Ethics4EU – Ethical Computer Science Education for Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Ethics4EU – Ethical Computer Science Education for Europe

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Ethics, religion and philosophy (incl. Inter-religious dialogue); ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Digital ethics deals with the impact of digital Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on our societies and the environment at large. It encompasses a range of issues and concerns from privacy and agency around personal information, digital literacy, big data including governance and accountability, the dominance of a small number of large network platforms, pervasive technology, the Internet of Things and surveillance applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithmic decision making including the fairness, accountability, and transparency of those automated decisions, and automating human intelligence for robotics or autonomous vehicles. Importantly, it is not only about hardware and software, but it also concerns systems and  how people and organisations and society and technology interact . Many of these subjects are currently undergoing intense study in the media, for example the use of automated profiling using illegally harvested data in the last US election, social media interference in the Brexit referendum and automated decision-making software which display gender and racial biases when shortlisting applicants for jobs, while others such as the impact of surveillance technology have been studied for decades. It is particularly relevant to the Irish context as the EU Data Protection Office is based in Dublin as a shared European understanding of what constitutes ethical technology will greatly assist the development of Irish capacity in this context.
The project has the following objectives:
– To identify gaps in computer science lecturers’ knowledge of ethics
– To develop a common understanding of pan-European values in ethics in technology
– To develop a repository of open and accessible online curricula, teaching and assessment resources to support computer science ethics
– To produce practical guidelines and instructor guides for the teaching of computer science ethics
– To develop a sustainable European Community of Practice in computer science ethics
– To develop an online training programme through the HubLinked Global Labs model for computer science lecturers in ethics.

Ethics4EU will develop new curricula, best practices and learning resources for digital ethics for computer science students. It follows a ‘train the trainer’ model for up-skilling computer science lecturers across Europe. The following resources (results/outputs) will be developed:
– Research report on European values in Ethical technology
– Research report on State of the Art of Teaching Ethics in Computer Science programmes
– Curriculum for teaching ethics in Computer Science
– An open access online learning resources database of teaching and assessment strategies for teaching ethics in computer science;
– An instructor guide to aid the delivery of material from the online resources database
– An online community of practice to facilitate discussion and experiences in delivering computer science ethics which will complement the online resource database and instructor guide
– A staff training and development programme for staff in computer science faculties with a number of deliveries (comprehensive online course, online CPD course and a blended learning version suitable for the classroom)

Through project meetings and multiplier events a range of perspectives from computer science and ethics lecturers, tech industry representatives and citizens with an interest in digital ethics will be sought. The project will also include a pilot staff training and development programme to evaluate the resources developed during the project. A number of established methodologies will be used to carry out the project. We will conduct a literature review and focus groups to create a report of the ‘state of the art’ in digital ethics in Europe. We will perform qualitative interviews with computer science faculty to determine current methods of teaching computer science ethics. We will follow pedagogical methods for curriculum development to develop online and blended learning programmes. We will follow a software development methodology to create digital resources including the database of learning resources, the online community of practice and the online learning environment. All outputs will be evaluated using a mixed methods approach. All project results will persist beyond the duration of the project and the open access policy we will pursue will ensure that they can be widely used by different organisations interested in digital ethics. The enhanced educational materials and delivery will result in computer science graduates with key skills in developing ethically aligned software which is advantageous for industry and society at large. The project includes two organisations with wide networks into CS education (Informatics Europe) and the wider community in Europe (D-Learn).

Project Website

http://ethics4eu.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 449410 Eur

Project Coordinator

TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY DUBLIN & Country: IE

Project Partners

• Informatics Europe
• European Digital Learning Network
• MAELARDALENS HOEGSKOLA
• INSTITUT MINES-TELECOM