Teaching Human-Computer Interaction for Social Good

The subject of human-computer interaction can serve for motivation of students of computing undergraduate courses, by empowering them in addressing problems of social importance and raising awareness on ethical issues. This is particularly important as there is a recognised lack of professional ethics direction in programs of study in most curricula. In this paper, it is argued that the subject of human-computer interaction is particularly suitable to serve this role, as it can relate to real life situations more easily than other theoretical or more technical subjects. Examples are provided of teaching interventions that relate the students to critical problems, e.g. to evaluate and re-design web sites of social relevance, design technologies for social inclusion, etc. It is argued that through such approaches of teaching human-computer interaction, computing is situated in a socially relevant context, motivating the students and increasing the learning effect of the teaching intervention.