"Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC)" is a Course materials drawn from MIT Open Learning and catalogued under Computer Science for Undergraduate / College. From the source: Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC), a cross-cutting initiative of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, works to train students and facilitate research to assess the broad challenges and opportunities associated with computing, and… Slide Collection preserves the upstream link, the original creator credit and the licensing terms; download the file to use it in a classroom, study group or revision plan.
About this presentation
Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC), a cross-cutting initiative of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, works to train students and facilitate research to assess the broad challenges and opportunities associated with computing, and improve design, policy, implementation, and impacts. This site is a resource for SERC pedagogical materials developed for use in MIT courses. SERC brings together cross-disciplinary teams of faculty, researchers, and students to develop original pedagogical materials that meet our goal of training students to practice responsible technology development through incorporation of insights and methods from the humanities and social sciences, including an emphasis on social responsibility. Materials include the MIT Case Studies Series in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing, original Active Learning Projects, and lecture materials that provide students hands-on practice and training in SERC, together with other resources and tools found useful in education at MIT. Original homework assignments and in-class demonstrations are specially created by multidisciplinary teams, to enable instructors to embed SERC-related material into a wide variety of existing courses. The aim of SERC is to facilitate the development of responsible “habits of mind and action” for those who create and deploy computing technologies, and fostering the creation of technologies in the public interest.
How to study this deck
Computer-science slides are deceptively dense. Code snippets and diagrams collapse hours of design decisions into a few lines, so resist the urge to skim. Run the snippets locally, change one variable, and observe what breaks.
Undergraduate viewers should treat this as a scaffolding for deeper reading — the slides outline the territory, but the textbook chapters and primary sources remain the actual content.
Five questions to test your understanding
- What is the single most important claim on the first three slides, and what evidence is offered for it?
- Which slide could you remove without losing the argument? Which slide is load-bearing?
- Where does the deck switch from definitions to applications? Mark that transition.
- What would a student who already disagreed with the conclusion need to see to be convinced?
- Which two slides, if combined, would give the clearest one-slide summary of the whole deck?
Where this deck fits in the wider catalogue
Slide Collection classifies this presentation under Computer Science, alongside other openly-licensed material in the same subject. If you are preparing a unit at the Undergraduate / College level, the dedicated combined Computer Science · Undergraduate / College page is the fastest way to find adjacent decks with the same audience in mind.
Citation & reuse
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