CCE STEM: Finding Practices that Cultivate Ethical Computing in Mobile and Wearable Application Research & Development

培养有道德的计算机研究人员是一项持续的挑战。当前的许多研究集中于将伦理（例如，隐私、公平或可访问性）作为明确的软件设计目标。这导致了专门的设计技术（例如，值敏感设计，设计隐私），旨在消除偏见，确保隐私，或启用可访问性。软件研究和开发中存在的伦理文化研究较少。研究人员不知道伦理讨论和决定何时以及如何在发展中出现，也不知道是什么鼓励了这些讨论和决定。在这个项目中，PI和她的研究团队将研究学术和商业软件研究与开发（R&amp；D），以发现鼓励对道德挑战进行讨论和行动的因素。然后，他们将通过为课堂和大规模在线开放课程（MOOCs）构建交互式研发模拟，将他们的发现纳入计算机伦理学的课程材料中。项目成果将回答以下问题：“在移动应用研究和开发中，哪些实践鼓励对伦理的讨论和决策？”、“如何将这些实践纳入计算机伦理教育？”以及“基于这些实践的模拟如何影响计算机伦理教育？”了解工作实践如何影响软件研发中的伦理思考，将通过鼓励现场伦理辩论和决策来影响计算研究和新兴技术的设计，这反过来又将通过鼓励伦理辩论和反思作为技术工作中不可或缺的、嵌入的部分来培养伦理系统研究人员。传播该项目的调查结果将侧重于衔接领域；PI和她的研究团队拥有丰富的跨学科经验，研究结果将发表在信息和计算机科学、伦理学和政策上。PI之前的民族志工作表明，软件研发的日常工作可以包括一些工作实践，这些工作实践可以撬开关于价值观的讨论，并帮助团队围绕社会价值观作为设计标准建立共识。PI将这些工作实践称为价值杠杆。这个项目将通过从不同的软件研发环境中收集比较数据来建立和测试这些初步的发现。这项研究将集中在移动和可穿戴应用程序的开发上，这是一个充满道德担忧的领域。这些设备收集从生物特征到位置再到联系人的敏感数据，然而这些数据的收集几乎完全不受监管。该团队将观察不同类型的移动和可穿戴研发工作，包括学术和商业，共同定位和虚拟，以及小型和大型团队。他们将使用参与式观察方法（参加会议、参加设计会议和进行访谈）以及跟踪数据分析（日志、聊天、bug跟踪器和其他组织虚拟工作的记录方式）来观察移动应用程序开发中涉及的各种工作实践。从对比项目中收集数据将阐明不同的研发实践和伦理计算研究之间的关系，并将使PI能够发现与多种计算文化相关的价值杠杆。然后，项目团队将把实证研究结果纳入移动应用程序设计课程的交互式模拟中，以评估来自该领域的价值杠杆是否可以在课堂和在线教育中产生影响。

Cultivating ethical computing researchers is an ongoing challenge. Much current research focuses on framing ethics (e.g., privacy, equity, or accessibility) as explicit software design goals. This has resulted in dedicated design techniques (e.g., value sensitive design, privacy by design) meant to eliminate bias, ensure privacy, or enable accessibility. Less studied have been existing ethical cultures within software research and development. Researchers don't know when and how ethical discussions and decisions emerge within development, or what encourages these discussions and decisions. In this project the PI and her research team will study academic and commercial software research and development (R&D), to discover factors that encourage discussion and action on ethical challenges. They will then incorporate their findings into curricular materials for computer ethics, by building interactive R&D simulations both for the classroom and for massive online open courseware (MOOCs). Project outcomes will answer questions such as "What practices within mobile application research and development encourage discussion of, and decisions about, ethics?" and "How can these practices be incorporated into computer ethics education?" and also "How do simulations based on these practices impact computer ethics education?" Understanding how work practices influence ethical deliberation within software R&D will influence computing research and the design of emerging technologies by encouraging in situ ethical debate and decision-making, which in turn will cultivate ethical stem researchers by encouraging ethical debate and reflection as integral, embedded parts of technical work. Dissemination of findings from this project will focus on bridging domains; the PI and her research team have extensive interdisciplinary experience, and findings will be published in information and computer science, ethics, and policy.The PI's previous ethnographic work suggests that the day-to-day work of software R&D can include work practices that pry open discussions about values and help teams build consensus around social values as design criteria. The PI refers to these work practices as values levers. This project will build upon and test those preliminary findings by collecting comparative data from contrasting software R&D environments. The research will focus on mobile and wearable application development, an area rife with ethical concerns. These devices collect sensitive data ranging from biometrics to location to contacts, yet the collection of such data is almost entirely unregulated. The team will observe diverse types of mobile and wearable R&D work, including academic and commercial, co-located and virtual, and small and large teams. They will use participant-observation methods (attending conferences, participating in design meetings, and conducting interviews) as well as analysis of trace data (logs, chat, bug trackers, and other recorded means of organizing virtual work), to observe the diverse work practices involved in mobile application development. Collecting data from contrasting projects will illuminate the relationship between diverse R&D practices and ethical computing research, and will enable the PI to discover values levers relevant to multiple computing cultures. The project team will then incorporate the empirical findings into interactive simulations for students in mobile application design courses to evaluate whether values levers from the field can have impacts in the classroom and in online education.