Embedded EthiCS Website
Education resource platform for educators to explore Stanford's ethics in technology curriculum
Education resource platform for educators to explore Stanford's ethics in technology curriculum
Stanford Embedded EthiCS (Ethics embedded in CS) is a program that integrates ethics teaching in Stanford’s introductory CS classes to help students understand the moral and ethical implications of technology. As important as ethical teaching is, not all educational institutions have the time and resources to develop their own set of Embedded EthiCS content. To promote ethics in technology teaching, Stanford Embedded EthiCS decided to develop a platform that shares all of their existing educational resources with educators around the world. I was hired as the website designer for the site during the ideation phase. I led the user research, prototyping, usability testing, and finally delivered high fidelity prototypes in collaboration with a team of ethics researchers, developers, and educators.
Providing two ways of browsing curriculum content for educators who want to efficiently pinpoint their targeted topic and educators who want to reference another syllabus
Tagging assignments, lectures, and courses with course topic tags to allow efficient search and filter.
Collapsing detailed text under key information including corresponded tags, title, and download action button to prevent information overload
I conducted interviews with 6 educators, including computer science professors from University of Washington, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Duke University, and educators from high schools and other educational institutions. The interview centered on how these educators research curriculum and navigate online resources. Each educator's institutional situation provided a unique perspective on their needs.
Educators find digging into existing curriculums and online resources time consuming without a guaranteed payoff: many educators come in with their own curriculum structure and can not adopt a entire existing course. There are a lot of uncertainties about whether the educator would actually find materials on their desired topic that can be fit into their existing framework.
Since many educators come in with an existing course framework, it is often a struggle to fit the online resource in. This is especially true for high school educators who teach within a standardized framework (the AP or IB).
Harvard has an existing website for their Embedded EthiCS curriculum. However, the materials are organized by time and Harvard's class, which are both unhelpful organization methods for the target user —educators who are working on their own curriculum. There is no easy way for the educator to pinpoint an interested topic without browsing through pages of search results.
Stanford Embedded EthiCS’s resources are organized in a class-based structure: there’s a certain set of materials integrated with CS1, CS2, Introduction to AI, and more. The materials are highly integrated into the course’s technical teaching. For example, there would be an additional ethical question section to a coding assignment.
However, every institution has their own curriculum structure and way of teaching. Educators often already have a set of curriculum when they are researching online, and adopting an entire curriculum from another institution is unrealistic.
Based on the user research, many educators search on online educational resources with the following mindsets. One, they already know a topic they want to cover and simply want supporting course materials. Two, they are not sure what ethics topics can be taught with the computer science topics they are teaching. They search for their own CS disciplines and see what existing ethics integrations there are.
These feedbacks pushed for the adoption of a tag system, where users can search and filter course content based on CS and ethics topics. The tag system allows educators to pinpoint the exact topic they want while also allowing them to explore.
The user research reflects that when searching online, educators try to first find the targeted information and then find ways to integrate it with their framework. This led to our decision to display elements of the course individually in the home page so users are able to filter them and pinpoint. If the user finds a content they are interested in, clicking it would lead to where the content stands within a course page, allowing the user to find out how Stanford integrated this content.
High fidelity design is delivered and currently under development, targeting educators from 4000+ universities across the US.
Led usability testing with CS and ethics educators; insights led to strategic revamps of visual design and information architecture.
Website will be presented at ethics in technology conferences to promote ethical technology teaching.
Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to connect with me through email
