Papers by Richard Blumenthal
ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society
As exemplified in the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, the ethical responsibility of ... more As exemplified in the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, the ethical responsibility of computing professionals obliges both guiding and aspirational behaviors. The guiding aspect of this responsibility includes ethical principles focused on avoiding harm and trustworthiness, while the aspirational aspect focuses on contributing to society and human well-begin. Ethical computing is often identified with the guiding principles. Though valued, they should not overshadow the aspirational aims of ethical computing. Towards this end, we advocate for a proactive pedagogy that promotes the aspirational aspects of computing for the social good throughout the computer science curriculum. This abstract presents our efforts in this direction.
ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society
"The right of suffrage is a fundamental Article in Republican Constitutions" [6]
ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society
Every few months or so since graduate school, I encounter new circumstances that remind me of the... more Every few months or so since graduate school, I encounter new circumstances that remind me of the relation between the descriptive and prescriptive approaches humans use to understand and navigate the world in which we live. My most recent reminder occurred while reading about bias in software and efforts by researchers to reduce the negative impacts of this bias on society by (re) designing algorithms to address such biases as gender, racial, age, etc. Typically, "software bias" arises from using a descriptive model of human behavior within a prescriptive program.
ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society
The previous Thinking Like a Lawyer Column , which I'm not, reminded me of an example I use w... more The previous Thinking Like a Lawyer Column , which I'm not, reminded me of an example I use when teaching dynamic semantics, as part of a Principles of Programming Languages course. Namely, I have purchased several guitars during my life and they all came with a warranty similar to the following, "Your new Gibson instrument is warranted to be free from defects in materials and workmanship for the life of the original retail purchaser...".
Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, Dec 1, 2014
A tension arises as the core knowledge in computer science continues to grow, while the time to c... more A tension arises as the core knowledge in computer science continues to grow, while the time to complete a Bachelor of Computer Science degree does not. Two document analysis studies are presented that focus on this growth. The first surveys historic growth in the curricula, while the second examines the current required curricula of 389 Computer Science departments. Finally, ten Design Patterns that help alleviate this curricular growth tension are introduced.
ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 2021
Recently, I've been reading Kendi's How to be an Antiracist , in which he posits "th... more Recently, I've been reading Kendi's How to be an Antiracist , in which he posits "there is no neutrality in the racism struggle" and further notes "the claim of 'not racist' neutrality is a mask for racism" [5]. This position and his subsequent justification made me wonder whether software can be neutral and what might be hidden by computing neutrality's mask?
Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2, 2022
For six decades, ACM and the broader computing community has established guidelines for Computer ... more For six decades, ACM and the broader computing community has established guidelines for Computer Science (CS) curricula. In Spring 2021, a CS202X Steering Committee was formed with the goal of establishing new curricular guidelines that will lead CS education for the next decade. As part of CS202X, an Algorithms (AL) subcommittee is focused on revising the AL topics and learning outcomes specified in Computer Science Curricula 2013. As the CS body of knowledge continues to grow, a healthy debate has emerged regarding how to prioritize the discipline's expanding topics for potential inclusion in CS202X. Towards this end, the objective of this BoF session is to seek feedback from members of the SIGCSE community concerning the AL knowledge and competencies that should be included in the new CS202X guidelines. Possible discussions include: should all graduates know Turing Machines, the Halting Problem, Big-O Complexity, or be able to differentiate Divide-and-Conquer from Transform-and-Conquer strategies; should newer algorithmic approaches addressing bias, fairness, and privacy be included in the curriculum; what are we missing; and what is obsolete, and if we cannot include it all, what goes? The entire computing community must assist in deciding such questions and their answers. Attend this BoF and take pride in shaping the curricular guidelines of CS education for the next decade.
ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 2022
In May and June 2021, the author conducted a survey of the computing and mathematical graduation ... more In May and June 2021, the author conducted a survey of the computing and mathematical graduation requirements of 500 Bachelor of Science in Computer Science ( BSCS ) programs in the U.S. to determine alignment among these requirements and those recommended by ACM/IEEE-CS’s Computer Science Curricula 2013 guidelines and ABET’s Criteria for Accrediting Computing Programs 2021–2022 curricular criterion. Specifically, computing and mathematics credit-hour and course graduation requirements were determined for ABET-accredited and non-accredited BSCS programs within public and private universities. As (i) curricular guidelines are recommendations that do not have to be followed, (ii) curricular accreditation criteria are minimal constraints that may be exceeded, and (iii) non-accredited programs may choose to meet or exceed curricular accreditation criterion, it is possible that graduating computer science students are exposed to similar, or a wide variety, of coursework and associated to...
ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 2021
ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 2020
Last July, members of Computing for the Social Good in Education (CSGEd) community issued the fol... more Last July, members of Computing for the Social Good in Education (CSGEd) community issued the following statement and associated resources.
Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2020
There are many excellent reasons for incorporating social good activities throughout our CS curri... more There are many excellent reasons for incorporating social good activities throughout our CS curricula. Possibly the most important are the large number of pressing local/global issues facing society (e.g. climate change and related issues)[8] which deserve the attention of the computing community, and in turn, demand the attention of computing educators. In addition, research suggests focusing on how computing can affect the social good can help broaden participation in computing[10, 11]. The problem is many CS educators both don't know where to start or how to create programming assignments around socially relevant themes, and believe that such activities can only be undertaken by advanced students in upper division courses, e.g. software engineering and capstone courses. The purpose of this special session is to equip participants with the easy to learn skills so they can begin incorporating socially relevant assignments/projects throughout the introductory computing sequence. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Computer science education.
ACM Inroads, 2019
A ccording to the United Nations, twenty-two global issues face society [31]. Many of these-Healt... more A ccording to the United Nations, twenty-two global issues face society [31]. Many of these-Health, Food, Water, Poverty, and Migration-relate to Climate Change, while others are social issues related to Democracy, International Law and Justice, Gender Equality, and Human Rights. Each of these issues deserves the attention of the computing community, and in turn, demands the attention of computing educators. As a community, we dare not continue with business as usual. Specifically, we must do our part to fill the pipeline of future computing professionals with practitioners who deeply understand that they can use their unique skills to tackle the major social issues of our time
Artificial Intelligence and Applications, 2010
Abstract Ethical decision making is an inherently ill-defined problem that challenges the develop... more Abstract Ethical decision making is an inherently ill-defined problem that challenges the development of intelligent tutoring systems. This paper describes an extension to the tIBIS intelligent tutoring system that allows better support for teaching ethical decision making. ...
Authoring Tools for Advanced Technology Learning Environments, 2003
ACM SIGOIS Bulletin, 1995
issue of learning and adaptation was important and that it would be worthwhile to further elabora... more issue of learning and adaptation was important and that it would be worthwhile to further elaborate upon it. We will therefore suggest a workshop on this topic for the European Computer Supported Cooperative Work conference to take place on the 9th to 15th of September 1995 in Stockholm. The tentative topic will be: Presentation and discussion of ideas with respect to organizational learning-1. from the point of view of socially organized work 2. from the point of view of requirements and design of systems to support organizational, learning and memory Position papers (starred papers included in SIGOIS Bulletin v.15 n.1, December 1994): Esa Auram~iki and Mikko Kovalainen: Computer support for sharing and extending expertise in paper process. Workshop Reports and Papers: CSCW'94 Rodney Fuller: The Model Class Discovery Dilemma in Computer-Supported Work Environments-from Critical Incidents to Metrics of Coordination Sture H~igglund and Rego Granlund: Collaborative C3I Decision Making and Training. *** Christine A. Halverson: Traffic Management in Air Traffic Control-Collaborative management in Real time. *** Patricia M. Jones: Cooperative work in distributed supervisory control: Towards intelligent collaborative support. *** Carla Simone: Requirements of a technology supporting collaborative process management Yvonne W~ern: Collaboration between people, machines and computers in complex process management-some theoretical reflections Workflow = OIS? A Report of a Workshop at the CSCW'94 Conference
Conference proceedings on Organizational computing systems - COCS '91, 1991
Many large, widely distributed organizations struggle with the enormous task of providing the rig... more Many large, widely distributed organizations struggle with the enormous task of providing the right information to the right people at the right time. Organizations facing this task often develop groups of analysts who specialize in supplying information transport and access capabilities to end-users. However, this approach has several drawbacks. Our aim is to address these problems at their source-not by replacing analysts in the information access problem, but by automating the roles assumed by analysts. Toward this end, this paper describes a strategy that combines four techniques to solve such problems: (1) an architecture for coarse-grained agents (CGAS}, (2) a communication protocol that enables CGAS to interact, (3,) an intermediate query language (IQL), designed around user-level concepts, and (4) a query translation mechanism that transforms IQL requests into database-specific queries. A prototype implementation, known as oMIE, is described.
Proceedings of conference on Organizational computing systems - COCS '95, 1995
Work.flow systems have been proposed as a means for automating business procedures. While growing... more Work.flow systems have been proposed as a means for automating business procedures. While growing in popularity, many fundamental problems, such as supporting unstructured office activities, still remain before this technology will be especially useful in the office. This paper examines difficulties associated with handling unstructured office activities and argues that it is both necessary and possible for workflow technology to better support office workers who perform these activities. The approach illustrated in this paper advocates reducing the rigidity of the workflow system's computational model, which, in turn, requires the system to better support the contextual information needs of the workers perfnrming the unstructured activities. Collaborative Technology Research Group Department of Computer Science rick @adUv~ie;l~;i:Yw~t.~atc]~'ttB(q.);u~e~"ee.LC~'.3cXi~l~;ado.edu see [201). While the business environment may currently be more accepting of workflow than it has been at any time in the past, many fundamental problems still need to be addressed befi?re the technology will be especially useful in the office (e.g., [11,[22]).
Object Oriented Systems, 1990
Uploads
Papers by Richard Blumenthal