Two Slashes

Earlier today, I had a short discussion with a friend and electrical engineering major about some of the similarities and differences we have in our respective curricula.  Somewhere along the line, we ended up discussing the fact that computer science majors at my school have to take a semester-long ethics course (for credit, thankfully), while electrical engineers get a whopping two lectures on ethics near the end of one of their sophomore-level classes (with an optional supplementary course for juniors).  Funny, isn’t it?

The summary of the CS course, reworded (for obvious reasons) but otherwise stolen directly from the course website:

The course focuses on the theory and practice of ethics as it relates to computers and information technology.  It uses group work and presentations to teach the basics of ethical decision-making.  Course topics include risk, reliability, privacy, warfare, business ethics, patents, copyright, and more. Students will be expected to write 12 short summaries as responses to reading assignments, participate in in-class discussions, and present topics to the class. Attendance is mandatory and will be factored into your grade.

I’ve discussed a few of the topics (namely, the privacy, copyright, and reliability points mentioned above, as well as others mentioned on other areas of the site like Netiquette) on this site before, with mixed results.  (I have a feeling there will be some recycling one way or another when I enroll for this course. )

Perhaps there’s something to be said here.  Are the computer science students, the same developers responsible for designing things like BitTorrent, required to take this course due to some stereotype that paints us as less honest than our electrically-oriented brethren?  Are the minds to blame for (and I can’t believe I’m using these examples again) Storm, Sasser, and the like the reason CS students have to take this course?  tI’m not entirely sure, but the posted cheating policy leaves plenty of room for improvement:

Nobody should need to cheat in a class discussing ethics and professionalism.

(Yes, it’s that pathetic, and it sounds as though cheating is an acceptable course of action in any other class as written.  Cheating is obviously not the best way to get through a course, but they might do well to reword their policy.)

The course is designed to require as much input from the students as possible.  While I don’t think this is a bad idea if implemented properly, it is almost certain to fail when most of the topics are student-taught and require the students leading the discussion to implement some form of game.  (Would now be the appropriate time to jump back to stereotypes and mention that CS students aren’t supposed to be sociable creatures in real life? )

Ethical, eh?  In what sense of the word?