Implementation of Competences of Social and Environmental Responsibility in IT Engineering Degrees

Editor's Notes

• #2: Good evening. My name is Rafael Miñano, with Ñ, so I come from Spain, as you will notice from my Spanish accent. My colleagues Celia and Aurea and I work at the UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID, at the School of Computer Systems Engineering And I am going to introduce OUR experience of developing competences about social and environmental responsibility in undergraduate IT engineering degrees
• #3: “Once upon a time, a long time ago, at the nineties of the last century”, the undergraduate degree programs included an elective course about IT Law, following some recommendations of the ACM and proposed by the School’s Director and having little support from the faculty.
• #4: the undergraduate degree programs included an elective course about IT Law, following some recommendations of the ACM and proposed by the School’s Director and having little support from the faculty.
• #5: At the beginning of the XXI century, 2004, a group of teachers offered an elective course focused on social issues, in fact, ICT oriented towards Human Development. This course was very important to test ideas, activities, topics that will be implemented later.
• #6: In 2009, new undergraduate degree programs were implemented, in accordance with the European Higher Education Area and the framework established by the Spanish Council of Universities. Our University, Politécnica de Madrid, included in all of its degrees the generic competence RESPECT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
• #7: Our School, following again the guidelines of the ACM introduced into the IT engineering degree programs a REQUIERED COURSE, in the FIRST ACADEMIC YEAR, which extended the former IT Law having MORE CREDITS and including MORE CONTENTS: Legal, Professional, Ethical and Social Issues
• #8: … but that was ONLY IN THE TITLE, because it was focused MAINLY on legal and professional issues and left just one or two lessons to social and ethical issues, which were not assessed nor included in the global scoring of the subject.
• #9: BUT, from the bottom-up approach, despite our new framework reduces the possibilities for elective courses, we adapted the former ICT 4D course, and offered other academic activities which gave the students the opportunity to know and to reflect on the interactions between society and technology, by public debates, films, readings, visitors and various cultural events.
• #10: Based on the experience and the learned lessons from the elective options, we were introducing bit by bit more contents, lessons, activities, assessment, within the required course. In 2014, the ethical and social issues took near 20% of the class time and 25% of the final scoring.
• #11: As we have said at the beginning of this presentation, in 2014, the programs were updated, by the initiative of the School of Computer Systems Engineering A new generic competence, Social and Environmental Responsibility, were included and it will be developed by the framework showed before: one 3 credits course on ethical and social issues in the firt year, one 3 credits course on legal and professional issues in the third year, and into the Final Year Project. It has been a long way and we might expect a “happy end”…
• #12: What do we mean by these competences? When programs of IT engineering degrees were updated at 2014, it has been defined a new GENERIC COMPETENCE “Social and Environmental Responsibility” We want our students to be aware that Engineering IS NOT ONLY A TECHNICAL ISSUE. We want them to know and to think about the the social, environmental and ethical issues related to the Information Technologies AND we want them to achieve the skills needed to deal with them in a responsible way.
• #13: This definition is based on the recommendations and guidelines from various references: Governmental recommendations, both from the framework of the EHEA and from the Spanish Council of Universities, specifical ones for IT engineering degrees Accreditation boards such as ABET and EUR-ACE Innovative initiatives in engineering education such as CDIO and the decade of UNESCO for training in sustainability Or professional boards such as the Association for Computing Machinery Our goal for the students is to be aware and competent Our goal for the programs, is that the inclusion of these topics will be considered IN FACT as normal as the inclusion of mathematics, programming , algorithmic or business subjects.
• #14: How are these competences implemented in the current programs? We have two compulsory subjects of 3 EUROPEAN CREDITS, in the 2nd an the 5th semester, and these competences have to be developed as well within the Final Year Project.
• #15: The first one is about social and ethical issues, Where our students reflect about the impact and challenges of IT in our global world, and think and practice with the principles of both the individual professional responsibility and the institutional responsibility.
• #16: The second one focus on the topics that are regulated in our society: privacy and data protection, intellectual property, cybercrimes,… They use current laws to work on cases and situations.
• #17: And into de Final Year Project the students have to include into the FYP memory a reflection on the ethical, legal, social and environmental aspects related to their project and to explain how they have taken them into account to carry out the project.
• #18: Which do we consider as the most important points of our experience? First, I want to highlight that our framework is mandatory for ALL of our students and it has different stages throughout the program.
• #19: In our teaching, the students have to work on cases, situations, examples, professional codes, companies, scandals, challenges… related to the Information Technologies, because they want to become IT engineers.
• #20: More, We are making an holistic and comprehensive approach, from different perspectives: We give a broad view of professional responsibility and sustainability integrating as ethical, social, legal and environmental issues We show how these topics affect not only the individual level and the personal behaviour (the micro level). As engineers develop their professional activities in enterprises and public institutions, we are reinforcing the role of the Corporate Social Responsibility (the meso level). Finally we want our students to be aware about the global impacts of the engineering and, specially the global impacts of IT in our globalized world (the macro level)
• #21: Another relevant point is that, In all stages, the two required courses and the FYP, we are following a common model to work with. When given a technological scenario, case or project… we want our students to be able to: - Use their knowledge of professional ethics, IT law and regulations, CSR, to: identify the relevant issues related to the situation given analyze it properly (taking into account all the stakeholders, considering different points of view, thinking critically and so on) and propose decisions or actions, consistent with law and deontology, and aimed at both minimizing the possible negative impacts and enhancing the positive ones.
• #22: Finally, I would like to highlight that our current framework is the result of a both top-down and bottom-up approaches. I am going to explain it by taking you through our history
• #23: As we have said at the beginning of this presentation, in 2014, the programs were updated, by the initiative of the School of Computer Systems Engineering A new generic competence, Social and Environmental Responsibility, were included and it will be developed by the framework showed before: one 3 credits course on ethical and social issues in the firt year, one 3 credits course on legal and professional issues in the third year, and into the Final Year Project. It has been a long way and we might expect a “happy end”…
• #24: … and we and our students lived happily ever after … but all we know that university is not fairy tale world… And we have to keep on working…
• #25: What do we think it should be improved? First, our everyday teaching work, by both: improving and updating the contents, introducing new methodologies and finding efficient ways of assessment. We want to make an special effort to support the students’ work when doing their FYP: we are planning to offer workshops and documents for guiding them in the integration of social and environmental issues within the project (1)   Secondly, one of our goals is to get more staff involved in developing our students’ social and environmental competencies. We want to do that in two ways: Inviting some of them to give some lectures in the current subjects and in the workshops for guiding the reflection for the FYP. Proposing and supporting them to introduce some appropriate contents and activities into their own courses, for instance.. Artificial Intelligence Software Quality Business Computer Security Data Bases   I hope we can bring you further progress on the next conferences So, to finish with… instead of the “happily ever after”, let me use a expression of the TV series
• #26: Thank you very much for your attention and I will be glad to answer any question or doubt about the presentation