Computer Ethics
Case Module Template
By William J. Frey
Module Introduction:
The Therac-25 case is what Huff and Frey call a thick, historical, evaluative, big news and bad news case. Tackling cases of this complexity requires both careful thought and considerable skill. Especially important is the ability to sift through the case details, documents, and conflicting narratives. The purpose of this module is to provide students with a structure to tackle big, long, and complicated cases. Students will receive frameworks to help them structure the case's ethical and social problems. They will also be provided with decision points that will help them to enter into the case and take up the standpoint of a participant. The module presented below can be linked to materials that can be found at www.computingcases.org. Nancy Leveson, in Safeware:System Safety and Computer (515-553), also provides an excellent and comprehensive account. Excellent advice on how to teach the case, updated information, and clear explanations of the programming errors are provided by Chuck Huff and Richard Brown in "Integrating Ethics into a Computing Curriculum: A Case Study of the Therac-25." The materials posted at Computing Cases were all developed through NSF projects DUE-9972280 and DUE 9980768.)
The module presents the case abstract and timeline. It then refers students to computingcases.org where they will find the case narrative, history, and supporting documents that provide background information necessary for analysis. The case abstract and timeline introduce students to the basic outlines of the case. The accompanying decision point taken from the case provides students with the necessary focus to carry out an in-depth analysis. Students respond to the decision-point by working through the four stages: problem specification, solution generation, solution testing, and solution implementation.
Module Activities:
- Instructor introduces the case based on the abstract and timeline found at www.computingcases.orgp6
- Students read case abstract, timeline, case decision point, and case analysis exercises.
- Students do further research into the case by consulting ComputingCases materials which include narratives, histories, supporting documents, and ethical analyses.
- Students carry out the activities outlined in the accompanying case exercises by (a) specifying the problem raised in the decision point, (b) generating solutions, (c) testing solutions using ethics tests, and (d) developing plans for implementing the solution over situational constraints.
- Students prepare their case analyses working in small groups.
- These groups present their completed analysis to the class in a case-debriefng session.
- The instructor concludes by discussing the problem-solving issues and intermediate moral concepts raised by the case.
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