What should we be learning about ethics in software engineering and what are we formally studying in the brazilian academy?

• Autor(a) principal: QUEIROZ, Germana Arruda de
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFPE
• dARK ID: ark:/64986/001300000hbzd
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufpe.br/handle/123456789/45461
• topic: Engenharia de software; Educação; Mapeamento

Software has a constant, increasingly present influence in our lives. For example, recently developed technologies, such as autonomous cars and social networks, can introduce prejudices, cause breaches of privacy, lead to digital addiction, and introduce other issues. This study aims to identify ethical issues that occur in software engineering and check how this subject is taught in the IT field. A systematic mapping study was conducted. Herein, 744 articles from four databases were returned, 50 of which were accepted for data extraction. Thereafter, we conducted an educational survey with 93 participants and composed a document analysis on the discipline of ethics in 20 Brazilian universities. Based on the data extracted in the review, it was possible to answer the research questions and understand the ethical issues that have been present throughout the last five years. The main ethical issues that can be mitigated through the teaching of ethics in higher education are those pertaining to privacy, awareness, and security. In our survey, we collected opinions from university students and professors. Among the students, 63% reported that the discipline of ethics is important in the curricula of undergraduate- and graduate-level informatics, 61.3% had knowledge about ethics applied to their professional field, 75.3% considered ethics important for IT professionals, 35.5% were interested in pursuing an ethics-related course, 72% did not read the code of professional ethics in any area of information technology, and 47.3% never studied ethics. Among the teachers, 82.3% never taught a specific code of ethics in information technology, 93.1% agreed that a code of ethics is necessary for good professional conduct, and 72% did not have sufficient knowledge regarding ethical issues. The recommendations of the MEC and SBS were reviewed, and it was noted that the recommendations do not provide information on the program, workload and content of the disciplines. The MEC and SBC recommendations were reviewed, and it was noted that the recommendations focus on the student profile at the end of the course. In Brazilians universities the most of disciplines are taught in ethics and society, only 30% of the courses have a workload of 30 hours and there is no standardization at both undergraduate and graduate levels. By combining the information collected, we found that, through systematic mapping, the main ethical issues were privacy and transparency. In the document's analysis, the words that appear most where privacy and intellectual property at the undergraduate level and privacy and responsibility at the graduate level. In the survey and analysis of documents we realized that the students consider the topic of ethics important for undergraduate and graduate courses because most courses have a workload of only 30 hours. The mapping study contributed to evidence the main ethical issues that were discussed in the scientific literature in the last five years, the survey on the opinion of students and teachers contributed to better understanding and suggestions for future changes to obtain greater student interest and greater motivation teachers' professional. Document analysis show that privacy is an issue discussed both in academia and scientific publications, transparency was seen more in publications and not in the syllabus of university courses, other ethical issues were seen as intellectual property and responsibility.