IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2013 - 32

ow do we apply ethics
to computer programming, or to software development?
We wish to turn
this question around to ask: "How
can software design-specifically
values-based design-advance the
discipline of ethics?" Our answer:
techniques used in realizing values
in educational computer games can
help faculty communities develop
statements of values. This article
explains how, and recounts the experience of the University of puerto
rico's College of Business Administration in crafting, translating,
implementing, and challenging a
declaration of their common values.

Developing a Statement
of Values
Flanagan et al. outlined "a research
project [rApUNSEL] aimed at
designing and building a game
environment for teaching girls to
program computers" [4, p. 323].
Educational software can be redesigned around values like social
justice and gender parity. This
redesigning passes through three
stages: value discovery, translation,
and verification.
1) Discovery. "The goal of this
activity is to 'discover' the values that are relevant to, inspire,
or inform a given design project, resulting in a list of values
and bringing into focus what is
often implicit in a design project" [4, p. 334]. Sources for values in software development
include design specifications,
designer and user values, and
values arising from "subversive
uses." Academic values come
from values required for
accreditation, those embedded
in a college's mission, values
shared by community members, and those emerging from
community education efforts.
2) Translation. "[T]ranslation is
the activity of embodying or
expressing...values in system
32

design. Translation is further
divided into operationalization, which involves defining
or articulating values in concrete terms, and implementation which involves specifying
corresponding design features"
[4, pp. 338]. In the developing its values, UprM wrote
profiles on the five values it
had chosen. Then it formally
approved the resulting statement of values (SOV) by vote.
The translation of values into
value profiles and the crafting of the SOV was a bottom-up process involving all
stakeholders.
3) Verification. "In the activity of
verification, designers assess to
what extent they have successfully implemented target values
in a given system. [Strategies
and methods] may include internal testing among the design
team, user testing in controlled
environments, formal and informal interviews and surveys, the
use of prototypes, traditional
quality assurance measures such
as automated and regressionoriented testing, and more" [4,
pp. 344-345]. SOV verification includes translation from
English to Spanish, generating
teaching modules, and activating challenges to update and
improve the SOV. Verification
is also a bottom-up process;
its activities are designed by
users to promote community
solidarity.
The process described in the next
section differs from that undergone by professional societies.
For example, the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice was written
by a special task force composed
of experts in professional ethics.
It provides a powerful decisionmaking tool for practitioners [11].
The code of ethics of the Puerto
Rico State Society of Professional
Engineers and Land Surveyors

was prepared by senior members
of the professional society who
took great pains to benchmark
their code against other professional codes [6, pp. 418-421].
The College of Business Administration (ADEM for the Spanish Administración de Empresas)
code used a bottom-up strategy
to secure stakeholder buy-in. A
value-based approach also helped
ADEM work around a bewildering
network of existing laws and codes
(reglamentos). Finally, the SOV
targeted the aspirational, a motive
present in Gotterbarn's [8] exhortation to software engineers to
adopt a positive, broader approach
to responsibility.1 His approach
has been criticized [18] and ably
defended [9]. A similar focus on
the aspirational was adopted by
those designing ADEM's SOV [7,
pp. 612-613]. While space does not
permit exploring these issues further, readers can find a discussion
of compliance and aspirational
motives in professional codes [6],
how codes can be used in a redeployed pedagogy to teach moral
virtue [7], and how codes form an
essential component of the "moral
ecology" of moral exemplars in
the professional areas [10].

Discovering
Community Values
Four stakeholder groups participated in drafting the SOV: nonteaching staff, administration,
faculty, and students. ADEM is one
of four colleges that together make
up UprM.
ADEM first organized a workshop to write a rule-based code
of ethics. participants, in small
groups, identified ethical issues and
crafted rules addressed to stakeholders. A sample provision: To
provide students a good education,
teachers should keep themselves
1

"This broader sense of responsibility goes
beyond the malpractice model. It incorporates
moral responsibility and the ethically commendable" [8, p. 229].

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SprING 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2013