Ethics, Equity, and Digital Citizenship

It can feel out of place in a Computer Science classroom to work in topics like ethics when there are technical skills like coding that already need more time to teach. But ethical decision-making is an essential tool for students that needs to have a place in every subject, especially in tech which now permeates every aspect of their lives. Here is how I present ethics in my AP Computer Science Principles course:

Progression of Study

Intro: Ethical Lenses and Arguments

There are two essential points to make when introducing ethics to students: ethical decision-making is inevitable and there are no right answers. Instead these sites provide resources on ethical lenses and tests to help judge decisions from a variety of different perspectives. Teaching ethics through case studies, like the ones provided by the Markkula Center, is one of my favorite sets of lessons for one selfish reason: the students end up running the class themselves! A good case study will spark deep, genuine conversation and all a teacher will need to do is suggest new lenses or provide new information to keep the debates going. 

Application: AI and the Luxury of Decision Making

The next message I want to share with my students is that ethics is present in the entire work pipeline. Indeed, the emergence of powerful technology like AI-driven cars has added to the number of decisions we now have to make. Some of these decisions are already being made for us and at the very least we need an awareness of these choices.

Make It Personal: Privacy, Security, and Innovation

Before going too far into technical details or hypotheticals, it is important to give students a chance to be introspective on their own wants and expectations. Code.org provides a fantastic framework for this asking them to find their own balance on the scale of privacy vs. utility. How much of their own data are they willing to give up in exchange for perceived benefits?

Deep Dive: Veracity and Uncertainty

Even with the lenses to serve as a framework for decision-making, there is still another layer to unpack before making actionable choices: the reliability of the information being used. All decisions are made with some element of risk that can not pass silently. In addition, even data-driven decisions can be plagued with bad data. Most importantly, you don’t know what you don’t know. There could be entirely unseen externalities from a decision. 

Leave An Impression: Sticky Cases

Finally, you want to leave students with a feeling of agency over their decisions. I like using the ethics of using email trackers for this. This makes a great closing topic since students have controls over multiple stages of this choice, from adding trackers to their mail to choosing to turn off images to prevent tracking.