Evaluating Micro-Insertion as a Method for Teaching Responsible Computing: Results from a Randomized Controlled Experiment

While there have been many calls for teaching ethics and responsible computing, it is unclear how responsible computing instruction and technical learning interact. Some instructors even hesitate to include ethics in their courses, fearing it might distract students from learning technical computing content. An approach called micro-insertion offers a path to teaching responsible computing while teaching technical content. Micro-insertion situates technical problems in real-world contexts, with frequent, minimally invasive discussions of potential harms of a computing professional’s technical choices. We conducted a between-subjects laboratory study where 82 post-secondary student participants were randomly assigned to one of two instructional conditions to learn a computing topic. The technical-only condition received traditional instruction, while the micro-insertion condition learned the same technical material contextualized within a real-world scenario with potential broader ethical or social impacts. Our study design included a pre-test, instruction intervention, immediate post-test, and a 2-week delayed post-test. Each test included both technical and contextualized questions, and the instructional time was the same across both conditions. The study revealed no statistically significant differences in learning outcomes between the two conditions. Participants in both conditions improved in solving problems presented both abstractly and contextualized with a real-world narrative. Thus, we did not find evidence that our responsible computing intervention distracted participants from learning the technical topics. Further, participants in the technical-only condition could correctly respond to contextualized questions, suggesting that students might be able to engage with responsible computing micro-insertions without targeted instruction. To more deeply understand students’ reasoning, we conducted follow-up interviews with 13 of the participants. The interviews revealed that participants in both conditions perceived to have learned about responsible computing from the study. However, the depth and quality of participants’ engagement with real-world issues varied significantly, with many only superficially addressing the context and many relying on their own personal experiences as their source of knowledge. We, therefore, encourage future studies to investigate other approaches to responsible computing education to determine which approach results in more meaningful consideration of social and ethical issues and whether that detracts from or supports technical learning.