XX Project Grant
Name: Mari M. Heltne Dept: QMCS
Mail # OSS-402 Phone 962-5478 E-mail mmheltne@stthomas.edu
The date of my initial full-time employment at UST was September 2002 and the status of my present employment at UST is tenure-track.
I would create project materials for a course required of all students who major or minor in computer science. Materials will enable students to solve case studies addressing ethical concerns encountered in work environments, and help them examine and write an appropriate Code of Ethics for their project team.
3. Intended
start date: September 2004
Project duration (in months): 4 months
I have grant funds for a ½ course release for Fall 2004, a joint project with Dr. Carole Bagley to revise QMCS 110 into a class that is highly interactive and includes a large service learning component.
I am working with a Young Scholar
this summer, in collaboration with Dr. Kris Bunton, on a project that is
interdisciplinary in technology and journalism.
Brief Abstract: Students majoring and minoring in computer science need to confront real-world, complex situations that demand high order, ethical decision making. In a recent description of “21st Century Skills” needed by people who hold technical jobs, the Metiri Groups states that higher order thinking skills have been defined as “the ability to think creatively, make decisions, solve problems, and see things in the mind's eye, (and) sound reasoning enables students to plan, design, execute, and evaluate solutions” (www.metiri.com). This project (1) would allow me to add a project milestone in which each team of students write its own “company” Code of Ethics, and (2) would give me time to locate and rewrite “computer ethics” case studies that demand students use high-order thinking and collaborative decision skills when writing case solutions.
Rationale/Need for Project: QMCS 420 (Systems Analysis and Design) is a course required of all majors and minors, and taken by several students majoring in areas of business. It teaches development methodologies for identifying appropriate computer solutions for workers dealing with collecting, storing, and analyzing data and information. Analysts must be able to develop relationships with both developers and business-oriented personnel based on trust. They must not only be technologically literate, able to work and collaborate on teams, and be adaptable, but must also understand what it means to be socially responsible and to contribute to society as informed citizens. QMCS 420 is taught using a project method, in which teams of 3-4 students form a “company” to create a Project Plan for a real-world client. This project plan is based on readings from the textbook, and consists of seven milestones spaced throughout the semester. What is currently missing from this project assignment is adequate coverage of what I refer to as “ethics in the information age.” The text (780 pages long) has devoted less than a page of material on “character and ethics” and instead of covering codes of ethics from major professional organizations from our discipline, quotes “The Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics” from the Computer Ethics Institute. While useful, these commandments are elusive and non-specific (“Commandment 1: Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.”)
Thus, I wish to create project materials that will address ethical concerns these students will often encounter in their work environments.
1.
Goal:
To enhance student learning through higher order thinking and sound
reasoning.
Objectives: To provide students with opportunities and situations in which they
must think creatively, make difficult decisions, interpret and detect
differences and similarities in ethical dilemmas, anticipate and understand
changes.
2.
Goal:
To encourage a sense of curiosity, creativity, and risk-taking.
Objectives: To increase the students’ sense of curiosity, which fuels lifelong
learning; to create an atmosphere where students are unafraid to suggest
creative and novel solutions to problems; to reward the courage needed for
risk-taking needed in future discoveries and inventions in this discipline.
3. Goal: to improve collaboration
and team skills as they learn to reason and work together.
Objectives: To encourage students to accomplish their project tasks in an
efficient, effective and timely manner through using the contributions of each
member of the team.
Project Activities
Current: The project currently has 6 milestones, the last one being the final project paper. The other milestones include: (1) Team organization information: members, contacts, background skills each member brings, group meeting times; (2) Group Contract: roles and responsibilities of each member of the team; criteria used to evaluate each group member at the end of the project; (3) Client Information Report: two paragraphs on the organization, nature and scope of the project, GANTT chart of project plan for the semester; (4) Detailed outline of client needs based on problems, opportunities discovered during requirements analysis phase; (5) Detailed outline of data models, database designs, and work flow process models; (6) Poster session with client and final project paper.
Proposed changes: During milestone 1, the team organizes itself, learning to know and trust each other, and (most difficult of all) finding common meeting times outside of class hours. They must come up with their “company name” which is displayed on all documents with their client as well as for the final project deliverables. It is at this stage that I would like to introduce the exploration of ethical behavior as it relates to dealing with each other and with clients through the assignment that each team must construct its own Code of Ethics after careful study of existing codes. The following are possibilities:
1. Students will use teaming, collaboration, and interpersonal communication skills to select two organizations to study. Each team must choose one major professional organization (see below) and one major software or hardware firm/corporation. They will find the Codes of Ethics from these groups, and will share them with the other members of their team. They will also decide on a way to most appropriately share them with other class members.
A beginning list of professional organizations in technical disciplines
is: ACM (Association for Computing
Machinery), IEEE Computer Society (Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers), NACSE (National Association
of Communications Systems Engineers for network/web credentialing), CAUSE
(computing in higher education), Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), and others as approved by the
instructor.
2. Each team must then, using critical reading, logical reasoning, and persuasion, construct the Code of Ethics for their own “company.”
3. Teams will share their Codes of Ethics with the other teams in the class by publishing it on their team website, and class discussion will highlight differences and similarities in the codes. Teams will be allowed to update their codes after this discussion.
4. Each
team’s Code of Ethics must
become part of the documentation that goes to their real world client.
I would also
like to add one or two case studies to the course that deal with ethical
decision making in the environment of information technology. I use other cases to help students engage in
the actual technical problems required to make decisions about data and process
model building. These new cases would
deal with issues of personal and social responsibility, such as marketing,
privacy, and uses of the technology that are immoral, obscene, or illegal. I will search for cases in books (two of
which I would order with these grant funds), or on the web. Dozens of websites exist where I can search
for
such cases, including
http://web.syr.edu/~jryan/infopro/ethics.html
http://www.cs.unca.edu/~edmiston/ethics.html
http://www.ethicsweb.ca/resources/computer/publications.html
Preparation for the Project: I was part of the UST Faculty Summer Seminar called “Exploring Ethics Across the Disciplines” from June 7-10, 2004. During that workshop, we discussed (obviously!) ethics, freedom, and enlightenment. I was particularly interested in the writings of Immanuel Kant. Sapere aude! “Dare to know.” “Think boldly.” Someone mentioned Alistair Macintyre: “We live amidst moral fragments.” “We speak fragments of discourses with no coherent context.” Someone else defined “ethics” as “how to do something right, not how to avoid doing something wrong.” He went on to say that “a can of soup can obey most of the 10 Commandments!” It was during this workshop that I decided that codes of ethics are, at best, presented to our students in “no coherent context.” The “Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics” as presented in the textbook are completely inadequate and presented without context. No situations are given within which any of the proposed ethical behaviors can be tested, or difficult decisions can be made.
Dissemination: I will share the results of this work with a journal paper or conference paper describing the project milestone and presenting the best of the Codes of Ethics as examples. One source of publication could be the EthicsWeb, which has online publications of essays, cases, papers, and books, in several areas, including Computer Ethics, Professional Ethics, Business Ethics, and Ethical Decision Making, and Applied Ethics Resources. See their website at http://www.ethicsweb.ca/resources/index.html .
Budget Item Grant
Request Total
Fall July 15, 2004 August 1
Submit the application to: Dr. Kris Bunton, OEC 324
Check that your application package contains eight complete, collated copies of the following:
√ A. Cover Sheet
√ B. Proposal Narrative
√ C. Budget Format page and Budget Explanation
D. Copies of supporting documentation (if applicable) N/A
√ E. Two-page vita
√ F. Grant Application Checklist (this sheet, signed and dated)
Other items to acknowledge:
G. Final reports: I do not have any final reports due at this time for previous Bush grants.
H. Protection
of Human Subjects of Research
N/A
I.
Final Report
Within three months of my project’s completion date, I agree to submit to the
Program Coordinator the following: (1) a project evaluation report, (2) an
accounting of the funds spent, and (3) assessment results.
I understand that submission of this final report is a prerequisite for any
future funding from UST’s Bush grant for Collaborative Inquiry.
Applicant Signature: __________________________________________
Date: July 15, 2004