Shaping our Worlds and Exploring Our We(s)

Published by Lisa Lancor and Greg McVerry on 11^th December 2018

Featured Image: by Mozilla

Using WebVr to Advance Ethics in Computer Science.

Project Purpose

Southern Connectiuct State University supports one of the oldest research centers of the ethics of compouters and technology. Through this Responsible CS Challenge Grant we will bring this long tradition to Modern browsers by having students develop ethical case studies in computer science using webVR.

Concept Summary

This project will fund the creation of a Virtual Reality recording and editing lab and the development of undergraduate courses in film, recoridn, and animation and a course in webVR. Through these coursese the students will create scalable and remixable content around issues of ethics in computer science in order to leave our programming understanding of ethics as a first-design pirnciple.

The project will proceed in two phases. The first phase we will convert an unused planetearium into a a webVR classroom. This will mean installing the high-end video, recording and computer editing equipment.

In phase two of the class we will develop the course syllabi for a two course sequence in webVR that will revolve around students scripting, animating, and filming case studies about ethics in computer science. These courses will be cross listed with our philosophy department studies in the ethics of technology.

To advance the goals of these challenges we will be making our curriculum and lesson plans openly licensed and available to other compueter science priograms across the globe using Glitch. The syllabi, coursework, and student projects will also be made available on GitHub. Any course work developed by the instructors with funds from the grant will be openly licensed. Students will have the right to choose theior license.

The pedagogy used will center around production based inquiry methods. As the PI's develop the curriculum they will write two model case studies: ethics, license, and open source, sustainability, the web, and block chain. In the first case study students will watch discussions of open source and examine elements of priviledge and privacy. In the second case study students will take part in the a simulation that compares energy use on a web based on HTML and a web based on blockchain technologies.

Students will then use the new laboratory to write and devlop other ethical case studies using webVR. Computer science programs across the globe can complete the case stuides, remix them, or use the curriculum to design their own.

Deliverables

Virtual reality recording studio
webVR editing stations
Approximatley 15 webVR case studies on ethics in computer science
Two course sequence on developing webVR with a lens towards ethics
Network of studnet blogs, reflections, and posts

Suitability

We make perfect partners for the project. Dr. Lisa Lancor, Chair of the Computer Science Department and Principal Investigator, teaches a class on "Ethical Hacking & Penetration Testing." and is considered an international expert on the intersection of ethics, computer science, and teaching.

Southern Connecticut state University has had a long relationship with Mozilla. Mozilla Foundation's code editor, Thimble, underwent extensive development and user testing in our college classrooms. Dr. J. Gregory McVerry, our Pedagogy Director, was selected as part of the innaugural #MOZ50 celebrating the fifty Mozillians who best supported the netwroks efforts around Internet Health. We instill the values of the Moxilla Manifesto into the students at SCSU out of a sense of duty as a campus focused on #SocialJustice.