Enterprise Academy Fellow, Lecturer, School of Computer Science at TU Dublin

Email: andrea.f.curley@TUDublin.ie

Andrea Curley is a lecturer in the School of Computer Science at TU Dublin, and previously spent five years working as a software developer in Ericsson. Along with lecturing, Andrea has been Programme Chairperson for a number of postgraduate courses for over 10 years, including the MSc in Computer Science. In this time, she has been involved in the development of new postgraduate programmes such as Higher Diploma in the Fundamentals of Computing and a Master’s Qualifier programme.

 

Creating a Microcredential in Digital Ethics

The lack of ethics education for undergraduate computer science students inspired Andrea's fellowship. Over the last few years, the prevalence of ethics scandals in the tech industry has highlighted the need for a more concerted approach into the incorporation of ethics into the computer science curriculum. Research, including that done for the Ethics4EU project, concurs that the most successful way of teaching ethics in a technical discipline is by embedding ethics into many modules rather than teaching a standalone module on ethics. In an ideal scenario, a number of modules at each stage would be identified to incorporate with ethics aspects. An issue with incorporating ethics in a number of modules is that a variety of lecturers need to be comfortable with the area of ethics in technology in their module(s). Therefore, there must to be some teaching element to educate lecturers on the area.

 

In order to be able to understand how best to educate students on ethics, an in-depth knowledge of how industry views, educates and deals with the area in practice is required. Therefore, an industry view on what is needed to become an ethically conscious graduate was core to this project.

 

Andrea set out to discover whether opportunities exist within the current system to customise module specifications so that aspects of it can be tailored to different audiences (e.g. industry and/or other disciplines across the university). Given that many issues in the university's validation and Quality Enhancement processes were then in the early stages of being resolved (e.g. digital badges), limited mechanisms to offer flexible courses appeared to exist, a major stumbling block as a key outcome of this project is to be able to give flexible, short courses. The key idea became to develop a flexible CPD/microcredential in ethics in technology.

 

An optional module on the MSc Computer Science was developed as part of this fellowship. Digital Ethics addresses a number of objectives and cohorts: (a) To educate learners on the ethical challenges inherent in rapidly developing technologies. (b) To provide learners who are employed as lecturers with the knowledge and confidence to be able to incorporate ethics into the design of their learning and learning activities. (c) To provide learners who are employed as professionals in the Information and Communications technology industry with the knowledge to lead and disseminate in the area of ethics in technology. The module is intended to motivate learners to critically assess technologies from the perspective of the major ethical frameworks. Learners who successfully complete the module will be prepared to enhance their own practice, and guide others in the development of ethical practices in the design, implementation and use of digital technology. A number of undergraduate modules were updated with ethics amendments, and Individual MSc dissertations/MSc Group projects on the area of ethics in technology were undertaken.

 

Following completion of her Fellowship, Andrea has worked on a variety of publications, including work on thematic analysis and the ethics framework. She has participated in the Ethics Working Group for Informatics Europe and at workshops in Ireland and internationally. She is supportive of the creation of a central repository for all ethics material, as well as the establishment of a Digital Ethics Working Group in TU Dublin. Her module has been designed in a manner that it can be utilised as a series of standalone workshops which could individually attract digital badges, and approval for this method has been sought. This will enable its use via a variety of different outlets – e.g. as a CPD for industry. She continues to further embed more ethics components in undergraduate modules, and has posited the idea of building a pan-university community of practice.