Feb. 19, 2002
Engineering for Social Change
SEAS Course Seeks to Teach Social and Ethical Analysis
Skills to Help Better Evaluate Technology
By Greg
Licamele
The objectives are clear: read,
think, speak, write. That’s what C. Dianne Martin, professor of
engineering and applied science, expects from the 85 students in her
“Technology and Society” course.
In other words, there’s
no computing in this computer science class.
Instead, she aims to teach
the ethical and social analyses skills necessary to evaluate technology
historically and practically.
“I try to impress upon
the students that there’s no such thing as value-free technology,”
Martin says. “The fact that we create a particular technology means
there are values attached to it. We can’t cop out and say I’m
just a computer programmer, or I am just a software engineer and I don’t
have anything to do with ethics. Everything you design is going to have
an impact on some aspect of human life.”
Martin and her students take
this philosophy outside the classroom to non-profit organizations in
DC. For 30 percent of their grade, students must conduct a social impact
analysis to provide technology assessments for social service agencies
such as Bright Beginnings Day Care Center, Bread for the City, Whitman-Walker
Clinic, and Emmaus Services for the Aging. Between the beginning of
March and the end of the semester, students in groups of three or four
must make site visits to their assigned organization. Using survey and
data collection methods, they must determine how computers impact people.
Do users view computers as a help or a hindrance to their job? Do they
have troubles with the interfaces such as Banner or Oracle? At the end
of the process, students must submit a technology report to the organization.
More often than not, these organizations are peppered with old and second-hand
computers. Frequently, the state of the hardware is where the trouble
starts.
“They’ve often found
the computers are obsolete and they are donated,” explains Martin.
“The staff members are trying to work with this equipment and they
are feeling guilty that there is something wrong with them. Our students
look at it and say, ‘Hey, the hard drive has been yanked out of
this computer, this isn’t your fault. This is a computer that’s
been cannibalized and then donated to you.’ ”
Martin says students come back
to class outraged over some of these situations.
“They say, ‘There
ought to be a law against corporations being able to do this,’
” Martin says. “They are learning more than they expected
to learn when they go into it.”
Martin acknowledges a love-hate
relationship for this course.
“It’s a bit of a
hard sell to students because they look at the syllabus and they say
this doesn’t look like computer science,” Martin says. “They’ll
come out of the class and say ‘this is one of the most interesting
courses I’ve ever had, but it doesn’t seem relevant.’
But when they come back two or three years later, they’ll say,
‘You know, I’ve ended up doing all of this usability testing
with people. I’ve had to interview end-users.”
These end-users are receptive
and appreciative of GW’s help. Working through the Office of Community
Service, Martin identifies organizations students can assess. Other
teams work on campus in places such as the University Police Department
and the Registrar’s Office.
In addition to the site work,
students must research a topic associated with that organization. For
instance, Whitman-Walker Clinic students might research technology and
privacy, while those at a day care center may examine children and the
digital divide.
Martin has taught this class
since 1983, but only since 1994 did she incorporate community service
organizations and the social impact analysis. Her passion for this class
stems from her liberal arts undergraduate work and her doctoral degree
in education. With a master’s degree in computer science sandwiched
in between, Martin has brought her eclectic education to GW and to computer
science programs around the country.
Using a grant from the National
Science Foundation in 1994, Martin invited 25 national experts to GW
to explore this relationship between technology and society. During
the next three years, these experts defined the learning objectives
for this type of course.
“We are perceived as leaders
in this area in helping to define the actual curriculum content,”
Martin says. “A computer science department any where in the country
can now understand the course requirements.”
As computer science students
might not realize the relevance of the course immediately, the short-term
benefit helps a DC non-profit group, while the long-term benefit focuses
on the overall development of the freshly minted computing wizards.
“The public depends on
all of the technologies created by these students,” Martin says.
“So they have to have a deep sense of responsibility that they
are serving a dependent public and they are a professional. As a professional,
they have a high level of ethics that are expected of them. You cannot
separate technology and society anymore. They are intertwined.”
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
