Teaching Software Ethics to Future Software Engineers

Aastha Pant, Simone V. Spiegler, Rashina Hoda, Jeremy Yoon, Nabeeb Yusuf, Tian Er, Shenyi Hu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference PaperResearchpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

The importance of teaching software ethics to software engineering (SE) students is more critical now than ever before as software-related ethical issues continue to impact society at an alarming rate. Traditional classroom methods, vignettes, role-play games, and quizzes have been employed over the years to teach SE students about software ethics. Recognising the significance of incorporating software ethics knowledge in SE education and the continued need for more efforts in the area of the teaching and learning of SE ethics, we developed an interactive, scenario-based Software Ethics Quiz. Our goal was to teach SE students about ethics in a comprehensive, open, and engaging manner through a combined approach of an online lecture followed by an interactive workshop with the quiz and a debriefing session. The anonymous quiz responses collected showed promising results regarding the engagement and efficacy of the lecture and quiz, with a slightly better rating for the interactive quiz. The voluntary student feedback collected suggested that a majority of the participants found the debrief discussion on the quiz scenarios to be very beneficial for learning about software ethics. In this experience report, we share our experiences, related educational resources including the quiz, and recommendations from lessons learned with the wider education community to keep driving this critical topic forward.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2024 ACM/IEEE 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training, ICSE-SEET 2024
EditorsKiev Gama, Janet Siegmund
Place of PublicationNY New York USA
PublisherIEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Pages391-401
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9798400704987
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
EventInternational Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2024) & Software Engineering Education and Training (SEET) - Lisbon, Portugal
Duration: 14 Apr 202420 Apr 2024
Conference number: 46th
https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3639474 (Proceedings)
https://conf.researchr.org/track/icse-2024/icse-2024-software-engineering-education-and-training-track? (Website)

Conference

ConferenceInternational Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2024) & Software Engineering Education and Training (SEET)
Abbreviated titleICSE-SEET 2024
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityLisbon
Period14/04/2420/04/24
Internet address

Keywords

  • education
  • engagement
  • ethics
  • quiz
  • software engineering

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