With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Ethics Education for Participatory Sensing project explored challenges related to facilitating responsible, socially trusted, and participatory ethics for data collection and analysis with urban sensing systems. Through participant observation, it developed educational materials for ethics education in science and engineering.
The mobile phone network is emerging as the largest sensor network on the planet. Mobile phone users, however, are generally unaware of the dual uses of the network, in which their communication devices are also information-gathering devices. In participatory urban sensing, everyday mobile devices become a platform for coordinated investigation of the environment and human activity, but transforming phones into data collection instruments raises ethical challenges.
The work was conducted with the belief that researchers should utilize the network of sensors with consent and active participation of users. The team created an immersion curriculum (using a hands-on laboratory approach) and an interdisciplinary seminar-style curriculum to teach participatory ethics for urban sensing to diverse STEM undergraduate and graduate students. They evaluated these curricula, and synthesized classroom findings into best practices disseminated to the the ubiquitous computing community and broader technology education communities—through white papers, guest lectures, video presentations and discussions, and a website.
PI: Deborah Estrin (UCLA Computer Science); Co-PIs: Jeff Burke (UCLA REMAP & UCLA’s Center for Embedded Networked Sensing); Mark Hansen (UCLA Statistics); Jim Waldo (Sun Microsystems); Lead Graduate Student: Katie Shilton (UCLA Information Studies).
Broader Impacts (from 2008): This work will benefit many areas of mobile and ubiquitous technology research. The multidisciplinarity and rapid pace of system development, the social diversity of users, and the diversity of urban sensing applications are exhilarating, yet pose significant challenges to developing a participatory ethics framework. Much as traditional human-subjects research guidelines apply to a broad and diverse research scope, the PI believes that similarly powerful principles can be specified for human sensing research. The pedagogical tools developed in the education phase of this project will train a diverse group of STEM students to align technological advances with human practices and ethics. Involving students in discussions and practical implementation of participatory ethics will integrate considerations of values into their research and design practice. Students and researchers trained in participatory urban sensing ethics will design systems that reflect participatory ethics, and balance technical and human values. Students will also bring the ethical thinking and value commitments formed during their education to careers in academia, technology industries, and policy arenas. As a critical test case in participatory ethics for urban sensing, formalizing and refining participatory privacy regulation will contribute to fields struggling with meaningful privacy design, including mobile and ubiquitous computing, social networking, and web community systems design.
Supported by NSF Grant No. IIS-0832873.
2008-2011.