I started a Google spreadsheet to track links to tech ethics syllabi

I started a Google spreadsheet to track links to tech ethics syllabi. I made it openly editable, because I worried that hand curation would result in me being a too-busy-assistant-professor bottleneck. I seeded it only with the ethics and policy class that I teach. I tweeted it. It got a lot of attention in part thanks to Boing Boing. It did not take long for me to make my point — that these classes are out there. A couple of months later, the New York Times also wrote about tech ethics classes, though largely presented these classes as something new, born from the bad PR of data science ethics scandals. A lot of the classes on this spreadsheet are not new— though I'm glad that there are even more now!

Besides simply the number of classes represented here, I think another point this data makes well is how spread across disciplines these classes are. About 50 are taught in computer science departments, but the rest come from information science/studies, communication, law, philosophy, and others.

The spreadsheet has also become an amazing living document, improved by others. It's prettier now, more organized. Others have added pivot tables, and additional resources like computing ethics education research papers. Today, there are almost 200 courses in this collection. Many people have told me that this resource has helped them refine or create syllabi, or argue for the value of such a class.

cfiesler on Medium