Professional Issues in Software Engineering curricula: Case studies on ethical decision making

The development of the Internet and the World Wide Web presents both Information Systems professionals and business managers with many new ethical problems. It is therefore, necessary to teach students about professional issues. This paper looks at how Professional Issues entered the Higher Education curriculum during the last decade. In particular we present the experience gained within the School of Informatics and Multimedia Technology at the University of North London through the integration of case studies for the Professional Issues part of the In-Course-Assessment (ICA) of a Software Engineering module. The case studies fulfil one of the two core capabilities covered in the module. The marking scheme and two different resolutions to the ethical dilemma posed in one of the scenarios (case studies) reached by particular students are presented together with our conclusions and indications of further action and research.