Distributing Ethics, Law and Professional Practice in CS / SE Curricula

Ed Morris

School of CS&IT, RMIT

Date and time: 11.30am-12.30pm, Friday 15th October, 2004

Venue: 10.11.04

Chair: James Harland

Abstract:

The ACM CS curriculum (CC2001) recommends distributing content on ethics, law and professional practices generally through ALL courses. In fact CC2001 strongly urges inclusion of a standalone course on any professional practice only if material on other practices is distributed over other courses.

Surveying CS / SE curricula at several reputable institutions shows little evidence that the recommended approach has been implemented. Most surveyed institutions have only 1 or 2 standalone professional practice courses. To the speaker's knowledge, no institution has the mix recommended in CC2001. The ACM SE curriculum (SE2004) appears to recognise this, and is more accepting of standalone ethics/law courses. Questions remain over who should deliver the material and at what level.

We discuss the pros and cons of various solutions. In conclusion we propose a course structure and resourcing that promotes integration of ethics/law modules into core and elective courses between a standalone professional practice course at the beginning and at the end of the program. Teaching in some core courses will need to adapt accordingly.

About the speaker:

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If you are interested in giving a presentation in this seminar series, or to make suggestions for speakers, please contact James Harland, the seminar co-ordinator.