Ethics for Nerds
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29173/irie484Keywords:
ethics, computer science, educationAbstract
Informatics is the innovation driver of our time. From social media and artificial intelligence to autonomous cyber-physical systems: informatics-driven, digital products and services permeate our society in significant ways. Computer scientists, whether researchers or software developers, are shaping tomorrow's society. As a consequence, ethical, societal, and practical reasons demand that students of computer science and related subjects should receive at least a basic ethical education to be able to do justice to their ever-growing responsibilities and duties. Ethics for Nerds is an award-winning lecture that is being taught annually at Saarland University since 2016. The course has been continually updated and progressively improved over the years. In this paper, we share our experiences with and best practices for teaching the basics of ethics to students of computer science and offer advice on how to design a successful ethics course as part of a computer science study program.
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