This course is required for all computer science  MAJ   majors.

It covers some ethical and social considerations of computing, and explores practical approaches to them.

Prerequisites:  COMP 2001 and  COMP 2002

Corequisites: COMP 2004,  COMP 2006,  COMP 2007

Availability: This course is usually offered in Fall and Winter semesters.

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COMP 2006, COMP 2007 and COMP 2008 are strict corequisites. You must register for all three courses at the same time. If you are also intending to take COMP 2004 in the same semester as COMP 2006/7/8 then you must register for all four courses at exactly the same time. If you encounter difficulties then contact registrar@mun.ca.

Course Objectives

This course provides students with a basis to address ethical and social issues in computing, by comparing and contrasting different approaches in order to determine appropriate actions. Case studies are used to illustrate these and other professional challenges of computing.

Representative Workload

• Assignments 45%
• In-class Exam 25%
• Final Exam 30%

Representative Course Outline

• Social implications of computing (both positive and negative) (1 hour)
• Fundamentals of ethical analysis (3 hours)
• Ethical argumentation and theories
• Analysis of case studies
• Professional ethics (2 hours)
• Professional codes of ethics
• Ethical responsibilities in software development
• Intellectual property (1 hour)
• IP rights, copyright, plagiarism, software piracy, open source
• Privacy and civil liberties (1 hour)
• Sustainability (1 hour)

Notes

• Credit cannot be obtained for both Computer Science 2008 and the former Computer Science 2760.
• Computer Science 2008 is a one credit-hour course.

Page last updated May 24th 2021