The Development of Teaching Case Studies to Explore Ethical Issues Associated with Computer Programming

Abstract

In the past decade software products have become pervasive in many aspects of people's lives around the world. Unfortunately, the quality of the experience an individual has interacting with that software is dependent on the quality of the software itself, and it is becoming more and more evident that many large software products contain a range of issues and errors, and these issues are not known to the developers of these systems, and they are unaware of the deleterious impacts of those issues on the individuals who use these systems. The authors of this paper are developing a new digital ethics curriculum for the instruction of computer science students. In this paper we present case studies that were explored to demonstrate programming issues to First Year Computer Science students. Each case study outlines key issues associated with a particular scenario and is accompanied by specific questions to be used by the instructor to allow students to begin to reflect on, and evaluate, the implications of these issues. The objective of this teaching content is to ensure that the students are presented with, and engage with, ethical considerations early in their studies and well before they encounter them in an employment setting.

From Early Adoption to Ethical Adoption: A Diffusion of Innovation Perspective on ChatGPT and Large Language Models in the Classroom

“…Additionally, it is crucial to investigate any gender, racial, political or other biases present in ChatGPT's content output [78], assess the fairness of its responses to diverse users and requests [79], scrutinize the risk of excessive reliance on ChatGPT [80], and examine its potential impact on students' cognitive sharpness and analytical abilities. 9) Ethical Case Studies: Implement case studies based on the education contents to simulate ethical issues related to ChatGPT in the classroom [81] V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION…”