Teaching Social Issues

Section I: Challanges and Ideas

Challenge 5: What do I bring to this course?

Every instructor brings a variety of personal knowledge and experience to a course. But nowhere is the breadth of that knowledge and experience more important than in teaching social issues of computing. Some of the key personal resources that you will draw from include your own academic background, teaching style, life experience, and technical experience.

ACADEMIC BACKGROUND

From what discipline does a course in "social issues of computing" draw its key ideas? Is it computer science? ... sociology? ... social psychology? ... philosophy? ... ethical theory? ... communications theory? ... organizational behavior? ... political science? ... software engineering? ... business management? ... economics? ... law? Courses in social issues of computing are offered in departments of philosophy, or management, or computer science. And some faculty argue that only members of their discipline are qualified to present this topic.[1] But we believe that many disciplines are needed, even though any one instructor is unlikely to master all of them.

In practice, you'll pick a subgroup of these disciplines, and tailor your course--the materials you use, the issues you emphasize--to fit your own academic background and the department in which the course is offered. But you can't avoid dealing with ideas and materials outside that background and that department, and you can effectively expose students to differing points of view.

First, you can use a wide range of reading material. Rob has selected the articles in C&C2 from many of the disciplines in the list above. You could add to your syllabus readings from the academic literature in disciplines that aren't included in the book. You can use readings from the technical or popular press as a contrast to the way that careful scholars approach the same topics.

Second, when you encounter material from a discipline outside your own, you will want to study relevant social analyses of computing written from the perspective of that discipline. Examples from C&C2 include the work of Paul Attewell (sociology), Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler (social psychology), Ken Laudon (management information systems), and many others. References from these articles will point you to other relevant work in the same field. A recognized text may help clarify basic concepts of a discipline: for example, as we were preparing material on the social design of worklife (Kling and Jewett, 1994), we relied heavily on Scott's (1987) organizational theory text for an introduction to rational and natural systems models.

Third, you can provide specialized reference material, such as the Dictionary of Modern Thought ( Bullock & Trombley, 1988) --perhaps on course reserve in the library--in areas that may be less familiar to you or the students.

Fourth, you might find colleagues in other disciplines that would be willing to serve as "consultants" or even as guest speakers. In practice, scheduling guests may be difficult; but when it happens it can be a good learning experience for both the students and the instructor.

Fifth, if you are not already a member of the ACM special interest group on computers and society (SIGCAS), you might consider joining it. They publish a quarterly bulletin, which addresses teaching as well as other issues--for example, they have included case studies that could be used in a course unit on ethics. Other associations which focus on one or more issues related to computing and society include the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Both groups have extensive resources available in electronic form via the Internet, which we list in Section II.

TEACHING STYLE

In Challenge 4, we advocated an active, cooperative learning approach to social issues of computing. This is an unusual approach in most technically-oriented programs such as computer science or engineering, even at the Master's degree level. Most teaching experience--with textbook-based, lecture-format courses--simply doesn't prepare faculty to work in this way.

For Rob, one key element of teaching style is understanding the students:

"A colleague at another university complains that his CS students have to be `spoon-fed' when they read complex social analytical articles. The cognitive complexity of some of these articles makes strong demands on undergraduates who are used to reading textbooks that present key ideas in a linear order and that block out key terms in boxes with concise definitions. It helps to walk students through some of the more complex articles, and help them see where authors introduce key ideas. It also helps to explain key terms from other fields that the authors assume that their own audiences--of lawyers, management specialists or social scientists--know well."

We don't advocate trying to change your style radically and instantly. Instead, gradually introduce a few techniques from Challenge 4 or Homework assignments and in-class exercises from Instructional Development Services; at CSULB, it's the Center for Faculty Development. There's probably something similar on your campus. There may also be faculty in a Department of Education on your campus who specialize in university-level teaching techniques. We've found that people in these organizations are delighted to talk to any instructor, from any discipline, who has questions or wants help.[2] The IDS office at UCI also publishes a very helpful book called Teaching With Excellence Compendium, which is based on ideas compiled at UC Berkeley.[3]

Seminars

The CSU system, for example, recently held their 3rd annual regional symposium on university teaching (for the 11 campuses in the southern part of the state). There were 90 presentations in six simultaneous tracks, with topics ranging from active and cooperative learning to computerized learning to cultural diversity to anti-cheating strategies. Your faculty development office can probably find something similar in your geographical area. One key attraction of a symposium like this is the opportunity to talk with faculty from many disciplines, but you may also want to consider specialized conferences on topics like critical thinking, writing across the curriculum, and so on.

Colleagues

We noted in the introduction to this book how important it has been for us to share ideas with colleagues. But what if you are the only faculty member teaching this course, in a department where other faculty are oriented toward technical course content and traditional course structures and teaching methods? In this case, conference attendance and electronic media may provide your major links to others in the field.

LIFE EXPERIENCE

In many courses, it's easy to ignore much of our non-academic life experience. But in a social issues of computing course, our life experience can be a central influence on how we approach the material. As we bring this experience into the course, students begin to see how computerization affects their own lives and the lives of those around them--whether or not they make their living with computers.

All of us use computerized systems daily, as members of the public. We rely on computerized automatic bank teller machines, computerized check-out counters at the grocery, computerized tax returns, computerized voice mail--even computerized fuel injection and anti-lock braking systems in our automobiles. What happens when these systems fail, or when they are designed with little regard for their ultimate users? Each of us has his own favorite "horror stories"; you probably do, too. Bring these to class, and ask the students for their analysis.

Here's one example that Tom has used:

"My illustration is a `simple' telephone call to Medicare. I explain to the students that no, I'm not yet old enough for Medicare (no matter what they may think). But I had a medical bill submitted by mistake to that agency. When I tried to inquire about it, I had to negotiate one of the most complex multi-level voice menus that I've encountered anywhere. It was so convoluted--and unintentionally hilarious--that I taped it to play for the class. I then asked them a simple question: `who is most likely to use this system?' Most of them quickly realized: `the elderly.' Q: `What is a common physical problem among the elderly?' A: `Impaired hearing.' Q: `How would a hearing-impaired person (let alone a technophobic one) react to this system?' And so on. Personal evidence such as this can, with analysis, go well beyond simply adding humor to the class: it can lead students to say `oh ... I've never thought about it that way'."

You can probably discover your own wealth of such evidence with only a few moments' reflection. Have you traveled overseas? Then you can illustrate what it's like to make a train reservation from a touch-screen computer in French or Japanese--or to use a computerized baggage locker (or computerized public toilet!) in an unfamiliar city. Have you been active in political campaigns or issues? Then you can illustrate why just "making a new law" won't answer every problem. Have you ever lost a credit card (or had one stolen)? Then you can illustrate the effort and frustration that you went through before your accounts were fixed. Even better, your illustrations can lead the students to share their own experiences with the class, and to begin analyzing them in a careful way.

TECHNICAL EXPERIENCE

Whether or not your own primary specialty is computer science, you can bring to the course a sense of technological history and an understanding of technological change. Younger students may think of computers only in the sense of a Macintosh or a PC that they've personally used. You can broaden their perspective.

As with life experience, you can bring more than just "war stories" of punch-card decks and octal machine-language programming--although these may occasionally be appropriate. Instead, we try to analyze these and other more recent developments to give students an appreciation of where technology has "come from" and how it is changing with increasing rapidity. The decade-and-a-half history of personal computing, for example, represents much more than growth from 10-megabyte to 1-gigabyte disk drives. It represents major changes in our dependence on computing resources, in the routine job skills that are needed by many employees, and so on. Just within the past year, the explosive growth of computer networks has put technology on the front page of newspapers and popular magazines, and has brought the phrase "Information Superhighway" (and even cornier synonyms like "Infobahn" and I-Way") into the popular lexicon. If our students are to deal effectively with these developments, they must develop a sense of the future and how they can help to shape it.

One way that we can help them develop this sense is to show how the present has been shaped. Here, as in life experience, you can probably develop illustrations from your own background. Have you done consulting or private systems development work? Then you can illustrate how complex the requirements, schedules, and costs of an actual system can be. And you can help to dispel the student notion that all programs--like those written in school--are built by one person, completed in one semester, and used only by the program's author or other computer scientists. Have you done research in corporations or in government organizations? Then you can explain how difficult it is to analyze and understand the relationships and mutual dependencies between a system and its social environment.

Like students, though, you may want to broaden your own personal orientation to technology--to think, for example, about large-scale commercial systems in addition to the PCs, workstations, and Unix-based machines that are commonly found in university computing environments. And as in supplementing your academic background by inviting guest speakers from other disciplines, you might also find speakers from local organizations who can bring vivid examples and current practice to your class.

NOTES

1 See Gotterbarn, 1992, for a nicely balanced discussion of theoretical vs. technical faculty in this role.

2 For example, Jim Cooper, Director of the Network for Cooperative Learning in Higher Education at CSU Dominguez Hills, was especially helpful as Tom was perparing a symposium presentation on this topic. (see also Cooper et. al. 1994 and Cooper et. al. 1990)

3 This is also available via the Internet at URL gopher://infocal.berkeley.edu:70/11/.p/otherdepts/ttips/GD