation these are
all great Reflections to have on how to
improve an assignment into something
that I highly recommend like for example
I had a professor that I did a residency
with across like multiple semesters of
the same course so I did three semesters
in a row with him and I wanted to see
how he kept some stuff the same and what
he changed and why he ended up doing
that so you engage in a lot of
conversations about how after we
completed a project on a particular idea
or whatever or even just a simple
assignment we would talk about what
worked with this particular assignment
or project and what didn't work what
could we fix for next time or try and
improve rather and then the following
semester we would try and Implement that
Improvement in a different way and again
just go through the this continuous
cycle of improving the assignment or
project I think that is a really
worthwhile thing to do and I praise the
authors for being open with us and
talking about how hey we've created this
thing it's imperfect we uh recognize
that we got feedback from the students
and we're sharing you how we have
changed Things based on that feedback I
think that's a very realistic approach
to how you might engage in these kind of
assignments rather than I've made an
assignment I never need to touch this
again it'll be relevant for the next 20
years of myself teaching probably not
now this paper ends with a discussion
and so in the discussion section the
authors say quote We Believe CS
Educators can Empower students to become
more proactive in considering social
impacts of their work embedding ethics
topics and discussions throughout
computer science coursework can help
accomplish this and has other positive
side effects end quote that's from page
five now I totally agree I think it's
very important to engage in ethics and
to embed it not just as a standalone
one-off thing but you can embed it
throughout different assignments
throughout a degree program or
throughout K-12 tenure Etc the more you
do it the more commonplace is going to
become so for example in undergraduate
courses that I used to design and
facilitate at Arizona State University
one of the things that we intentionally
did in the design of things was to make
a class that was a standalone class that
was specific to how to use technology in
music education but we had it so that
all of the classes like the art of
teaching Voice or the art of teaching
instrumental musicianship Etc all of
those classes took the ideas that were
in introduced in the digital technology
class of hybrid class and they applied
it into it so they would keep coming
back to the same ideas of how to record
how to manipulate sound how to remix Etc
in all of the classes that they took
after it so it was a standalone course
but it was reinforced repeatedly every
single semester after that that I think
is an extremely important and easy way
that you can introduce ethics into a
degree program or into a class is like
having a unit on ethics and then keep
calling back to that every single time
you do an assignment think about this in
terms of
hey you just created a program great
what other perspectives might be harmed
by that program that you created or my
benefit from that program let's talk
about the ethics of the thing that you
created that is an alignment with a lot
of the csta standards in terms of
getting like diverse perspectives on a
product or a program or whatever and
it's just like you know beneficial in
general for accessibility issues SEL
issues ETC so I highly recommend
engaging in it in that way but you might
have it as a standalone class or as a
unit Etc any of that is better than none
of that and it really depends on so many
contexts like how often do you see your
students what are the classes typically
designed as are they around units are
they around projects are they around
assignments Etc there are many ways to
do education so figure out a way that
works best for you and the classes and
students that you work with now when you
engage in those assignments just make
sure that you talk about how there are
many perspectives to this and try and
bring them in as much as possible
because some students may not have
experienced the harm that others have
when it comes to impacts of computing so
again exploring multiple perspectives is
extremely beneficial in the long run
here's a quote from page six quote when
speculating about ethics in the
classroom students and instructors may
fail to consider perspectives outside of
their own as an instructor in their
study said people tend to lean on their
own experiences pretty heavily in
speculation and don't unless they are
very carefully prompted consider broader
context including reflection is an
opportunity to carefully prompt students
to consider other perspectives and quote
that's from page six I agree and a
reflection can help but also engaging in
a variety of questioning techniques
which I've done multiple podcast
episodes to talk about questioning
techniques that you can use in computer
science education so check out the show
notes for some of those episodes for
example episode 12 which was talking
about computer science better questions
better discussions another thing that
authors mentioned in the discussion
section is that it's important to talk
about this transition from theoretical
to a real world application so if you're
going to have like a hypothetical
scenario that is like using cats and
dogs or inanimate objects or whatever
and then you transition into how does
this impact you as an individual or
communities or groups of people Etc
there needs to be some kind of guidance
in that and some kind of weaning into it
without just like jumping into the deep
end because it might be harmful for some
students and not necessarily for others
again think through the different
perspectives that your students might
have that you might not understand when
they're jumping into things that might
have negatively impacted them in their
life another thing that they mentioned
is that it's very helpful to have a
discussion group or focus group kind of
talking about the assignment this is
something that you can do before doing
an assignment you can also doing do it
during an assignment like I mentioned
I'd kind of co-design assignments with
students across kindergarten through
graduate students or you can do it as a
post assignment Reflections hey we've
finished this thing next year when we do
a similar assignment with other students
what might you recommend that we change
or add or really emphasize Etc these are
all things that you can do like the very
first person that I did a student
teaching with is that an elementary
school we're doing Elementary General
music and band and so at the end of each
one of the lessons he would kind of like
write a little note in the lesson
changes for next time do this for next
time because he wouldn't teach that
lesson again until the fall following
year and so it was like helpful for him
to be able to kind of keep track of what
worked really well what could he modify
for next time that's something that you
could also do if you have a similar
approach now the authors also know in
the discussion section that there are
many ways you can approach teaching
ethics but if you focus on how to Think
Through ethics rather than what to think
this can make it a little bit more open
for students who might disagree with
your values and your understandings or
your ways of being it makes it so that
many people can engage in the ethics
course in a way that is beneficial to
everyone now if you want to see the
course materials in the assignment and
whatnot they do include a link to that
it is footnote one and this is at the
very bottom of page six so make sure you
check that out if you're interested in
it now at the end of these unpacking
scholarship episodes I like to talk
about some of my lingering questions and
thoughts when I read through each one of
these Publications that I share on this
podcast one question that I have is
what's your preferred balance between
thinking and doing in computer science
this is important because again if we
think of those two different camps like
if we have some people who think we
should just focus on the doing and other
people think that we should focus on the
thinking about the impacts of computing
there's going to be some tension in
there so you need be able to figure out
where is your preferred balance as an
educator and what do you want for your
students now if we broaden this and
again think outside of computer science
and like let's go with something that
I'm interested in I'm interested in
gaming if we spent a lot of time talking
about gaming strategies and not actually
playing video games I wouldn't really be
as interested in that I also wouldn't be
just interested in just playing without
actually thinking about it I personally
prefer some kind of more of a middle
ground but some people might be more
leaning towards one end versus another
end some people really like only talking
about strategy not necessarily playing
it and other people only want to play it
same thing again applies to whether you
want to just think about or just do or
create with computer science Concepts
practices skills Etc now for yourself or
for the students that you work with how
did your preference change across
different subject areas in some classes
you might lean more towards the doing in
other classes you might lean more
towards the thinking why is that and how
does that preference align or misalign
with the students you've worked with in
those different subject areas and
context or when they think of your class
computer science or technology or coding
or whatever labeled as what other
preconceived notions of where it's going
to align on that Continuum which Camp
will it lean towards one more or the
other another question that I have is
what's your own rationale for including
or excluding ethics in your classes what
approach or approaches do you lean
toward do you like to do a standalone
unit on ethics do you like to have a
standalone class on ethics do you like
to embed it into different assignments
or only have a single assignment working
on ethics how did you come to that
rationale and that understanding and how
do you think that is impacting students
long term what would be the pros and
cons or affordances of constraints of
using a different approach in terms of
how much time you have in terms of what
students are supposed to learn in
relation to standards which I
problematize in many other episodes all
of these are important things to
consider when trying to figure out when
to include ethics or not another
question that I have is how might we
connect ethics with other Frameworks for
example there's a framework that John
Stapleton recently introduced me to it's
called aesthetic perspectives attributes
of excellence in arts for Change and so
these perspectives include things like
disruption commitment communal meaning
cultural Integrity risk-taking emotional
experience sensory experience openness
coherence resourcefulness and stickiness
each of these are kind of unpacked in a
link that I include in the show notes
but I highly recommend taking a look at
but if you were to approach some of
these different aesthetic perspectives
and use that as a lens for looking at
ethics in computer science what might be
gained from that what about some other
different Frameworks or perspectives
might we apply with ethics that may or
may not exist within computer science in
the field there are many ways to do
ethics or to Think Through ethics so try
and find inspiration from different
sources outside of and within the field
of Computer Science Education some of
the ways that I used to teach Drumline
were inspired by what I learned from
martial arts or from sports psychology
or from Neuroscience Etc there are many
ways of like thinking and doing that can
have a profound impact on teaching and
learning so I highly recommend exploring
them if you've got a topic or an idea
that would be interesting to explore
feel free to leave a comment on the
YouTube video for this episode or any of
the other episodes I do read all the
comments and I try to respond to them
all so I'm happy to unpack papers that
you might recommend or some ideas of
could be explored I do have a long list
of papers to go through and I'm also
happy to talk through some different
guests who might be able to come on the
show I've been doing a lot less guest
interviews lately because I've been
focusing on refining these unpacking
scholarship episodes because of a huge
project that I've got planned over this
next coming year so all these have kind
of been preparing for that but I'm more
than happy to interview anybody on the
show I just haven't actively reached out
to any guests in quite some time I hope
you enjoyed these solo episodes I've
been refining them over the past couple
of months and will continue to do so
because I like to iterate on things and
try and improve them but if you enjoyed
this leave a like on YouTube or leave a
review on whatever podcast app you're
listening to the song and please just
consider sharing it with somebody else
it's the biggest compliment you can give
but thank you sincerely for listening to
this episode and the 100 and some odd
episodes that are before this one stay
tuned for another episode next week
until then I'll be all staying safe and
are having a wonderful week

Article

Jarzemsky, J., Paup, J., & Fiesler, C., (2023). “This Applies to the Real World”: Student Perspectives on Integrating Ethics into a Computer Science Assignment. Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - SIGCSE ’23, 1–7.

Abstract

“There is a growing movement in undergraduate computer science (CS) programs to embed ethics across CS classes rather than relying solely on standalone ethics courses. One strategy is creating assignments that encourage students to reflect on ethical issues inherent to the code they write. Building off prior work that has surveyed students after doing such assignments in class, we conducted focus groups with students who reviewed a new introductory ethics-based CS assignment. In this experience report, we present a case study describing our process of designing an ethics-based assignment and proposing the assignment to students for feedback. Participants in our focus groups not only shared feedback on the assignment, but also on the integration of ethics into coding assignments in general, revealing the benefits and challenges of this work from a student perspective. We also generated novel ethics-oriented assignment concepts alongside students. Deriving from tech controversies that participants felt most affected by, we created a bank of ideas as a starting point for further curriculum development.”

Author Keywords

Ethics, introductory programming, CS1, social impact, assignments, university, undergraduate, content, focus groups, content moderation

My One Sentence Summary

This paper explores student perspectives on an undergraduate ethics assignment in a CS class.

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

What’s your preferred balance between thinking and doing in computer science?
What’s your own rationale for including (or excluding) ethics in your classes?
- What approach(es) do you lean toward?
How might we connect ethics with other frameworks (e.g., Aesthetic Perspectives)?

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
- Contemporary Venues of Curriculum Inquiry
  - In this episode I unpack an excerpt from Schubert’s (2008) publication titled “Curriculum inquiry,” which describes different venues or types of curriculum that educators and education researchers should consider.
- CS for What? Diverse Visions of Computer Science Education in Practice
- Eliminating Gender Bias in Computer Science Education Materials
  - In this episode I unpack Medel and Pournaghshband’s (2017) publication titled “Eliminating gender bias in computer science education materials,” which examines three examples of “how stereotypes about women can manifest themselves through class materials” (p. 411)
- Images of Curriculum
  - In this episode I unpack an excerpt from Schubert’s (1986) book titled “Curriculum: Perspective, paradigm, and possibility,” which describes different examples, intents, and criticisms of “images” or “characterizations” of curriculum.
- Racial Justice Amidst the Dangers of Computing Creep: A Dialogue
  - In this episode I unpack Shah and Yadav’s (2023) publication titled “Racial justice amidst the dangers of computer creep: A dialogue,” which presents a dialogue that problematizes issues around racial justice in computing education.
- Situated Language and Learning with Bryan Brown
  - In this interview Bryan Brown, we discuss the importance of language in education. In particular, we discuss the role of language in teaching and learning, discursive identity, situated language and learning, the importance of representation in education, the role of language on stress, how smartphones and virtual communication platforms (e.g., Zoom) could change learning, and many other topics relevant to CS education and learning.
- Talking About [Computer Science]: Better Questions? Better Discussions!
  - In this episode I unpack Allsup and Baxter’s (2004) publication titled “Talking about music: Better questions? Better discussions!” which is a short article that discusses open, guided, and closed questions, as well as a framework for encouraging critical thinking through questions. Although this article is published in a music education journal, I discuss potential implications for computer science educators.
- More episodes related to ethics
- More episodes related to questioning techniques
- More episodes related to situated language and learning
- More episodes related to social and emotional learning
- All other episodes
Learn more about CSTA’s standards, such as the “Impacts of Computing” standards
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