Integration of ethics issues into software engineering management education

Abstract

Society becomes more dependent on software, and the quality of software has a direct and vital impact on the life of people. Therefore, the importance of software engineering ethics is highlighted. Further, it is necessary to increase the emphasis on ethics education in software engineering curricula. However, in practice, there is generally not a single software engineering ethics course. Even if there is, it is a marginal role. How to effectively integrate ethics topics into software engineering education is a key issue. In this paper, we first analyze the relevance of two domains: Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice and software engineering management that is a subdomain of Software Engineering Body of Knowledge. The results show that they are highly related. Therefore, it is feasible and reasonable to integrate ethics issues into the course of software engineering management, which is usually a required course. This integration brings a solid position for the ethical education. In addition, we suggest new description of codes to promote their fusion, further put forward some ideas about their fusion in education practice. Our contribution is to put forward a new idea for the ethics education in software engineering field.