Open AccessModels for Ethical Decision-Making for Use in Teaching Information Ethics: Challenges for Educating Diverse Information Professionals
Author(s) -
Toni Carbo
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
international review of information ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2563-5638
DOI - 10.29173/irie249
Subject(s) - ethical decision , engineering ethics , information ethics , graduate students , reflection (computer programming) , sociology , medical education , psychology , pedagogy , computer science , engineering , medicine , programming language
Teaching Information Ethics to a very diverse group of graduate students working towards careers asinformation professionals raises a number of challenges. The students come from different disciplines and awide range of diverse educational, economic, social, and cultural backgrounds and from several differentcountries. At the University of Pittsburgh, students in the Information Ethics course are enrolled in one ofthree master’s or doctoral degree programs at the School of Information Sciences: information science,library and information science or telecommunications. In addition, graduate students, and an occasionalsenior-level undergraduate student, from other disciplines and schools, such as business, medicine, publicand international affairs, as well as students from other universities, such as Carnegie Mellon University, takethe fifteen-week course. Identifying and using models for ethical reflection and moral decision-makingrequires drawing on materials from several disciplines and adapting those models for the course. This paperwill discuss some of the models used in the past, the advantages and disadvantages of the model currentlyused (i.e., Richard Paul and Linda Elder’s, The Miniature Guide to Understanding the Foundations of EthicalReasoning. The Foundation for Critical Thinking, Dillon Beach, CA, 2003), and the evolution of theInformation Ethics course over its fifteen-year history.