Exploring Ethical Codes and Moral Behavior in Today’s Classroom

G.M. Marakas states [20] “Suggesting that ethics are an important element in any business endeavor seems intuitive. In systems analysis (IS) 1 , however, personal integrity and ethics are often at the center of the conduct of a development effort.” At Edinboro University of PA the Computer Science (CS) program specifies that CS courses contain a section on ethical issues related to the course topic. At Robert Morris University (RMU), an entire course in the IS program is devoted to a study of global, social, economic and ethical issues in computing. As ethical and behavioral issues are of growing concern in business, so too are they in today’s classroom. The access and exchange of electronic documents among students and their ability to be opaque as to the use of these materials on assignments increasingly raises concerns regarding plagiarism and authorship across educational institutions. A key question addressed in this essay is “What are the drivers (factors) that account for the decisions today’s university students make to either engage in, or refrain from, actions that are considered immoral?” Can we determine and depict where students stand on ethical drivers as well as on the behavioral choices each makes? This paper introduces concepts for representing ethical drivers as dimensions in social-cultural and ethical frameworks; further, techniques for placing a student within these multidimensional frames are introduced. An initial survey instrument has been piloted that demonstrates one of the dimensions related to ethical framing. The design of a target study to demonstrate both ethical and moral frames, along with associated survey instruments, is presented.