Incorporating Ethics in Computing Courses: Barriers, Support, and Perspectives from Educators

In this episode I unpack Smith et al.’s (2023) publication titled “Incorporating ethics in computing courses: Barriers, support, and perspectives from educators,” which investigates the perceived barriers and support for implementing ethics into higher education CS courses.

Over the past three weeks we've talked
about ethics in relation to Computer
Science Education we've talked about
perspectives from students how to
integrate and then we also talked about
well when is there enough or too much
ethics education in computer science
education classes but one area that we
haven't talked about are perspectives of
Educators So today we're going to talk
about perspectives from Educators on
barriers and support in relation to
implementing or integrating ethics into
computer science education classes and
we're going to do that by unpacking the
paper titled incorporating Ethics in
Computing courses barriers support and
perspectives from Educators this is
written by Jessie J Smith Blakely H
Payne Shamika Classen Dylan Thomas Doyle
and Casey feisler apologies if I
mispronounce any names here's the
abstract for this paper quote
incorporating ethics in Computing
education has become a priority from for
the 6C Community many Computing
departments and Educators have
contributed to this endeavor by creating
Standalone competing ethics courses or
integrating ethics modules and
discussions into pre-existing curricula
in this study we hope to support this
effort by reporting on Computing
educators's attitudes towards including
ethics in their Computing classroom with
a special focus on the structures that
hinder or help this endeavor we surveyed
instructors to understand their
attitudes toward including ethics in
their classes what barriers might be
preventing them from doing so and which
structures best support them we found
that even though instructors were
generally positive about ethics as a
component of competing education there
are specific barriers preventing ethics
from being including in some Computing
courses in this work we explore how to
alleviate these barriers and outline
support structures that could encourage
further integration of ethics and
Computing in higher education now if I
don't summarizes paper into a single
sentence I'd say that this paper
investigates the perceived barriers and
support for implementing ethics into
higher education courses now even though
this paper is talking about higher
education Computer Science Education I'm
going to talk about this in relation to
K-12 CS education although it's
applicable across all grade levels now
if you don't know who I am my name is
Jared O'Leary and I've worked with every
single grade kindergarten through
doctoral student in a variety of
contexts like music education and
computer science education for example
I've developed professional development
and curricula used by Educators and
students around the world in computer
science education classes but now I
create free content on my website
jaredelary.com which is where you can
actually find the show notes for this
episode as well as 180 other episodes
and a bunch of other computer science
education content and gaming and
drumming stuff because yeah I like to
create content now the authors began by
talking about how there are some
different perspectives on how to
integrate ethics into a higher education
classroom but as I mentioned that there
hasn't really been much research on
exploring the perspectives and the
challenges of Educators who are trying
to implement ethics into the classes or
who are unable to do so so this paper
explores three research questions and so
here they are from page 368. quote rq1
what perceptions do Computing professors
have about ethics education in the
Computing classroom our Q2 what barriers
prevent Computing professors from
incorporating ethics in their competing
classroom our Q3 what support do
Computing professors need to help them
incorporate ethics in their Computing
classroom end quote so the method
section they talk about how they
surveyed 138 different participants and
they have a little table that is a table
one on page 368 that kind of like breaks
down the demographics and I just want to
say as a non-binary individual I do
appreciate that you include the
non-binary category and you labeled it
as non-binary or you could also label it
as trans but it is way better than
labeling it as other which unfortunately
I've seen a lot of scholarship do all
right so let's get into the findings of
this particular paper so rq1 is on the
Educators perspectives of Ethics here's
a quote from page 369 quote 71.5 of
participants disagreed or strongly
disagreed that ethics topic should be
taught by faculty from a department like
philosophy or sociology rather than by
competing faculty additionally 61.3
percent of respondents agreed or
strongly agreed that their colleagues
think including ethics in the Computing
classroom is important 93 of
participants agreed or strongly agreed
that including ethics in the Computing
classroom prepares students for a career
in Computing after graduation and 93
agreed or strongly agreed the students
gained value from discussing ethics in
the competing classroom 76 percent of
respondents reported that ethics does
not take away from a student's ability
to learn core Computing topics end quote
that's really interesting so the
professors mostly agree hey yeah we
think that ethics should be included it
doesn't take away from the classroom
setting Etc so maybe they kind of align
with the paper that I unpacked a couple
weeks ago that was talking about the
different ways that you can integrate by
embedding ethics throughout different
assignments and whatnot as opposed to
having like a unit or like a standalone
course specifically on ethics now even
though the vast majority of the
professors agreed that ethics should be
in computer science classrooms 51 of
them agreed or strongly agreed that not
every topic needs to relate to ethics so
they said quotes like hey this is a math
class there's not really an ethical
component to this or we're just focusing
on the technical rather than the
practical application of this
understandings Etc but some people just
disagreed with that perspective so
here's a quote from page 369 from a
participant number 89. quote someone I
admire in competing education wrote
earlier this year that he thought it was
more important that his Computing
students understand communities and
context than the details of the
mathematics underlying Computing so I
thought about what it would look like to
think about communities and context with
discrete mathematics discrete structures
courses and it does feel like a
disservice to teach anything touching on
algorithms without talking about the
conversations around algorithmic bias
right now end quote now this is a really
important question to consider so one of
the things that I've talked about in
this podcast is how there's a tendency
for like some subject areas to only
focus on the content itself without
actual application like for myself math
classes I had no idea why I was learning
pre-calc like it had absolutely no
application in my life and has not had
any applications since I took it if
perhaps the teacher had actually said
here's when you're going to need to know
this thing then maybe I would have
actually paid more attention in that
class but I mean the same thing applies
to like history three classes to science
classes Etc there's so much schooling
that occurs that is completely
decontextualized from actual real world
application this is an idea that is
often referred to as situated language
and learning and so we actually talk
about that in episode 53 which was like
well over 100 episodes ago and is titled
situated language and learning with
Brian Brown which I highly recommend if
you want to learn more about this
concept but if we are just focusing on
like algorithms without actual
application of when you might use those
algorithms or how it impacts the world
or the users who use them then I would
argue we probably aren't doing a great
job of actually contextualizing or
situating the understandings within real
world application but I haven't taught
those style of classes so maybe there's
something that I'm missing here this is
just me kind of guessing going off of
the wide variety of classes I have
actually taught not to argue with myself
because I like to do this having
thoughts like band and Drumline and
things like that those Concepts and
practices are applicable or situated
within real world context in terms of
like hey the techniques they're using
right here you could use on a gig or use
for your leisure to perform Etc we don't
necessarily talk about well how does
this relate to ethics like I mentioned
in Prior podcasts like there's a
Rosewood shortage and Rosewood is often
used to be able to create instruments
like marimbas that I played on as a
percussionist should we spend time in
lessons talking about the ethical
implications of actually practicing an
instrument that is causing some
deforestation issues or should we just
spend that time just focusing on how to
perform better on an instrument that
uses the Rosewood so on one hand I agree
with the participants who say that
ethics can be embedded in so many
different ways but on the other hand I
can think of some arguments where okay
well maybe it is situated but it might
not necessarily relate to ethics which
will actually unpack a little bit more
in the lingering questions at the end of
this podcast episode now another
perspective that the authors explored is
when should we actually focus on ethics
so 23 of the participants said that the
students need to learn a base
understanding of competing skills before
they can actually explore ethical issues
and then of those 23 of the participants
did not actually include ethics in their
own course so my guess is those kind of
professors were teaching like CS 100
courses like an intro to computer
science here's the very Basics that you
need to learn now and the professional
development that I created one of the
things that we really were intentional
with was trying to not create some
overwhelm so we didn't want to introduce
like a new Computing Concept in addition
to a new pedagogical concept
simultaneously because it would create
some overwhelm with the teachers who
were participating in the professional
development so what we'd often do is
just focus on we're going to model
something without actually telling you
why we're doing it this way some
pedagogical approaches and we're going
to introduce some of the computer
science Concepts and practices that
you're going to need to be able to use
to be able to create a particular
project after we have finished creating
that project or getting the majority of
the way through it like to a point where
okay they clearly understand this maybe
there's some more work on it but they're
good to go then we would actually use
the framework tpack to unpack it was the
technical logical knowledge that you
needed to know was it ecological
knowledge that you need to know and then
what was the content knowledge that you
needed to know be able to create that
project and so at that point we would
unpack okay well did you notice that I
used a different type of assessment this
time let's talk about how I use this
when you might use it Etc the same thing
can apply for ethics at what point do
you introduce the concept and the
ethical problem at the same time do you
want them to focus on one or the other
or simultaneously there's no right or
wrong answer that works for every
scenario so something that we as
Educators need to really think about now
if you are like the majority of the
Educators in the study and think that
ethics should be included in a classroom
this kind of leads into rq2 which is on
the barriers to ethics integration so at
what point are you going to run into a
roadblock that might prevent you from
actually integrating ethics into your
classroom now 42 of the 138 participants
did not actually include ethics in their
course and if I were taking that survey
I would have been one of those as well I
did not focus on that in the classroom
and it's something that I'm looking back
on going hmm I should have done that
more but I'll talk about in the
lingering questions section when okay
maybe yet doesn't actually fit because
of the focus that I chose in the
classrooms that I worked with now of
those participants who did not
incorporate ethics into their coursework
the 42 of those participants 40 of them
said that there were specific barriers
that prevented them from doing so while
the vast majority 60 said no there
weren't really any barriers preventing
me from doing it so what were these
barriers because this might help you as
an educator whether you're a
kindergartner or in higher education or
whatever so one of them was just simply
a desire to leave ethics into other
classes or other courses so those
Educators just did not think well this
didn't really belong within this
particular content area maybe it was so
Niche down that they didn't think that
it was applicable like the example of
going to lessons for learning how to
play marimba and then instead of doing
that you're actually learning about the
shortage of Rosewood the next barriers
that professors thought that some other
topics had higher priority like there's
so much technical stuff that we need to
learn that we don't have time to really
focus on the ethical now I would argue
as somebody with a PhD in a subject area
that there is never enough time to learn
every everything that you need to know
about a particular subject area
especially in a single course as I
mentioned in other curriculum episodes
in particular there is this a concept
known as the null curricula so the null
curricula are the things that are left
out of a curriculum so whether it's a
course or a degree or whatever even
though I have three degrees in music
education I still do not know everything
about pedagogy and content knowledge
related to music and music education and
I know that same thing applies for every
single domain out there so there are
always other things that are going to be
left out of a coursework and what you
need to figure out is where is that
balance between whether or not you
should include something or not include
something but as we've talked about in
other episodes should your weight be
focused more on the technical or more on
the theoretical or the applied
understanding of the technical can you
apply the understanding if you haven't
learned the technical but at what point
is it's saturated enough that you've
learned enough of the technical to learn
how to apply it into the ethical again
no right or wrong way of doing it just
some more things that we have to think
about as Educators the next barrier is
kind of related to that so it's just the
general idea that well ethics doesn't
really relate to this particular content
the Barry after that is that they felt
like they could not control the
curriculum so having worked in higher
education I do know that sometimes the
professors are kind of handed a textbook
or handed a like full curriculum that
just basically says here's what you're
going to teach on what specific days and
hear the assignments Etc so if you are
like a faculty associate or something
like that you might not have control
over what is actually taught within that
class you can still find ways to
incorporate discussions on it maybe not
make a full assignment or like change
the assignment to focus on it or maybe
you can by like just focusing around a
particular theme but after an assignment
is completed you could say cool we just
learned this thing we applied it now
let's talk about the ethical
implications of the concepts and
practices that you just learned how
might what you just created impact the
users or communities that are going to
use or not use this particular app or
product or whatever and the next barrier
is that participants mention not having
enough time incentives or encouragement
to actually integrate ethics into their
classes again with the time thing
there's always going to be no curricula
there's never enough time to learn
everything I I still know just a
fraction of what it means to be a music
educator or to understand music
education and the same thing with
computer science even though I've been
in this field for about a decade I still
have so much to learn and understand and
then the last barrier that some of the
professors mentioned is that ethics
actually distracts from working on the
core Computing Concepts so here's an
interesting quote that kind of
summarizes this from page 370 and there
are a bunch of other interesting quotes
throughout each one of these sections so
if you want to see what professor said I
do highly recommend taking a look at
this article quote ethics instruction is
unquestionably essential for computer
science students ethical mistakes in
Computing can have disastrous
consequences however adding ethics to
courses on algorithms or discrete
mathematics is distracting and
ineffective end quote so the author of
this particular question really
understands like the importance of this
thing but then says yeah but it takes
away from this other thing that the view
is more important and what I wonder is
are we focusing too much on the love
that we have for particular to the
content area without actually thinking
about the application of it now an
interesting subsection in this
particular research question is that
they mentioned that 67 of the
participants agreed or strongly agreed
that they felt confident in being able
to actually integrate ethics and apply
it into their courses now next week
we're going to actually explore an
article that explores the perspectives
of K-12 Educators and we're going to see
that Educators don't necessarily even
understand what ethics is so even if
they are confident they might be
confidently focusing on Equity instead
of Ethics so stay tuned for next week's
episode that kind of unpacks that more
but the authors do mention that even
though more than two-thirds of the
participants said that they're confident
in doing it that it would definitely
help to have more professional
development or support structures to be
able to implement ethics within the
classes now I would argue from a K-12
perspective that those support
structures would largely come from
administrators whether it be like
administrators just being able to allow
more time for things or encouraging
teachers to modify like existing
curriculum to include more ethics so if
you are like a department chair for a
computer science program in a district
or you are like a mentor or educator or
an administrator or whatever maybe you
can find some ways to incorporate more
ethics within the classes that are
taught in your District now for rq3 they
talk about some of the structures that
support ethics so of the professors who
are doing this what helps them out to be
able to integrate ethics into their
classes so the first one is additional
resources and these are specifically
like online resources to be able to make
it so that the professors don't have to
generate ethics related content or
assignments from nothing as somebody who
has professionally created like well
over 100 lesson plans that are used by
Educators and students around the world
with each one of those lesson plans
averaging like at least a dozen pages I
could say it takes a lot of time to be
able to design higher education courses
which I've done that as well or to be
able to create lessons content curricula
Etc so to be able to like draw from a
pool of resources that are available or
like assignments that include ethics Etc
that makes your life so much easier it's
just one less thing that you have to
worry about as an educator maybe you
might like take one of these resources
and modify it to make it more customized
for the students that you're working
with but that is a whole lot easier than
having to come up with something on the
Fly especially if you are not as
familiar with ethics as some of the K-12
teachers are in the paper that I'll
unpack next week but I will point out
that some of the professors who
responded mentioned that hey I actually
prefer to create my own assignments and
whatnot and I would have done the same
thing and did the same thing when I was
in the classroom now the second thing
that supported integrating ethics into
competing courses was collaboration with
others so this could be other faculty
members within your department or maybe
even outside of the department or
outside of your school or even District
as one of the professors mentioned they
kind of question the ethics of some of
their other colleagues which I'm sorry
I've been there done that left that
organization where I was questioning
that as well so I know exactly what that
feels like but there are ways that you
can actually collaborate with people who
are ethical who might not be within your
like organization Corporation higher
education institution or whatever and
the last thing kind of relates to this
is just having a community so this
community could be in their Department
it could be like peers in the field it
could be like a general research
Community or even a conference Community
like meeting up at a like a group or
talking with other participants or
audience members at like conference
session at like something like 6C or
csta's conference whatever but this
could also include like digital
communities so going on to Twitter or
other online communities like cstas
community board and other resources and
whatnot so there are many ways that you
can kind of connect with or collaborate
with other people so the support
structures for number two and three are
kind of like hand in hand collaboration
with others and community and I guess it
could also go hand in hand with the
first one in that you could kind of
collaborate on creating additional
resources that you then share in your
community Etc which is one of the things
that I do so like my website I've got
hundreds if not thousands of free
resources on my website because I've
been working on it for over 20 years now
sharing a bunch of like drumming stuff
there's over 1400 hours of drumming
content on there I'm sharing a bunch of
Gaming stuff and then there's a ton of
Computer Science Education stuff that
was like the lesson plans that I
previously created for the classrooms
that I used to teach or the lesson plans
that I professionally created that were
used by teachers and Educators around
the world all of those things are
available for free because I want to be
able to help people because I totally
understand how helpful it can be to have
additional resources and I had the
benefit of like not having kids and
having a wife who is also very busy so I
had plenty of like quote-unquote free
time to be able to create these
resources and share them for free with
other people but I understand that not
every educator has that opportunity to
do so now in the discussion section to
kind of talk about some of the things
that I mentioned that were in the
findings so I just kind of embedded my
own perspectives on the discussion but
if you want to read this I do highly
recommend it you can find a link to it
in the show notes at jaredolary.com at
the end of these unpacking scholarship
episodes I'd like to share some
lingering questions and thoughts that I
had while reading through the paper this
is not a critique of any of the authors
it's just me kind of sharing some
wonderments so one of them that I kind
of mentioned earlier is if we consider
no curricula won't there always be not
enough time to learn the technical
especially when it comes to introductory
courses for myself one of the ways that
I tried to like acknowledge this and
teach around that was acknowledging that
if I've taught how to learn and
providing more resources then there was
time to actually learn this would help
students to be able to continue their
learning down the road after the course
Ended as I mentioned in episode 66 the
role of deliberate practice in the
acquisition of expert performance which
I unpacked some scholarship on sports
psychology in relation to Computer
Science Education I talk about how it
takes thousands if not tens of thousands
of hours of effort and deliberate
practice to become an expert within a
domain now if we take that into
consideration any degree or series of
degrees or even a single course is not
going to be enough to help somebody
become an expert on a topic so how might
we teach to focus on long-term learning
beyond the course or beyond the degree
itself to encourage that lifelong
development of expertise in a particular
domain so if you want to learn more
about that check out episode 66 which I
do link to in the show notes but another
question that I have is if integrating
CS into another content area are we
further diluting CS by also focusing on
ethics so for example one of the things
that I talk about is how if we think
like a Venn diagram so we have like two
circles and one circle is like the I
don't know science and the other circle
is computer science now where they
overlap that little portion in the
middle is going to be the thing that we
might focus on when integrating computer
science into science science class but
if we also now include a third circle
that is ethics on top of that are we
narrowing our scope so much that we are
ignoring all the things that are outside
of that little narrow scope that are
within each of the other domains so the
more lenses that we apply onto a
particular area does it make it so that
we cannot actually focus on learning
Concepts and practices that do not exist
within that particular Nexus or
intersection now again there's no right
or wrong answer to this but it's
something that's important to think
about again in relation to the null
curricula which has kind of been the
theme of this particular episode so now
as an example of what I'm talking about
here so one of the things that I've
mentioned so many times in this
particular podcast is my emphasis on
focusing on interest driven learning so
students will come into a class if there
are 30 kids in the class they'd be able
to create 30 unique projects using
multiple different programming languages
and platforms to be able to create
something that was uniquely interesting
to them if I had a requirement that
there had to be some kind of ethical
component to explore or discuss or
understand stand or whatever would that
then narrow the scope so that students
would be unable to actually explore the
interest within that class now on one
hand I can think of some examples where
that's a definitive yes but on the other
hand it's like okay well I could see how
we might be able to at least discuss it
but it might not be the primary focus
for the different types of projects that
students like to create so while I agree
that ethics can and should be
incorporated into the classroom
different pedagogies may or may not lend
itself toward that kind of integration
and then the last question that I have
is how would this compare like the
perspectives with Elementary Middle
School and High School Educators what
barriers and perspectives or layers of
support might each of those grade bands
have and we're actually going to explore
that a little bit more in next week's
episode which will kind of wrap up this
little mini series on ethics and
computer science education if you
enjoyed this particular discussion
please consider sharing it with somebody
else or leaving a review on whatever app
that you're listening to some just helps
more people find it I do create this
content full time and I create all this
stuff for free for you to use so sharing
with somebody else not only helps me out
but it also helps out other people to
find the hundreds if not thousands of
free resources on their website
jaredolary.com stay tuned next week for
another episode until then I hope you're
all staying safe and are having a
wonderful week

Article

Smith, J. J., Payne, B. H., Klassen, S., Doyle, D. T., & Fiesler, C. (2023). Incorporating Ethics in Computing Courses: Barriers, Support, and Perspectives from Educators. Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - SIGCSE ’23, 367-373.

Abstract

“Incorporating ethics into computing education has become a priority for the SIGCSE community. Many computing departments and educators have contributed to this endeavor by creating standalone computing ethics courses or integrating ethics modules and discussions into preexisting curricula. In this study, we hope to support this effort by reporting on computing educators’ attitudes toward including ethics in their computing classroom, with a special focus on the structures that hinder or help this endeavor. We surveyed 138 higher education computing instructors to understand their attitudes toward including ethics in their classes, what barriers might be preventing them from doing so, and which structures best support them. We found that even though instructors were generally positive about ethics as a component of computing education, there are specific barriers preventing ethics from being included in some computing courses. In this work, we explore how to alleviate these barriers and outline support structures that could encourage further integration of ethics and computing in higher education.”

Author Keywords

Ethics, post-secondary, curriculum, perspectives, survey

My One Sentence Summary

This paper investigates the perceived barriers and support for implementing ethics into higher education CS courses.

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

If we consider null curricula, won't there always be not enough time to learn the technical?
If integrating CS into another content area, are we further diluting CS by also focusing on ethics?
- Does an ethics focus narrow the possibilities too much with interest-driven learning?
How would these perspectives compare with elementary, middle school, and high school educators?
- What barriers and perspectives would each band have?

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
- 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.
- The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
  - In this episode I unpack Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer’s (1993) publication titled “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance,” which debunks the notion of innate abilities within a domain and describes the role of deliberate practice in achieving expert performance.
- More episodes related to situated language and learning
- More episodes related to ethics
- All other episodes
Conferences I metioned
- Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA)
- Special Interest Group Computer Science Education (SIGCSE)
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter