Education DCL: EAGER: Taking Law into Our Own Hands: Infusing Law into CS Education, Early and Often

For much of its existence, the field of computing has evolved without the influence of overarching laws; and computer science (CS) education has mirrored this reality. However, now, our society is in the midst of introducing regulations that govern core aspects of computing including data, applications, and intelligence. Prominent examples include the General Data Protection Regulation and the AI Act of Europe.

This trend has created a critical gap in CS education, where the status quo of “leave the law to the lawyers” is resulting in a computing workforce that is untrained about the laws that govern their work. This project’s novelties lie in investigating if early and continuous exposure to computing-related laws helps CS students develop a lawful approach to computing.

The project's broader significance and importance are in motivating changes to the CS curriculum towards training the next generation CS workforce to be law-aware.

The objective of this project is to integrate the principles and practices of emerging technology laws into the CS curriculum. To do so, the researchers propose a layered educational plan that (i) starts with prerequisite-free foundation lectures and seminar course; then (ii) infuses law into core CS coursework, and finally (iii) enables hands-on training via law-aware CS research and competition.

The project team will measure students' performance as well as collect their feedback across all the coursework. This data will help answer the key research question: does early and continuous exposure to technology laws help CS undergraduates develop a lawful approach to computing. Findings from this work including novel approaches to pedagogy, experiences, and teaching materials are expected to evolve CS education to incorporate laws that govern computing systems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.