The Study of Information Professional Ethics Curricula and Students’ Alternative Conceptions in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Lin, Chien-Hung, 林建宏
• Other Authors: Chien, Chou
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/18718509575902194538

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 教育研究所 === 100 === With the advent of technology, people have had the chance to get access to information technology and the Internet more and more often. Under the circumstance, the competence which information professionals have and the roles which they play have become more significant. Because information professionals’ competence might cause considerable impacts on regular users and their professional behaviors could involve many ethical issues, information professionals have to be guided and ruled by information professional ethics. Thus, information professional ethics have to be taught in information departments when they are in higher education. The study intended to investigate the curricula offered by Taiwan universities’ information departments and categorized their students’ possible alternative conceptions by a self-developed two-tier test. Based on the investigation of curricula and the analysis of 440 respondents’ answers to the test, the results are as follows: 1. Approximately 40% information departments have offered information professional ethics-related courses. Among these, elective courses are slightly more than required ones. 2. Among these information professional ethics-related courses, more courses cover the content on general information ethics and information laws/ regulations; fewer courses cover the content of professional ethics, such as the basic concept of ethics, conduct codes, ethical decision making, and so on. 3. The students have alternative conceptions on ethical thinking, such as social consensus-based thoughts, the lack of the conception of ethical decision making and solution making, and the focus of means rather than goals. 4. The students have alternative conceptions on laws, such as law-misinterpretation, the lack of knowledge in copyright/ privacy laws, and insufficient conceptions of confidentiality. 5. The students have alternative conceptions on their rights and obligations, such as the lack of attribution of responsibility to the product, over-emphasis on their personal-related rights, and insufficient conceptions on distinction between the public domain and the private domain. 6. The students who have full-time working experience and who have no working experience at all have significantly higher scores than the ones who have only part-time working experience on our two-tier test. According to the results, the researcher stated that it is necessary to offer the information professional ethics curricula for information departments in Taiwan colleges and universities. Finally, the researcher provided concrete suggestions for the curriculum development of information professional ethics.