Knowledge Ethics is a required course in Florida State College’s Interdisciplinary Data Science Master’s Program (IDS). The IDS program was model new after I arrived at FSU. College students in this system will quickly be starting, or in some instances have already began, their careers in information science, principally in personal trade and in governmental businesses. Few have any background in philosophy.
As a graduate scholar, I preferred educating medical ethics to pre-med college students as a result of I feel creating a sensitivity to moral points makes college students higher future clinicians. I take pleasure in educating Knowledge Ethics for the same purpose. It’s simple for a knowledge scientist (or certainly, for any of us in our skilled lives!) to get their work carried out by placing their head down, ignoring the social context of that work and the moral considerations it would elevate. In Knowledge Ethics, I attempt to assist college students develop a capability to determine moral points as they come up and develop into comfy discussing troublesome ethical and political questions. When ideas like privateness and transparency are talked about in information science, they’re usually handled simply as buzzwords. So I additionally wish to equip college students with arguments about why precisely such values matter.
My experiences educating utilized ethics to undergrads made me wish to keep away from framing the course round basic ethical theories. I discover that introducing the “Large Three” ethical theories in a cursory manner simply leaves college students with caricatures of every household of views and encourages them to consider philosophical theories as objects on a menu to be chosen when it’s handy. As a substitute of a theory-driven strategy, I construction the category round various ethical values/subjects together with privateness, autonomy, and equity. When creating the preliminary studying listing, I drew from a earlier course on the Ethics of Expertise that I co-taught with my good friend Kathleen Creel (who’s extra of an knowledgeable on this space than me!) and checked out a bunch of syllabi on-line from of us like Solon Barocas, Moritz Hardt, Karen Levy, Jon Kleinberg, Milo Phillips-Brown, Yoel Roth, and Catherine Stinson. I additionally maintain a folder on my desktop the place I save papers that I’d wish to assign in future iterations of the category as I see them. Preserving the studying listing up-to-date is among the course’s largest challenges.
I designed the assessments with a watch towards making the course helpful for college students. I feel efficient writing is a vital ability for a variety of jobs, together with jobs in information science, the place the emphasis is extra usually on programming and statistics. Nonetheless, mastering the actual type of a philosophical essay didn’t appear all that necessary given IDS college students’ profession trajectories. So I made a decision as an alternative to develop “Coverage Memo” assignments, which require college students to investigate a selected, real-world case of their selecting utilizing the philosophical texts assigned for the course.
Within the present iteration of the category, I assign two coverage memos: one on privateness, and the opposite on discrimination and equity. The task is sort of regimented, with particular required sections (e.g., “Case Background,” “Coverage Choices”). I feel this makes it much less intimidating and hopefully extra just like writing duties that the scholars could be requested to do sooner or later. The widespread availability of instruments like ChatGPT has thrown a wrench into the coverage memo assignments, although the requirement to interact with particular course readings—lots of that are current, such that there’s little textual content about them on which LLMs can prepare—helps considerably. (I’ve additionally been experimenting with the Google Docs method of discouraging overuse of LLMs. I’ve reservations about this strategy, however that’s for a unique weblog put up…)
Final summer time, after I was updating the course, I noticed a put up on-line by Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado (through Anya Plutynski) recommending “The Book Club as a Pedagogical Tool.” I used to be intrigued by the thought, significantly for the reason that IDS college students’ different coursework is far much less reading-intensive than a typical philosophy class. A e-book membership task appeared like a great way for college students to discover a subject in a extra sustained manner, to get to know each other, and to construct confidence of their capability to get via a full-length e-book. I chosen eight current commerce books masking subjects like office surveillance, the dangers of AI, content material moderation, and informational privateness. College students selected a e-book initially of the semester. Seven weeks later, they submitted dialogue questions on Canvas and met in small teams over Zoom to debate their books. Afterward, I requested them to put in writing a person reflection on the e-book and their group’s dialogue.
College students’ (nameless) suggestions in regards to the e-book membership was overwhelmingly constructive. I required every group to report their dialog on Zoom in order that I might watch them again. Most teams had wide-ranging, attention-grabbing conversations. It’s troublesome to inform with certainty if a scholar actually learn the entire e-book (the task is extra “teacher” than “cop”), and a number of the teams’ discussions have been extra pure than others. Nonetheless, I plan to make use of the task once more, partially as a result of the scholars appear to actually take pleasure in it. With information science altering consistently, I feel it’s particularly necessary for college students to depart the category feeling curious and empowered to maintain updated with modern moral challenges. My impression (and hope) is that the e-book membership helps to foster this intrinsic motivation to concentrate to moral points in information science lengthy after the course ends.
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Zina B. Ward
I’m an Assistant Professor at Florida State College, with analysis pursuits typically philosophy of science and the historical past and philosophy of cognitive science. I acquired my PhD from the College of Pittsburgh and MPhil from Cambridge College, each in Historical past and Philosophy of Science. My web site is here.
