Computer Science 691SE - S-SoftwareEng/SocImpact&Ethics

Open to COMPSCI graduate students only. The goal of this course is to provide a forum in which students can consider the wide-ranging impact that the work of software engineers has on society. This will be done by having students make presentations about their ongoing case studies of example software engineering systems (both successes and failures), software practices (both good and bad), and applications to domains (both effective and problematic). Thus, for example, it is expected that one student case study will focus on the disastrous healthcare.gov web site rollout in Fall 2014; another will examine the development and deployment of software that enabled Volkswagen to defraud pollution inspections, as was exposed in 2015; and still another will address the ways in which software systems are transforming healthcare. Each case study will focus on the responsibilities of the software developers in creating these systems, the impacts that their work will have (whether they know it or not), and the ethical considerations that they should always have in mind. The course will meet once a week, for 2.5 hours, which will be spent largely on discussions of student case studies, with only minimal lecturing by the Professor. Instead, it is expected that each class meeting will consist of discussions, focused by student presentations and examination of newsworthy events concerned with software systems. Each student will be required to do an in-depth case study over the course of the semester, will make at least two presentations about the case study and will write a thoroughly-researched, scholarly paper summarizing what the student has found and has learned. The final student presentation is expected to summarize what the student has learned through the study. Each student is expected to be an active participant in class discussions, and the instructor?s evaluation of the student?s participation in discussions will be weighted as an important component of the student?s final course grade. STUDENTS NEEDING SPECIAL PERMISSION MUST REQUEST OVERRIDES VIA THE ON-LINE FORM: https://www.cics.umass.edu/overrides.