2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Abstract
While interest in incorporating ethics in engineering and computer science education continues to grow, the way that ethics in relation to professional practice is often too abstract for students to directly connect to their current and future work. The style of teaching and learning about ethics varies from theoretical philosophy courses to courses that carefully examine the harms and impacts of systems and technologies. While each of these approaches is extremely valuable, Students do not necessarily leave with models of how to continue thinking about ethics in the profession or a framework that they can easily apply in the future. This paper presents a question directed approach used in the teaching of a tech ethics course. The questions are easy to understand and repeat instruction makes it natural for students to always use the questions to guide their thinking towards ethical matters throughout the course. Students are given a Why/Who/What/Where/How framework for thinking through ethical quandaries and case studies.
1. WHY care and worry about ethics
a. Why do ethics matter?
b. Why do you care about ethics? Do you?
c. Impact of Technology on Society: Personal, Political, Environmental, Economic
d. Legal and policy dimensions

2. WHO are stakeholders in ethics?
a. Users
b. Tech professionals / Tech Workers
c. Companies
d. Institutions including governments
e. Threat actors

3. WHAT are the spectrums of Ethical concerns?
a. Privacy and security
b. Ownership and access
c. Surveillance and freedom AND/OR Freedom and Anti-Freedom
d. Abuses and unintended consequences
e. Fairness and Justice
f. Identifying concerns by stakeholder group (connects to 2 above)

4. WHERE do tech ethics apply?
a. Ethics in Design, Development, Data, Deployment, and your Day job
b. Ethics at home, company/institution, government
c. Ethics is important in every step of the process and in every setting

5. HOW can tech ethics be applied?
a. Repeat: Ethics in Design, Development, Data, Deployment, and your Day job
b. At the company: speaking up; advocating for ethics as an employee
c. At the company: building social capital to help you speak up
d. At the company: building community
e. Ethics not as an afterthought but centered in all your processes
f. Assessing your own impact
g. How to connect personal ethics to professional ethics
h. Codes of conduct
i. Approaches in ethical tech: Design Justice, Values Sensitive Design, Privacy by Design, Consentful Tech
j. How to use your ethical outlook: thinking beyond reducing harm to actively advancing justice and equity while addressing problems you care about

Bonus: WHEN? All the time

Students are expected to apply the questions to thinking about the case studies provided throughout the semester. Ex: when working through a particular case study they must identify who are the different stakeholders involved and what are the concerns for each group and how they may conflict with each other.

The questions are memorable, and it is expected that students will continue applying this ethical framework in the future as they step into a profession in which they will inevitably have to grapple with ethical questions due to how closely our profession is tied to human life now and in the future. The framework also specifically addresses the how of ethical professional practice which teaches students about how to build community and social capital in the workplace and thus make it easier to advocate for ethical behavior.

This paper describes this approach in detail as well as shares experiences from the instructor who has used this methodology to great success in a tech ethics course.