Replication: A Pedagogical Tool for Teaching Ethical Practices to Future Software Engineers

Abstract

Plagiarism activities such as copying code, algorithms, or documentation without consent and lack of attribution are rising in industry and academia. While this can be attributed to the rise of generative AI, a lack of awareness about plagiarism and its implications among soon-to-be software engineers and practitioners raises serious concerns about academic integrity and adds another dimension to this challenge. This research proposes exploring "replicating a study"as a pedagogical tool to impart ethical considerations to software engineering undergraduate students. Replicating a study involves recreating and validating existing research findings utilizing datasets from the original study, contributing to a deeper understanding of engineering concepts. Thus, while working on a replication study, students can be prompted to explore and understand professional ethics such as obtaining informed consent, permission to reuse data, and giving credit to original authors. Using preliminary results from such an experiment with two undergraduate student groups, in this ongoing research, we explore and solicit input to modify the methodology for a more extensive study.