Debate as a Final Examination in a Computer Ethics Course

The goals of our senior-level course, Social, Ethical and Professional Issues in Computing, include preparing students to think critically and to argue effectively about ethical issues that surround the field of computing. The course text, classroom activities, and assignments are geared toward developing those thinking, analysis, and discussion skills, while learning to work cooperatively with their classmates in the formation of their own opinions about controversial topics. The “final examination ” for this course is structured as a debate al-lowing students to analyze an issue and thoughtfully consider multiple perspectives of the issue. This paper describes the course, the structure of the final examination and the results of a study used to ascertain student perceptions about the effectiveness of this style of final examination for this course. ∗Copyright 2005 by the Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium. Permission to make printed or digital copies of all or part of this material for educational or personal use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies include this notice and the full citation on the first page.