Building Computing Ethics from the Ground Up Gail Kaiser Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Fall 2000

The Problem…  As and Computer Security Incident Responses Coordinator, I am often the first point of contact when ethics violations occur either by our students or our students as victims.  Meeting with students often reveals little knowledge of cyber ethics.  Since computing is incorporated into elementary school curricula, that is the time to begin introducing computing ethics.  Most teachers warn about chat rooms to protect children from the Internet. We also need to protect our university resources.

Some Examples…  Survey of 41 middle school students revealed little regard for cyber ethics. They seemed to feel that what they had heard didn’t apply to them.  Napster is okay because the record companies and performers are already “rich enough.”  Students know what plagiarism is but it’s ok because their “teacher’s don’t use computers.”  It is “ok” to copy computer games their friends bought because they weren’t going to sell the game to someone else.

The Plan…  Introduce computing ethics at a much younger age; i.e. in middle school.  Guide teams of undergraduates in producing a video or game that will engage and appeal to young computer users to be distributed to middle school students.  Our undergraduates will survey a larger number of local middle school students.  Based on results, plan an appropriate multimedia project that will most appeal to this age group.

Present Status  Difficulty in having our undergraduates adopt the project.  No undergraduate team took on the project presented by the Project Director for the “Capstone” degree completion requirement for this term.  Probably not a “fun” project to work on.  Higher hopes for next term.