EPES 313: Ethical and Policy Issues in Information Technologies

Course Description:

This is a special section of a course devoted to exploring the social, ethical, and policy dimensions of new technology use in schools. Computers, the Internet, and other multimedia technologies introduce new challenges in thinking about the consequences of technology uses for the learning opportunities and outcomes of students. This course will explore such critical themes as access and equity issues, censorship, privacy, commercialization, new forms of literacy, online communication, and developing a "global community" through the Internet.

Each of these issues is of tremendous importance to society generally, but especially for our purposes, to schools. Each of them generates real controversies, and radically different opposing perspectives. Each, we believe, also poses some deep challenges to conventional understandings and practices in schools: issues concerning curriculum content, privacy, student and teacher rights, and so on. Furthermore, as the semester goes along, you will see more and more interconnections amongst these issues.

Overview

In this course we will be reading and thinking about some of the most vexing problems confronting the use of new information and communication technologies in education. By the end, we will all have better and more complex understandings of these problems, but that does not mean that we will have "answered" or "solved" them. In fact, we may see them as too difficult to be "solved" in any final manner.

A central focus of this course is the special nature (if any) of "computer ethics" as a field of inquiry, and what special significance such issues might have for educators. In the process, you will learn a good deal about what "ethics" means generally, but that is not our central purpose in this class; rather, I hope to provide you with better tools, and opportunities, for thinking about these issues at a more sophisticated level than most people do.

The class emphasizes reading and discussion. We will have three synchronous lecture/chat sessions as a group each week, but the bulk of our interactions will take place asynchronously. In order for this approach to work, you must take responsibility for doing the readings every day and being prepared to take part in these exchanges. The lectures will supplement, not substitute for, the readings. Because this is a four-week class, the work will be very compressed; I strongly urge you to set up times every day when you will be focused only on this course, on doing the readings, and on contributing to the online discussions. The readings are not overwhelming in volume, but bear close and careful reading, sometimes rereading.

You will also be a member of a team with the responsibility of completing a group project. Coordinating the activities of the members is each team’s own responsibility. I will help out when you need for me to, but I assume that you will be able to work independently and cooperatively; learning to do that more effectively is an ancillary goal for this course.

Syllabus

UNIT 1: ETHICS AND LAW

Week 1

Ethical theories, pt. 1 (Johnson ch. 1; Weckert ch. 1)

Week 2

Ethical theories pt. 2 (Kizza ch. 2; Spinello ch. 1)

Week 3

Computer ethics (Forrester ch. 1; Moor, in Baird et al.)

Week 4

Ethics and law (Winograd, in Johnson and Nissenbaum; Kizza ch. 1)

UNIT 2: PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

Week 5

Professional ethics (Weckert ch. 2, Kizza ch. 3)

Week 6

Teachers as computer professionals (Johnson ch. 2; Williams, in Ermann et al.

Week 7

Ethical codes and AUPs (Willard, page selections; Ermann et al., page selections)

Week 8

New ethical horizons, and new dilemmas (Kizza chs. 8, 9)

UNIT 3: ISSUES/CASE STUDIES

Week 9

Privacy (Spinello ch. 5; Schulman, in Baird et al.; Gumpert, in Baird et al.; Spinello Case Study 3.3)

Week 10

Personal information (Weckert ch. 3; Rule, in Johnson and Nissenbaum; Spinello Case Study 4.1)

Week 11

Anonymity (Kling, in Baird et al.; Spinello Case Study 9.2)

Week 12

Free speech (Spinello ch. 3; Spinello Case Study 8.1)

Week 13

Censorship (Weckert ch. 4; Spinello Case Study 9.3)

Week 14

Piracy (Johnson, in Baird et al.; Stallman, in Johnson and Nissenbaum; Nissenbaum, in Johnson and Nissenbaum; Spinello Case Study 6.2)

Week 15

Intellectual property (Davis, in Baird et al.; Kolko, in Baird et al.; Weckert ch. 5; Spinello ch. 4)

Week 16

Hacking (Forrester, ch. 4; Denning, in Johnson and Nissenbaum; Spafford, in Johnson and Nissenbaum; Spinello Case Study 7.4)

Major Project

In this class you will have seen several examples of codes of computer ethics. I want each team to develop a Code of Computer Ethics for Educators. Imagine that you are developing a set of guidelines for the entire state. What topics should your code address that are of particular concern to educators? Should it be differentiated by primary/secondary/postsecondary levels? Or are the issues generic across these levels? What special responsibilities might educators have that others do not?

I do not want just a list of rules, but a rationale for each rule or principle you identify. Explain the ethical justification for each item, and treat this explanation as a way of trying to persuade people why they should embrace and follow each rule (they aren’t commandments!). These explanations may range from a paragraph to a page or more in length. You should also note what kinds of exceptions may apply in certain instances, if any.

Try to be as comprehensive as possible. Your code probably will include topics not discussed in this class. Don’t limit yourself to the resources and links provided here; with some searching you may find others that will be even more useful to you. You may be able to use some other codes as starting points for your own, but you will certainly need to adapt them for the context of education, and the particular problems educators face.

I urge you to get started with this project right away, collecting information and planning a strategy for how your team will work together. As the course proceeds, you will see more and more topics that need to be addressed, so expect this project to go through many drafts and to grow over time. Of course, I expect them to be well written and carefully proofread. The final documents should be submitted in HTML format. I am not very interested in clever designs or graphics, but if you find that a particular way of organizing your page helps in getting its message across, then do so by all means.

If you run into problems, email me and we will set up a conference to discuss them.

After they are graded, your Codes will be posted as web pages and published for other educators to read and learn from. Perhaps you will even influence the formation of such codes elsewhere!

Due date: August 3. Don’t wait until the last day of class to get started!

Resources

I. Books and Readings

We will read selections from several books:

Computer Ethics : Cautionary Tales and Ethical Dilemmas in Computing

by Tom Forester

CyberEthics

by Richard A. Spinello

Case Studies in Information and Computer Ethics

by Richard A. Spinello

Cyberethics

by Robert M. Baird et al., Editors

Computers, Ethics, and Society

by M. David Ermann et al., Editors

Computer Ethics

by Deborah G. Johnson

Computers, Ethics and Social Values

by Deborah G. Johnson and Helen Nissenbaum, Editors

The CyberEthics Reader

by Nancy Willard

There are two books we will be reading nearly all of, so it is better to purchase them. Links to Amazon are included:

Ethical and Social Issues in the Information Age

(Undergraduate Texts in Computer Science)

by Joseph Migga Kizza, et al.

Computer and Information Ethics

by John Weckert and Douglas Adeney

II. Online Resources

Ethics resources:

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/ethics.htm

http://www.depaul.edu/ethics/ethb1.html

http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/ethics/ethics_list.html

http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/resources/

http://ethics.acusd.edu/

Computer ethics resources:

http://www.depaul.edu/ethics/ethb16.html

http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/ethics/computer.html

http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/resources/professionalism/webethics/

http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/resources/computer/

http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us//cybereng/ethics/

http://www.cpsr.org/~marsha-w/EthicsMay98/

http://www.cpsr.org/program/

http://bones.cs.wcupa.edu/~epstein/social.html

http://v.hbi-stuttgart.de/~capurro/icie-index.html

http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~jobrown/ethics.html

http://onlineethics.org/keywords/interethics.html

http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/resources/GenderMedia/cyber.html