CS2013-final-report

Ethical decision making is an inductive thought process that is not routinely taught in any normative educational
area. This class, which exists on the cutting edge of technological advance, equips the student to think outside the
box and apply the new rubric of ethical deliberation to the expanding world of the cyber-arena. The course equips
students majoring in Cyberforensics and Cybersecurity to apply practical knowledge to the monumental challenges
they will face in their careers as the world of the cyber-arena becomes more and more pervasive and invasive.
When developing this course, we looked at requiring a philosophical ethics class that would count as a general
education requirement in the humanities. But the issue we had is that the cases in that course would be divorced
from the situations faced by information system security professionals. We wanted the cases to be those that would
fit in with our curriculum. In addition, there was not room in our program to have two courses, so we decided to
develop one that would count as a general education ethics course and present ethical theory as the basis for
examining cases.
We looked at many computer/cyber ethics textbooks and discovered that most of them only provided a cursory
overview of ethical theory, if any. This was not enough to warrant classification under general education. We also
did not want to require two textbooks because we are mindful of textbook costs for our students. We then found
Herman T. Tavani’s text that covered ethical theory in depth and provided the practical cases in the field of
computer ethics.
Body of Knowledge coverage
KA Knowledge Unit Topics Covered Hours
SP Social Context Social Justice
6
Digital divide
Distributive justice theories
Accessibility issues
Social interaction
Cultural issues
Commerce, Free Speech and Censorship
Define the Internet as public or private space
Regulatory agencies and laws regarding regulation in physical space
Jurisdictional issues with regulating cyberspace
Free speech and hate speech
Free speech and pornography
SP Analytical Tools Introduction to Ethical Thought – values, morals, normative analysis 12
Introduction to Cyberethics
Ethical theories – Virtue Ethics, Utilitarianism, Deontology, Just
Consequentialism, Social Contract Theory
Evaluate stakeholder positions
Concepts of argumentation and debate
SP Professional Ethics Moral responsibility of a professional
Pervasive nature of computing applies to all, not only professionals
Professional Codes of Conduct
Principles of the Joint IEEE-CS/ACM Code of Ethics and
Professional Practice
Purpose of a code of ethics
Weaknesses of codes of ethics
Accountability, responsibility and liability
4
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