Principles Matter

There is increasing agreement that teaching students ethics in computer science (CS) is important, but there is little agreement about how to teach ethics, when to teach ethics, or even what ethics curricula should include. CS programs are experimenting with both stand-alone courses and approaches that integrate ethics throughout the computer science curriculum. Drawing from work in CS education and Science & Technology Studies, we designed an integrated and interdisciplinary ethics intervention to help computer security students identify where ethics and politics intersect with their technical field and encourage students to see themselves as practitioners of politics and ethics. Through analysis of student assignments, post-course surveys, and instructor reflections, we found that, while our intervention had benefits for students and instructors, it only weakly encouraged students to think of themselves as practitioners of ethics and politics. Students also struggled to confidently adjudicate ethical dilemmas given only a set of ethical principles. Finally, the ethical principles we gave students strongly shaped their analysis -- for example, students were more likely to consider disparate impacts of technology on marginalized groups when directly prompted to do so. Our results suggest that integrated and inter-disciplinary approaches have many benefits, but they require additional resources beyond a single course to effectively support students in adjudicating ethical dilemmas.