Models for Ethical Decision-Making for Use in Teaching Information Ethics: Challenges for Educating Diverse Information Professionals

Abstract

Teaching Information Ethics to a very diverse group of graduate students working towards careers as information professionals raises a number of challenges. The students come from different disciplines and a wide range of diverse educational, economic, social, and cultural backgrounds and from several different countries. At the University of Pittsburgh, students in the Information Ethics course are enrolled in one of three master’s or doctoral degree programs at the School of Information Sciences: information science, library and information science or telecommunications. In addition, graduate students, and an occasional senior-level undergraduate student, from other disciplines and schools, such as business, medicine, public and international affairs, as well as students from other universities, such as Carnegie Mellon University, take the fifteen-week course. Identifying and using models for ethical reflection and moral decision-making requires drawing on materials from several disciplines and adapting those models for the course. This paper will discuss some of the models used in the past, the advantages and disadvantages of the model currently used (i.e., Richard Paul and Linda Elder’s, The Miniature Guide to Understanding the Foundations of Ethical Reasoning. The Foundation for Critical Thinking, Dillon Beach, CA, 2003), and the evolution of the Information Ethics course over its fifteen-year history.