Moral conflicts in a project course in information systems education

Abstract

Tero Vartiaisen väitöskirja kuvaa informaatioteknologian ammattilaisiksi opiskelevien ja työelämässä toimivien IT-ammattilaisten yhteistyöprojektissa kohtaamia moraalisia ongelmia. Hän tutki tietojenkäsittelytieteiden yliopisto-opintoihin kuuluvaa projektikurssia, jossa opiskelijaryhmät toteuttavat alan kehityshankkeita yrityksille. Hanke voi kohdistua esimerkiksi tietojärjestelmän tai organisaation tietojenkäsittelyprosessien kehittämiseen. Liike-elämän ja yliopiston välinen yhteistyö on vaativaa kaikille osapuolille. Vartiainen kartoitti asiakkaiden, opiskelijoiden ja yliopisto-ohjaajien kohtaamia moraalisia ongelmia. Hän keräsi tietoa osallistuvalla havainnoinnilla, haastatteluin, päiväkirjojen, kyselylomakkeiden ja piirrosten avulla. Moraalinen ongelma on tilanne, jossa henkilö kokee, että hän on moraalin näkökulmasta merkittävän valintatilanteen edessä.

Project work is recognized as an essential part of studies in information systems development, because it provides students with good professional abilities like producing plans and managing schedules. A project course, which includes interplay of clients, students, and university instructors, is complex to manage in practice. Although ethical issues of these courses have been recognized in literature, there is no research on morally significant decision-making situations (i.e., moral conflicts) individuals of these courses confront. As a first step to tackle with moral conflicts in project courses, this study aims to fill this gap in knowledge by determining moral conflicts perceived by parties of a project course. In the selected course, instructors guide student groups, which learn to manage a project by implementing a project task for a real-life client in the IT field. Phenomenography was used in analysing moral conflicts. Information about moral conflicts was gathered with the help of participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, drawings, and diaries. Three themes of moral conflicts - objectives of parties, commitment and prioritisation, and treatment of individuals – are common to all parties. All parties have to take a stand on conflicting objectives of clients to benefit from the co-operation and of university to promote learning. Every party confronts commitment and prioritization conflicts relating to tasks of project co-operation and other duties. Treatment of individuals - especially intervening with someone’s actions - was found to be one of the hardest of these moral conflicts. Derived from the results and by utilizing a theory of moral psychology, a framework of morally successful project course was formulated. Additionally, categorizations of clients’ perceptions on morals and ethics, moral problems, and feelings relating to moral problems were determined.