Code & Power
LIS 500 is a course that examines race, class and gender in the computing industry and information profession.
This was one of the earliest ethics-driven courses examining the role of bias and design in information technology at a professional school. Students in this course also learn the fundamental basis of online networking (internet protocols), and elementary HTML web design, and database programming via PHP.
The online version of this course uses extensive video chat and collaboration, allowing students of diverse backgrounds and social identities an opportunity to interrogate the power of code together.
An alternative bias test: This walk-through of a student final project, demonstrates an alternative to the Harvard Implicit Bias test, a website that famously uses menus and user-input to predict unconscious racist and sexist behaviors.
