The role of social and ethical studies of IT in the university curriculum

In this paper, I will assess the role of education regarding the social and ethical aspects of information technology in the university curriculum. I will begin in section 1 by outlining a field of study which I call social and humanistic studies of computing (SHC) and contrast this with applied studies of societal aspects of computing (ASC). In section 2, I will argue for the importance of both SHC and ASC in university curricula and relate their roles to academic and professional functions of university education. In section 3, I will describe how courses in SHC and ASC may be taught in practice, illustrating this with a description of the minor ICT and Society which I have helped to develop at my university, and with a description of a course in Computers and Society. In section 4, I will assess the relation of computer ethics to SHC and ASC, and its role in the university curriculum. I will outline educational goals for computer ethics education and provide a brief description of a course in computer ethics that meets these goals. In the concluding section, finally, I will briefly consider how my remarks on social and ethical studies of computing would translate to a different area: that of secondary education