Ethics, programming, and virtual environments.

We have devised a novel experiential approach to teaching students about the social impact of computers and the ethical, legal, and social responsibilities of computing professionals. Rather than teaching these topics in a traditional classroom manner, we teach them in a text-based online virtual educational environment. At the same time we use the environment's object-oriented design to instruct the students in object-oriented concepts, and to introduce them to software engineering by having them work in groups. The approach is proving extremely successful.