Overview

The Socially Responsible Computing Handbook (or SRCH) is a website under development at srch.cs.brown.edu. It describes material on the issues in being socially responsible in the field of computer science.

The problem: The SRCH is currently primarily a textbook, but not for a single course. An instructor is meant to use parts of the material in their own course. However, some of the material may be too advanced or may not be aligned to the learning objectives of the instructor’s course. The SRCH is also incomplete and under active development.

The solution: A tool that allows instructors to document the learning objectives of their own course, and to choose parts of the SRCH that align with those objectives.

Mockup page ideas

Instructors should be able to describe their course, including a high-level description and a collection of individual learning objectives, classified by the cognitive part of Bloom’s Taxonomy:

• Remember
• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create

Instructors should then be able to easily incorporate their selections into their own course. Note that Lamakū itself uses Bloom’s taxonomy when creating assignments and discussions.

Since the SRCH is being developed, and ideas about socially responsible computing are being developed, instructors should also be able to add new material. And an instructor’s work on curriculum tracks should be publishable and sharable with other instructors. Thus, this application has many aspects of a Wiki, but with structure specific to this domain.

Some possible mockup pages include:

• Home-Page
• Login/Register
• Profile
• Course CRUD pages
• Learning objectives CRUD
• Mapping from course learning objectives to SRCH learning objectives
• CRUD of SRCH content
• CRUD of bibliographic references

Use case ideas

Whether or not the following bullet points list all pages or not, the completed use case should show an end-to-end scenario of using the system.

• An instructor creates a course, defining a series of learning objectives. She then browses the SRCH, flagging topics and source material for possible inclusion in her course. This produces a “breadcrumb” trail through the material.
• An instructor sorts and organizes topics and materials flagged for possible inclusion in a “breadcrumb” trail, deciding how to structure the material for inclusion in their course.
• An instructor fills in topics in their course material that isn’t yet included in the SRCH. She writes a discussion, includes bibliographic references, and documents learning objectives.
• An editor reviews instructors’ “breadcrumb” trails, looking for new material and topics to include in the main SRCH.

Beyond the basics

After implementing the basic functionality, here are ideas for more advanced features:

• Publish organized course material as its own page.
• Integrate the Navigator with a bibliographic system, like Zotero.
• Integrate the Navigator with Lamakū, so that instructors can easily import material.
• Create an interface to propose new modules for the SRCH itself.
• Develop a new module for the SRCH on whether and how it would be appropriate to use a large language model (LLM) tool to propose alignment of SRCH material with specific course objectives. Include an essay explaining whether and how this integration aligns with the material covered in the SRCH. Consider the use of data annotators reported here in this investigation. Is such use socially responsible?

Faculty Sponsor

Brook Conner dbconner

Student Development

The SRCH is being developed by undergraduates at Brown University.