Overview of the Discipline of Computer Science - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 31

The homework presented in Activity 5 guides the students how to prepare these
presentations.

Activity 5: Preparation of a Presentation on a Computer Scientist, Homework
Select a computer scientist and prepare a short presentation (15 min) about
this scientist. In your presentation:
1. Sketch briefly the scientist's biography.
2. Describe his or her major contributions to the field of computer science.
3. Focus on one problem that the scientist worked on and explain its impact
on the field of computer science.

3.5 Social Issues of Computer Science

This section illustrates the actual teaching in the MTCS course of ethics, diversity,
and soft skills—social issues of computer science which deal with the community
of computer science professionals. 7
The need to tackle such topics in the framework of computer science teacher
preparation programs emerges from the growing recognition that such topics are in-
deed part of the discipline of computer science. This fact is well reflected, for exam-
ple, in the Computer Science volume of the Computing Curricula 2001, 2008 and
2013. 8 According to these volumes, one body of knowledge of computer science is
SP—Social and Professional Issues—which is composed of 11-16 core hours and
includes the following core topics: Social Context, Analytical Tools, Professional
Ethics, Intellectual Property, Privacy and Civil Liberties, Professional Communica-
tion, Sustainability, History, Economies of Computing, Security Policies, and Laws
and Computer Crimes (taken from the 2013 curriculum).
We would add that the attention given to social issues is highlighted also in the
context of other educational domains. For example, this perspective is integrated in
the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) movement that “studies the relation-
ships between these three elements and combines a cross-disciplinary approach of
engineering, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences.” 9
There are additional social issues related to computer science, such as, program
comprehension, software requirements, business issues, and more (cf. Tomayko and
Hazzan 2004 ). In what follows, as mentioned, we illustrate the teaching of social
issues of computer science in the MTCS course by focusing on ethics, diversity and
soft skills.

7 Based on Hazzan and Lapidot ( 2006 ).
8 See Computing Curricula:
2001: http://www.acm.org/education/curric_vols/cc2001.pdf
2008: http://www.acm.org/education/curricula/ComputerScience2008.pdf
2013: http://www.acm.org/education/CS2013-final-report.pdf.