The House of Computing: Integrating Counternarratives into Computer Systems Education

Abstract

Social upheaval through widespread disinformation, aggressive automation, and algorithmic oppression have led to an increasing focus on the ethical considerations of technologists. In response, researchers and educators have looked to integrate ethics into Computer Science curricula, either by creating ethics-exclusive courses or embedding ethics into existing computing topics. Regardless of approach, few ethics integrations seek to explicitly center counternarratives, narratives opposing dominant narratives within computing, as a method of instruction. Given an existing teaching opportunity, our prior experience with computer systems education, and a lack of existing ethics integrations into computer systems, we integrated counternarratives into an introductory systems course. We framed this integration through theHouse of Computing (HoC), a structural metaphor that frames the computing discipline as an object for critique. Throughout the course, we presented counternarratives alongside technical content. We assessed student understanding of counternarratives through "floorplans'': metaphorical representations of course units, or floors within theHoC. Through an analysis of students' first floorplan, we found that nearly every student expressed existing or newfound awareness of structural problems within computing, though the novelty of the floorplans concept challenged students. Based on this experience, we offer recommendations for instructors looking to teach computer systems critically or integrate counternarratives into other computing courses.