How To and How Much? Teaching Ethics in An Interaction Design Course

How much is sufficient and how should one teach ethics in an Interaction Design curriculum in undergraduate computing program has been a point of dilemma for many HCI educators. We conducted a preliminary study using a mixed method to gather perception on ethics in our interaction design courses at two of the leading Singapore Universities. We answer three research questions specific to an undergraduate HCI course: Is there a need for ethics? Is there sufficient ethics coverage? and how to teach ethics? We surveyed 140 students, and interviewed six teachers in two Singapore Universities. Our findings suggest that 92% of students and 100% of teachers see a need for ethics in design courses but more students see it as a need in general computer science or undergraduate education. Based on the student surveys, we find that there is no lack of ethics coverage in our interaction design course. More importantly, most students and teachers prefer ethics to be covered in a use case to be discussed in class instead of a lecture or questions based on research articles.