812 TEACHING PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN COMPUTING THROUGH THE DEVELOPMENT OF A STUDENT CODE OF CONDUCT by: Bernd Carsten Stahl, Chris Wood & Richard Howley Abstract: This paper considers the question how professional issues can be taught in an undergraduate environment where little academic experience is to be expected. It develops a theoretical framework which justifies the need for such teaching and indicates that codes of conduct can be a useful vehicle to address these issues. Given the constructivist teaching theory that was deemed appropriate for the subject, the paper proceeds to discuss the realisation of the teaching of professional standards in a HNC programme in a UK university. The paper discusses the result of the module and the strengths and weaknesses of the approach Key words: professionalism, code of conduct, ethics, morality, teaching, constructivism 1 Introduction Moral and ethical issues can be of high importance in computing. These issues can often be framed in terms of professionalism or professional behaviour by computing professionals. The standard of professional behaviour is subject to scrutiny by professional bodies. Learning the basics of these standards is something that should happen simultaneously with the learning of other professional knowledge, which, for computing professionals, is usually done in academic institutions. This means that university education in computing should cover professional issues and that these have to include moral and ethical issues. This much is generally accepted wisdom and supported by most computer professionals as well as most professional bodies or associations. What is much less clear than this is how professional and ethical issues can and should be taught. There are different ways of approaching the topic. Some think that it is useful to clearly tell students what their professional duties and obligations are. Others try a more interactive approach in order to have students develop their own moral reasoning skills. Some think that the topic is a sub-topic of professionalism whereas others see it as part of moral philosophy that pervades practical matters such as computing. Furthermore, there are many practical problems to overcome (Dawson & Newman 2002). Computing students are frequently very interested in core computing subjects such as programming languages, databases etc. but much less so in "soft" areas such as professionalism or ethics. Then there are questions of scarcity and resources as teaching time needs to be allocated to other subjects and